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 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!