In the postapocalyptic adventure Saltcrop, Carmen and Skipper set sail across the ocean to find their missing sister, Nora, who was last seen in the employ of a suspicious agricultural megacompany. The company, Renewal, makes massive profits selling blight-resistant seeds and other solutions to widespread crop failures in a climate change-ravaged world. Hints suggest Renewal has skeletons in the closet. Saltcrop's action and mystery are both thrilling, but it's the complicated sisterly dynamics that propels Yume Kitasei's novel into a single-night read.
The wild escapade takes place in a seamlessly imagined world, traversing drowned towns, decaying cities, and the open ocean. The beautifully rendered setting is equal parts eerie and gorgeous, like the unnaturally phosphorescent whales the sisters encounter. "After, they mourn the departure of the whales and the lights, and all the moments of pure wonder like this that only come once in a life and can never be fully remembered."
The characters' personalities clash spectacularly, their disputes arising with family as well as the strangers they meet along the way. When they pick up a sailing companion, Jackson, his volatility makes for a truly nail-biting read. Kitasei's writing shows profound relational insight, depicting, for instance, the grandmother who raised the three sisters "trying to pinch and prod" Skipper into her own likeness, "not the person Grandma was, but the person Grandma imagined herself to be. But Skipper was a rock, not clay."
Saltcrop is a poignant read that opens up an ambitious array of mysteries, character conflicts, and moral questions--and delivers spectacularly on them all. --Carol Caley, writer