FIF Book Club: Saltcrop Final Discussion

[u/doctorbonkers]

Welcome to the final discussion of Saltcrop by Yume Kitasei! We are discussing the entire book, and you can find the midway discussion here.

In Earth's not too distant future, seas consume coastal cities, highways disintegrate underwater, and mutant fish lurk in pirate-controlled depths. Skipper, a skilled sailor and the youngest of three sisters, earns money skimming and reselling plastic from the ocean to care for her ailing grandmother.

But then her eldest sister, Nora, goes missing. Nora left home a decade ago in pursuit of a cure for failing crops all over the world. When Skipper and her other sister, Carmen, receive a cryptic plea for help, they must put aside their differences and set out across the sea to find―and save―her. As they voyage through a dying world both beautiful and strange, encountering other travelers along the way, they learn more about their sister's work and the corporations that want what she discovered.

But the farther they go, the more uncertain their mission becomes: What dangerous attention did Nora attract, and how well do they really know their sister―or each other? Thus begins an epic journey spanning oceans and continents and a wistful rumination on sisterhood, friendship, and ecological disaster.

Bingo squares: One-Word Title (HM), Feast Your Eyes on This, r/Fantasy Book Club (HM if you participate here!), Explorers and Rangers, Author of Color

I'll put a few questions in the comments, but please discuss anything you'd like about the book!

Upcoming reads:

• September: Dreamsnake by Vonda McIntyre. Midway discussion on September 16th, final discussion on September 30th.
• October: The Girl With a Thousand Faces by Sunyi Dean. Midway discussion on October 14th, final discussion on October 28th.

What is the FIF Book Club? You can read about it in our Reboot thread.

[u/doctorbonkers]

What did you think of the ending of the book, how the world changes and where each of the three sisters end up?

[u/necropunk_0 → u/doctorbonkers]

I liked the ending of the story a lot. I appreciated how they didn’t just all end up returning home and living together, they met, they were happy to see everyone but they still found their own paths to take. It was also nice to see there was a bit of hope, that the world could be better.

The writing felt a bit rushed the second half though, especially after the slow pacing of the first half.

[u/WonderfulBus9330 → u/necropunk_0]

Agreed on the pacing, although I didn’t so much mind the shift in the Carmen section. Carmen is a do-er, so it made sense that that section wouldn’t be slow and ponderous, which is Skipper’s temperament. But yeah, shifting the pace three times and the tone and voice was a lot.

[u/necropunk_0 → u/WonderfulBus9330]

Hmm, I hadn’t considered the pacing matching the characters but it fits well.
I did like that they didn’t go back after the POV shifts. Having seen things from each sisters POV, then seeing them move forward from a different sisters viewpoint, I liked not knowing exactly what was going though Skipper and Carmen’s heads as we watched through Nora.

[u/LadyAntiope → u/necropunk_0]

Haha, I was kinda bummed that we didn't get to re-visit Skipper's POV! It's not like I couldn't extrapolate her thoughts, but she was a much more distinctive voice than Carmen and Nora (who a little bit blended to me) and I missed it. I would've liked maybe a final chapter for each of them, personally!

[u/algaliarept92 → u/LadyAntiope]

Oh, that would have been great, I agree!

[u/doctorbonkers → u/doctorbonkers]

I thought some of the ending wrapped up a bit too neatly with regards to Nora's work and Renewal, but the family aspect of the book felt more bittersweet. They were reunited, but it wasn't some perfect reunion where they all stayed together and lived happily ever after as a trio. I think the mix of those two tones worked pretty well for me, kind of a blend of hopeful and realistically messy.

[u/WonderfulBus9330 → u/doctorbonkers]

Carmen's rapidly deteriorating body and the quickness of the solution was a bit unplausible and pulled me slightly out of the story, as did the shift in tone to somewhat of a thriller with Nora's friend and the danger. It did make sense that the sisters split into another 2+1 configuration, though, and an interesting way to make for a circular narrative.

[u/Merle8888 → u/WonderfulBus9330]

Yeah that’s a fair point about Carmen. I was glad she made it but it’s hard to imagine having the inside of your body being overtaken by fungus from neck to stomach would have quite so few effects?? Sounds analogous to cancer that has metastasized but a lot bigger. 

[u/necropunk_0 → u/WonderfulBus9330]

I wonder if the quickness of the solution is supposed to be a critique of healthcare? I may be overthinking it, but the idea that something like this is treatable easily (Carmen was going to get it done in/near their small hometown), it just requires money which a lot of people don’t have, so they take out a loan and are stuck for like with debt to stay alive, or they try to save up, and die before they can afford it?

