Award-winning author Paolo Bacigalupi delivers a thrilling, fast-paced adventure set in a vivid and raw, uncertain future.
In this exhilarating companion to Printz Award winner and National Book Award finalist SHIP BREAKER, Paolo Bacigalupi brilliantly captures a dark future America that has devolved into unending civil wars, driven by demagogues who recruit children to become soulless killing machines.
Two refugees of these wars, Mahlia and Mouse, are known as 'war maggots': survivors who have barely managed to escape the unspeakable violence plaguing the war-torn lands of the Drowned Cities. But their fragile safety is threatened when they discover a wounded half-man -a bioengineered war beast named Tool, who is hunted by a vengeful band of soldiers.
When tragedy strikes, Mahlia is faced with an impossible decision: risk everything to save the boy who once saved her, or flee to her own safety.
Drawing upon the brutal truths of current events, THE DROWNED CITIES is a powerful story of loyalty, survival and heart-pounding adventure.
Beautifully written, filled with high-octane action, and featuring badly damaged but fascinating and endearing characters, this fine novel tops its predecessor and can only increase the author's already strong reputation. - Publishers Weekly
Suzanne Collins may have put dystopian literature on the map with The Hunger Games...but Bacigalupi is one of the genre's masters. - The Los Angeles Times
Bacigalupi writes with a furious energy that makes this brilliant depiction of an all-too-believable future impossible to forget. - Booklist
Breathtaking. - Kirkus
Paolo Bacigalupi is the author of the highly acclaimed The Drowned Cities and the New York Times bestselling Ship Breaker, which was also a Michael L. Printz Award winner and a National Book Award finalist. He is also the author of The Windup Girl and Pump Six and Other Stories, and is a Hugo, Nebula, Locus, Compton Crook, John W. Campbell Memorial, and Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award winner. He lives in western Colorado with his wife and son.