Book Review: Salvage by Alexandra Duncan

Salvage
Author:  Alexandra Duncan
Publisher:  Greenwillow, 400 pages
Expected Publication Date:  April 1, 2014

From Goodreads:
Ava, a teenage girl living aboard the male-dominated deep space merchant ship Parastrata, faces betrayal, banishment, and death. Taking her fate into her own hands, she flees to the Gyre, a floating continent of garbage and scrap in the Pacific Ocean, in this thrilling, surprising, and thought-provoking debut novel that will appeal to fans of Across the Universe, by Beth Revis, and The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood.

Review:
This is such a wonderful, unusual, heartbreaking and hopeful book about Ava's journey from spaceside to earthside (from a spaceship to a space station to a garbage island to Mumbai, a city of over 175 million people).  From clueless ignorant girl to strong independent woman.  It was not at all what I was expecting, and I absolutely loved it.

Ava has spent her entire life living in space on a ship that has a very patriarchal society.  The women do "women's work" ("cooking, weaving, dyeing, mending, and growing children") and only the men learn how to read and do math.  Ava has always been interested in "fixing" (basically, anything mechanical) and has a natural gift for it, but that's not allowed.  And yes, the men have multiple wives.

Then something happens and Ava is cast out and has to go to Earth.  And continues her journey of hardship, but at the same time, meets incredible people who change her life for the better.  It's the best type of sci-fi story, focused on characters and personal growth but it also has intricate, detailed world-building.  I really don't want to write too much more about it because I think it's better to read it without knowing any more.  Just read it.   This is YA sci-fi done right.

Posted by:  Pam