Second Entry

Day 2 of reading and I have completed the book, Yes!!! finally It is such a good feeling, well I guess I will start reading another book, speaking of another book, I am thinking that I will start Posting of my previous book Stolen so stay in tune for that in my next blog. Well back to Ship Breaker, yes I have finished my book but I have not completed my required posing of my book so it might take 1-2 days to finish the entire posting requirement.

After my previous post, we got introduce to Nailer and his friends even more Nailer Lopez, also known as Lucky Boy, is the teenage protagonist of the novel. He works as a ship breaker, tearing apart old oil tankers to scavenge for copper wiring, metal staples, or any other material that can be sold on the market. He's been working this job since he was a young boy, and now, as a teenager, he is getting too big for the work. Although he's small and scrawny for his age, with ribs that stick out from under his clothes, there will always be smaller kids queuing up for his job. Nailer has a few close friends, Pima and her mother Sadna, but since his mother died of an infection, Nailer doesn't have any family to protect him from life on the beach. His father, Richard Lopez, is a violent, abusive drug addict, who doesn't think twice about killing people for profit.

The theme of the book is loyalty and Luck. The two things anyone needs to survive the harsh life on Bright Sands Beach are loyalty and luck. There's big luck and small luck - big luck would be being born into a rich family so that you would never have to work on crew, while small luck would be finding a Lucky Strike, a prize valuable enough to change your life so you never have to work crew again - but the Fates are always willing to dole luck out. Many of the people who seek luck on the island give gifts to the Fates in the hopes that their luck will change, but it is unknown why the Fates choose one individual over another to make lucky. Once the Fates decide to change one's luck, they have to use that change wisely. "If you're just smart or just lucky, it's not worth a copper yard. You got to have both, or you're just like Sloth down at those bonfires, begging for someone to find a use for you" (Page 51). Nailer's first experience with luck is when he falls into the oil pocket on the abandoned tanker. He knows that in this situation, he has to be both lucky and smart if he wants to live. He chooses not to steal the oil and the Fates reward him with his life. Later, the Fates throw luck on his shoulder again by presenting the wrecked clipper ship. Once again, Nailer chooses not to rush for the easy reward. He chooses to let Nita live rather than cash in at her expense. Although it seems that Nailer's luck has run out, the Fates continue to reward him for his loyalty and love. Eventually, he is lucky enough to return Nita to her family and secure a job for himself in the Patel fleet. There are others who have cashed in on their Lucky Strikes - like the man who bears the same name, Lucky Strike - but their luck is finite. Although Lucky Strike is extremely wealthy, he is still confined to life on the beach, with all its depravity and ugliness. Nailer's dreams are bigger than that, and although the money from the oil pocket and the clipper wreckage would have changed his life, money is never what Nailer truly craves. In the end, the Fates reward Nailer by making him truly lucky and giving him his one true dream -- freedom.