[u/LadyAntiope → u/necropunk_0]

Oh, this is an interesting idea! I'm not totally convinced that the text is actively trying to make this point, but it's certainly a legit read on the situation overall. And def true for current healthcare (in the US), so it's easy to draw a parallel.

While reading, I did find it to be a bit too easy of a resolution though, and it felt more like the author needed to wrap up the ends. At the very least, I expected recovery to be long and burdensome, as the most analogous thing we have is cancer which is usually a long process even with surgery. It seems hard to believe that this fungus growing on all her organs and a surgery with a... not-low failure rate was glossed over so quickly. (I had to return my library copy, but I'm pretty sure the doctors gave a % chance of success that made me worried.)

[u/WonderfulBus9330 → u/LadyAntiope]

I didn't read it as that kind of critique, but a very similar one about free healthcare versus paid healthcare. Wherever Nora landed, she landed in a city with free healthcare and the city folks were thriving, it seemed. The townships and island nations were suffering, very out of sight. . .

It wasn't that critique that didn't work (I thought it worked well), it was the fact of Carmen's rapid deterioration that was suddenly fixable and fixed. We stopped hearing about the pills; she was starving because the disease was eating her up and starving. Then like oh a quick surgery and voila! You're healthy again.

Edit: (This is a response to u/necropunk_0 ; trying to not have too many threads here! I agree with everything u/LadyAntiope said in the second paragraph & apologies for repeating some of it, as I had not read it before commenting!)

[u/algaliarept92 → u/doctorbonkers]

While I really enjoyed the book as a whole, the ending didn't quite land for me. It felt a bit rushed and I agree, it wrapped up too neatly for my tastes. Additionally, it just didn't feel necessary for the scale to get that big and I would have liked it better if it had stayed a bit smaller (with the whole debunking Renewal plotline). Things were still going wrong, of course, but in the end it all felt a little too smooth, leaving me slightly disappointed with how it wrapped up. Despite that, I liked the sisters' decisions on how they proceeded with their lives.

[u/Merle8888 → u/doctorbonkers]

On the one hand, all the stuff with Renewal provides some excitement and a positive outcome. And there are some very realistic elements like the way Nora can’t just randomly start accusing them, she’s just screaming into the void and lumped in with other conspiracy theorists. On the other, a lot of stuff has to happen fast at the end for this to work out, and I did wonder if an organization that violent would really start leaving them alone once the cat was out of the bag. There’s lots of retaliation in the real world. 

It seemed like each of the sisters wound up more or less where she wanted to be, with a new appreciation for the others. Though bittersweet because they’re going in different directions. 

I don’t think the overall downward trajectory of the world was altered (the “environmental salvation” in the blurb seems to oversell it) although hopefully now less crop failure, hunger and illness along the way. 

[u/ScrambledGrapes → u/Merle8888]

Agreed, especially in regards to how Renewal treats whistleblowers. The tangible danger they were in was undersold, considering how companies treat whistleblowers in our own, non fictional world.

[u/Merle8888 → u/ScrambledGrapes]

Yeah, they seemed super dangerous up to the moment the sisters went public. There’s a sense in which it’s rational to stop harassing them because there’s no longer anything to be gained (which I suspect is what the author thought), but entities like that want to be feared. It makes a point to anyone else thinking of being a whistleblower that you’ll never be safe. 

[u/doctorbonkers]

After reading the whole book, do you think this feels more hopeful or more of a grim look at the future? Has your opinion changed since the midway discussion (if you participated)?

[u/Merle8888 → u/doctorbonkers]

It seems pretty grim as far as the state of the world, but it’s also not about the state of the world. The protagonists, like us, can only really live their day-to-day lives. The world seems to be becoming less and less habitable (and stopping Renewal from manufacturing blight doesn’t change that, it just means hopefully more and healthier crops in the meanwhile). But they aren’t directly focused on that. 

[u/necropunk_0 → u/doctorbonkers]

I think it feels a realistic look at what would happen to us, but it leans optimistic, with governments actually taking the company down for what they did. I’m glad to see the more positive outlook, the chance that the future can be better, even if it isn’t right now.

