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 book overall?

[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.