The humanitarian
atrocities of certain regions in Africa are well-documented. Warlords piling on top of warlords, all
fighting for self-perceived causes or just a moment of megolomaniacal glory,
much of the continent’s 20 and 21st century history, with the introduction of
western weapons, is bound up in bloodshed of the most appalling, cyclical,
anti-humanist variety. For every
beautiful, smiling face a person sees in a tourist brochure or UNICEF ad, there
is a child soldier lying dead in a ditch. Paolo Bacigalupi’s 2012 YA novel The Drowned Cities, follow up to the
successful Ship Breaker, captures
precisely such a violent time in an American future history. A grim, harrowing account, a teenage girl
fights to save a friend who once saved her in a land turned upside down by internecine
war and feigned patriotism.
The novel
is the story of Mahlia, a half Chinese, half American girl left behind in the
drowned cities (a post-flood, tropical version of the Chesapeake Bay area) after
the death of her mother and father’s return to China to escape the partisan
violence which followed upon America’s fragmentation in the aftermath of
environmental disaster. Caught by a
passing warlord, Mahlia’s hand is chopped off.
With her head planned next, a boy named Mouse steps in at the last
moment to save her. The pair escaping
the warlord, they eventually find themselves living with and assisting a doctor
in a remote jungle village called Banyantown.
Only partially out of the warzone, however, distant guns can be heard throughout
the day and soldiers occasionally tramp through. But when a highly-prized escapee finds
himself in their backyard one day, it’s only a matter of time before a whole
army comes looking to collect. Matters
drawing to a head in Banyantown as the soldiers carouse and trample what
semblance of civilized life remains to the village, Mouse and Mahlia’s have
their worlds spun further out of control.
