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Synopsis:

From the acclaimed author of The Stardust Grail comes the epic tale of two sisters who sail across oceans to find their missing third sister―and Earth’s environmental salvation.

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.

Review:

Saltcrop is the story of the bond of three sisters, Nora, Carmen, and Skipper. The world is flooded and coastal cities have been reclaimed by the ocean. All of crops get blight and many people are starving to death before Renewal creates pesticides that give crops a defense against disease. When the family stops hearing from Nora, who lives in a large city and works for the major seed corporation, they starts to worry, especially after they get news from her work that they needed to get her things before they are thrown away. Skipper has spent her life working and living with her sailboat as her solitary love, so she decides that she is going to sail to the city and figure out what happened to Nora. Even though her middle sister Carmen and her do not really get along very well, Carmen decides that she is going to come with her. What unfolds is an adventure of epic proportions, complete with danger, pirates, corporate espionage, and growth as individuals and as siblings.

The first half of this novel is so compelling. The story pulls at you from three different angles: learning about the new world that is flooded and dying, characters that do not exactly get along but are doing the best they can for the benefit of another (in this case finding their sister and finding out why she disappeared}, and the sheer anxious danger that is around every turn. Novels on boats and ships always have an added anxiety because the boat is an isolated setting, where death is imminent outside of the immediate location. The sisters travel during tumultuous storms, pirate raids, and they have to trust people that should not be trusted. All of these things lends a consistent anxiety and danger. This feeling does shift to a different setting later in the novel but does not relent. 

One of the more impressive aspects of the writing is the way that Yume Kitasei not only builds the world but builds the relationships between the characters. In one small scene toward the beginning of the novel, we get the entire picture of the relationship between Skipper and Carmen. They are just starting their journey on the sailboat. Skipper makes beans and is embarrassed that she cannot offer her sister more. She is afraid that when cooking them, she oversalts them, so she spends the whole time watching Carmen eat, seeing how many drinks of water she takes because of the saltiness and notices when Carmen does not finish them. This is such a small scene, but it tells so much about how Skipper feels like she needs to impress Carmen, that she feels a little bit inferior to her sister, and that this dynamic will be tested quickly and often.

I did not know what to expect when I started Saltcrop so it was a pleasant surprise to get pulled into a story about two sisters trying to find a third. It seems like such a simple, classic plot, but so much is done with the story that it makes Saltcrop a unique experience that I will remember for a long time. I am interested in reading Yume Kitasei’s previous novels. If they are anywhere as close to as good as Saltcrop, I will have another author whose writing I will always be excited to read.