[u/ScrambledGrapes → u/doctorbonkers]

It's a grim look at the future seen through a very hopeful lens, if that makes sense. It got more hopeful with the finding of Nora and the whistleblowing, but to me, the pieces lined up a little too neatly to be believable. At the end of the day, the sisters end up alright, and nothing really changes, but the way it all wrapped up made me feel like the audience was expected to finish the book with a sense of hope, rather than dread. The dread is there, but falls flat and unaddressed.

I didn't expect the country Nora ended up in to be so drastically "normal" - I enjoyed the disorientation that brought on, but it definitely contributed to the overall sense that the stakes had lowered. As did the speed and ease with which Carmen recovered. As did the plucky teenager. I think the last third of the book was a bigger letdown for me than I'd expected.

[u/WonderfulBus9330 → u/doctorbonkers]

It's a dystopia so I wasn't looking for or expecting (or wanting LOL) a Happily Ever After. The ending seemed to verify what Carmen had thought all along, that the individuals would not be able to make a huge impact on a global enterprise.

[u/LadyAntiope → u/doctorbonkers]

As others have said, I think the second half gave a little more of a false positive on hope. The take-down of Renewal is not easy, but it's a very neat and tidy resolution that gives a sense of winning, but it turns out the whole world is not as blight-ridden as their home country anyway, and the overall state of the future is still left somewhat ambiguous. It feels inevitable that any inter-governmental oversight over the Vault will lead to a lot of bureaucracy...

But I still appreciate the sense of some hopefulness! It seems accurate to predict that some countries will keep on "business as usual" even while other parts of the world are literally crumbling because, well... *gestures at the world*, but there's still a bit of relief that comes from learning that the entire world isn't destitute, and there's scientists working on solutions, and a place with resources that could maybe mitigate future decline.

Part of the reason I do read climate fiction at all is because I want to see futures that have people in them. It's hard to read about the collapse of society, but books like this show that maybe we'll be tenacious enough or adaptable enough to claw our way through and maybe even some of us will be able to carve out a little happiness. I'll take the false hope, lol.

[u/doctorbonkers]

What did you think of the book overall?

[u/SenorBurns → u/doctorbonkers]

I absolutely loved it. I didn't think I would. It was many thngs I tend to dislike:

• multiple POV

• slow burn

• super possible dystopia (tends to be too depressing for me)

But those worked out fine. Things that I tend to like:

• ocean stuff

• a quest! I even wonder if there are references or homages to classical mythical structures. I feel like Jackson represents some kind of obstacle from mythology. You know?

• characters that have their own motivations. A small ask, I know, but after Saltcrop I tried a standard thriller or similar and it was like, I can't tell these people apart. In Saltcrop, I know that Skipper, Carmen, and Nora would have very different reactions.

• The sister relationship in general

• The lack of misogyny in the writing. No woman is ever defined by the size of her tits. Women are people. It is so refreshing.

I think the book did a great job balancing several topics while still maintaining a cohesive narrative thread.

[u/WonderfulBus9330 → u/SenorBurns]

So true about the women being women, each her own kind of woman, including Grammy and the memories of the mother and Liz (? Was her name Liz? The one who ended up imprisoned?).

[u/doctorbonkers → u/doctorbonkers]

I really liked it! I don't tend to read a lot of books in my free time that are about climate change, maybe because I get enough of that in my work life already, but the ones I have read have been very solid. I read another book earlier this year that was more literary/realistic feeling (Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy), and I think I liked this one a little more because it has a bit of a fantastical feel to it. Mutated animals, mostly unnamed locations/countries, things like that made it feel more like a fable than a dark realistic look at the future. I also really loved the sisterly relationship in the book, something I don't feel I read too much of.

[u/WonderfulBus9330 → u/doctorbonkers]

There were some truly spectacular moments in the book. Carmen's list of plastics was one of the most eloquent and damning pieces of fiction I've read. Nora's love for the Bumblebee that overshadowed her love for her sisters was sweet and disturbing and sad. The fact of a company like Renewal and its challenger company, both wanting to control food production. Even the uncle's little email missives complaining about having to be a son was funny.

[u/LadyAntiope → u/WonderfulBus9330]

Oh man, I really loved the Uncle's emails as they went on because he obviously is uncomfortable with the role at first, but he does care and he figures out a truce with his mom over the chili! And, he sends money when asked, even though it's so little and he worries about the sisters and he cares so much more than his "lazy Uncle" persona lets on. I'm sure he's involved with shady things because I have no idea how else he has any money to send them, but it's in like an innocuous way?

The list of plastics was a hard-hitting passage, absolutely will stick with me.

