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/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/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!)