Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi My rating: 4 of 5 stars A coming-of-age novel that’s a bit slow to start, but ultimately engrossing. What stands out for me aren’t so much the characters–protagonists Nailer and Nita are complex and believable, but many of the supporting characters are sketchily drawn–or the plot, which has a familiar shape–shipwrecked rich girl rescued by gutter rat, flight from bad people wanting to use rich girl as pawn, a big fight, a hairsbreadth rescue–but the meticulously detailed, multi-layered post-climate change world in which the action takes place. Bacigalupi presents a scenario in which our own “Accelerated Age” and the damage it wrought is just a memory, and a new society has grown up in and around its relics and submerged former metropolitan areas. From the hardscrabble coastal region where Nailer and his crew dismantle the rusted hulks of supertankers for salvage, to the drowned city…

When the Sea is Rising Red by Cat Hellisen My rating: 4 of 5 stars A haunting YA fantasy by a debut author. Seventeen-year-old Felicita, a sheltered aristocrat, flees the rigid traditions and stifling conventions of her caste, taking refuge in the slums and falling in with a rag-tag band of outcasts, grifters, and revolutionaries. Struggling to adjust to her new life, she plunges headlong into a dangerous infatuation, and is swept up in events she doesn’t understand. By the time she realizes the true nature of what she’s become part of, it’s too late to escape. This is a pretty familiar plot line. But Hellisen keeps it fresh with a determined and realistically conflicted heroine, interesting characters, and truly stellar world building. Atmospheric descriptions and lyrical prose bring the seaside city of Pelimburg–populated by humans, selkies and vampires (who aren’t like any other vampires you’ve met), animated by strange…