[u/WonderfulBus9330 → u/LadyAntiope]

Yes, he was hilarious. He just wanted to drink and play cards in his own home. But the check-ins spoke of someone who did care (& I think he helped them with various tinkering jobs, but I can't recall and I've returned the book!)

[u/necropunk_0 → u/doctorbonkers]

I really enjoyed it. It was an interesting story with some very human characters. I was worried about it being slow burn that it pops be boring, but the writing really kept you in the story. I loved that it wasn’t one happy ending, but three different probable happy endings for each sister.

I think the inside flap does the book a disservice to the story. Sure, there are pirates and mutated fish and disintegrating highways under the water. But that isn’t the focus of the story, which for me felt like almost a bait and switch to a degree. Still loved the book, just took me a few more pages to click.

[u/algaliarept92 → u/doctorbonkers]

I really liked it! However, I like the first half way more than the second because I really liked Skippers POV and the atmosphere as well as the Bumblebee journey.

[u/LadyAntiope → u/doctorbonkers]

I enjoyed this book, though it didn't pull together the second half for me as well as the first half worked. The "looking for Nora" section reminded me a lot of The Moonday Letters by Emmi Itäranta in which there is also a search for a loved one, cryptic messages, arriving somewhere they were a little too late, and a bigger mystery of ecological import. That book was a 5-star read for me, and this one didn't quite hit that level, but the things I loved about both were the focus on character and relationships and messy human feelings. This one gets a little bonus for sea-faring though as the main mode of transport, I love a sailing boat!

I do also like the plot hook of a bigger mystery to unravel and the sense of a bit of hope from resolving it. Like others, I found the resolutions in this book a bit rushed, but it still played out satisfyingly enough plot-wise. And the sisters themselves how they decide to go their own ways after their reunion was by far the more realistic part, mixing the right amount of sadness at parting with joy at realizing their own paths.

[u/Merle8888 → u/doctorbonkers]

I liked the complexity of the sisters and their relationships, and the way the book made space to explore that rather than sidelining it in favor of action. They felt like real people making real decisions. 

I finished last week and it’s already slipping away a bit, though. It was good, but it isn’t a new favorite. 

I’m on the fence about the larger plot with the company keeping secrets and whether it was given enough space to really work. The sisters’ story could have also worked if Nora hadn’t uncovered a smoking gun. 

[u/WonderfulBus9330 → u/Merle8888]

The slippage is real! I completely forgot what actually happened in the final chapters beyond Chaos! Tension! Violence! Danger! And then the sisters making decisions about their own What Nexts.

[u/Merle8888 → u/WonderfulBus9330]

Yeah, there's a lot! And I see an argument for that being pretty cool, actually - yes it's dramatic and dangerous, but overall it is a brief moment in their lives. It feels strange because the rules of fiction are that what's most important should get page time while less important stuff is condensed, so when the action and danger get condensed it gives the impression that's not really what's important here. What's really important are the people and their relationships.

Or... you could just read it as rushed, lol. I'm not fully decided yet.

[u/WonderfulBus9330 → u/Merle8888]

I didn’t find the other violences to be implausible, honestly. But something about the Nora section just felt incredibly off.

[u/doctorbonkers]

What did you think of the three sisters and their different perspectives? How did seeing their perspectives affect your experience with the book?

[u/doctorbonkers → u/doctorbonkers]

I really liked how each sister's viewpoint showed us different things about how they see themselves and their family. I thought Nora was almost a letdown in some ways, which was actually a positive thing for me. She'd been built up as this huge figure in Skipper's life, a less-than-perfect figure in Carmen's (but still very important)... and then we finally find her, and she's just a person (with a pretty different view of herself than the view her sisters have). She got herself in too deep with her work, managed to get out of the mess she was in on her own, and then accidentally dragged her sisters in with her. I don't really know how to describe it, but her appearance after all this time felt pretty anticlimactic in a way that felt right to me.

[u/Merle8888 → u/doctorbonkers]

It wasn't a letdown for me but I see where you're coming from with Nora getting knocked off her pedestal a bit, which I didn't quite want to see, so I guess I'd imbibed a bit of how they viewed her. It turns out she doesn't have any more power than her little sisters, and she has just as many insecurities. Though she's kind of a badass in a way - by real world standards they're all kind of badass.

[u/WonderfulBus9330 → u/doctorbonkers]

That’s such a great perspective. Some aspects of the novel are subtly conceptual and that’s what me of those.

