Review of Saltcrop by Yume Kitasei

Kitasei's stark dystopian science fiction sets sisters adrift in a future world where oceans have risen and consumed much of the earth. Leaving a stressful daily life of scarcity, two sisters embark on a far-fetched rescue mission for the third in this messy, danger-filled journey that tests each of their mettle.

In a near-future world reeling from environmental catastrophe, oceans have risen and destroyed the cities along the world's coasts.

Skipper and Carmen are sisters getting by with Carmen working and Skipper selling scavenged plastic from the water so they can get by and help care for their gruff, ailing grandmother. Their oldest sister, Nora, left home years earlier to try to help develop crops to sustain the world.

Food shortages, job shortages, risen waters, mutated and often toxic wildlife, and scarcity in all areas mean life is stressful. They all have enough daily concerns to stop them from dreaming of anything more.

But when Carmen and Skipper receive a desperate, cryptic plea for help from Nora, the younger sisters begin to worry that she's gotten mixed up in the dark underbelly of the business of chemicals, pollution, fortunes, and great power involved in crop production. They decide to set out across the dangerous sea and into the unknown to try to save her.

Much of the novel centers around the sisters' unlikely, disaster-ridden ocean voyage, with dips into the past to revisit memories and further illuminate the reasons for their current-day dynamics and personality traits. Kitasei considers matters of duty and loyalty versus desire for individuality and imagination; emotional frigidity in the face of a crushing desire for warmth; and love, complications, and disappointments around family ties and friend bonds.

The story is sectioned into disparate parts, and at times the sisters are privy to little or no information about the situation at hand. This creates a cold, distant tone for periods of the book. But the hard-fought connections between the sisters is often powerful and moving.

The sisters persist in their ever-changing mission, never giving up and boosting one another when they despair, and, against all odds, they drive themselves forward, sometimes seemingly only by the force of their will.

Kitasei offers multiple almost feral, incredibly strong female protagonists making their way in an unforgiving future world decimated by earlier populations, carelessness, and mistakes. The bonds between the sisters are never too easily forged, and the novel is never earnest--Saltcrop is gritty, unrelenting danger balanced with adventure and layers of back story. It seems amazing that anyone lives through the novel's many challenging situations.

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Yume Kitasei is also the author of The Deep Sky and The Stardust Grail.

You can find other books about life near the ocean, ocean voyages, and environmentally focused novels on this Bossy blog.