Ship Breaker Review

The book Ship Breaker does have a decent premise story wise, the main character Nailer works on Ship-Breaking yards in a post apocalyptic Louisiana. After a series of unfortunate and fortunate events Nailer comes across a damaged futuristic Clipper Ship, owned by the Patel family, with the only survivor Nita Patel. As usual many events follow that will change the life’s of all the characters.

While for me this idea is sound, it has a few problems in the way the author does this story. For instance the book, at least for me, has some pacing problems. The book starts out slow, and the story does not go anywhere for the first 100 or so pages out of a 323 page book. Something like this would be no problem if the book was longer, but it’s not. It also seems a little too short and not following out some ideas to the fullest extent. Leaving many questions unanswered, some topics talked about then just abandoned never to be heard of again. Talking about abandoned things I must talk about the ending. The reason I say abandoned is because it seams like the author had some sort of time constraint and rushed straight through it, leaving me very disappointed and unsatisfied. Along with a unsatisfying end there is an unsatisfying love story that to me is just plain awful in its execution, and in the rushed ending totally abandons this relationship.

I would recommend this book to someone who wants a short read, is okay with a book tat cuts corners and at points rushes itself so much that the story doesn’t even have time to catch up. Also they have to be able to read plenty of language, be able to deal with graphic scenery. Along with a love story that doesn’t work at all. The book does remind of a movie I saw once called Book Of Eli, which is not a good thing because it took place in a post apocalyptic world with most of the same problems minus one or two.