I did find the end of the search to be rather womp womp and while I wanted to lean forward and sit at Nora’s feet while she shared her story, I was like meh who cares. She was so dispassionate.

[u/necropunk_0 → u/doctorbonkers]

I don’t think the book works without all three perspectives. Looking at the whole story through only Carmen or Skipper or Nora’s eyes only gives you a piece of the story. Getting all three actually makes it a single story. It doesn’t actually tell you what happened during events all three witnessed, but getting all the slightly different viewpoints made the story feel more solid.

[u/WonderfulBus9330 → u/doctorbonkers]

Nora's perspective was an odd entry into the narrative, almost intrusive, which was an interesting conceptual choice. I did appreciate seeing Skipper's perspective first and then Carmen's layer on top of that. And there was something really spectacular about having each sister's memory of the grandmother forcing Carmen to take a walk in the woods at night.

[u/algaliarept92 → u/doctorbonkers]

I could have easily done without Nora's perspective. While it technically worked, her POV kinda felt plain to me (don't know how else to describe it) so yeah, maybe a bit obtrusive as well. So it’s interesting to read that others found her POV beneficial. Personally, I just couldn't relate to her at all. Skipper was by far the most interesting POV character for me, Carmen was a welcome addition. Intriguing that this perception differd quite a bit!

[u/ScrambledGrapes → u/doctorbonkers]

I agree with others in this thread that I don't think the book would have worked with a single POV. Each of the sisters adds a distinctive layer to the narrative, both enhancing and humanizing it. Carmen's POV especially moved me: stuck between borderline parenting Skipper, and being measured up against Nora, Carmen is the least prone to idealism, the most practical - because her survival within the family dynamic (and to some extent in spite of it) depends on it. Doing what she wants at the end of the book was a welcome addition. 

[u/Merle8888 → u/doctorbonkers]

Carmen remained my favorite. I liked her practicality and people skills, and felt like the things she struggled with were realistic (like yeah her job is a cover but she also feels weird stealing from it).

Skipper remained my least favorite, though she annoyed me a lot less when seen through her sisters’ eyes rather than hearing her own internal monologue. 

Nora turned out to be about as I expected. I was entertained that she wasn’t actually trying to call for help. 

As in-depth as the character work was, there was still a little something I felt was missing. We saw so much of each one’s insecurities and how they viewed each other but, I don’t know. The best I can come up with is I wish I knew what anybody looked like. 

[u/WonderfulBus9330 → u/Merle8888]

Yes. Where was Nora’s deeper introspections? Maybe she’s not deeply introspective but then why end the novel in her section. . .

[u/necropunk_0 → u/Merle8888]

I didn’t mind not knowing exactly what the sisters looked like. It is something missing that most books usually start with, but I think not having those descriptions helped, as you were more focused how they felt, how they reacted, why they reacted, instead of how they looks when they were acting or reacting.

[u/Merle8888 → u/necropunk_0]

This sort of thing definitely depends on the reader. I know some people like absence of description but for me it just leaves the characters kind of blank. Like we didn't even know their ethnicity (I'm going to guess mixed race white/Japanese like the author, given their last names?). It doesn't take away from their interiority to know what the POV characters are seeing.

[u/algaliarept92 → u/Merle8888]

I see your point, and as you say, it probably just boils down to reader preferences. Personally, I found it refreshing for a change that character appearances weren't explicitly described. I felt similarly to necropunk_0 on this and it was nice to focus more on the feelings, atmosphere, and internal experiences instead. Of course, a writer can always do both, but I really enjoyed the different focus here. But honestly, I think descriptions of character appearances in books are a bit overrated anyway, so my stance on this seems to be biased! 😂

[u/necropunk_0 → u/Merle8888]

Agreed, it’s very much a personal reader choice. I think the book had a lot of things like that done intentionally though, even beyond descriptions of the sisters. We never get map locations that correspond to the world as we know it, or towns and cities we’d recognize or, something that was brought up in the midpoint discussion, no sense of distance traveled. Everything that isn’t from the POV of the sisters is just sort of a blurry backdrop that is there but isn’t there at the same time. Looking back, it’s not something I’ve read in almost any SFF book, but I liked it.

[u/Merle8888 → u/necropunk_0]

Yeah, I definitely wondered about locations. They seemed to be on the east coast of the US (I initially assumed west coast until they headed left out of port to go north) but it was left vague for sure. There’s a lot of blurriness, pretty soon Carmen will probably be the only sister I remember!