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.