How often have you heard that sometimes it is not the destination, but the journey that matters? I was reminded of this on reading this novel. The setup is this – upon receiving a cryptic message, Skipper Shimizu (real first name Rosa) and her middle-sister Carmen go on a journey to find their missing elder sister Nora. Despite them being typically quarrelling siblings, they put aside their differences and begin to travel from their small town in order to find Nora.
That’s the fairly straightforward plot in a nutshell; but what this really does is allow Kitasei to show us the near-future world they travel through – a world of decline and decay, mutant animals and Vandermeer-type viruses, sudden storms and rising sea levels, ecological blight and collapsing social and environmental systems.
It’s told well enough; the writing’s great, and the sibling rivalry seems authentic and engaging. Stylistically there’s a nice touch with different parts of the narrative being centred around each of the three sisters. The chapters are short but very engaging.
The worldbuilding is generally logical and often depressingly bleak. Although the places the siblings go to and the things they see are as important as the need to find missing family, the worldbuilding is often brief. Much of the book is set on boats, with only three major locations on land. This doesn’t give us too much to go on, although the background is enough for us to get the general idea of a world teetering on the edge of collapse. It’s not really something we’ve not seen before, though – think Kevin Costner’s Waterworld meets Thelma and Louise or even Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, for example (although perhaps not quite as bleak as that.)
It’s understandable, but not a shock, that we find out pretty early that multinational corporations are the source of most of the harm the girls see, although the way that they deal with this makes up the last section of the novel. It does end positively, which will be appreciated by many.
I think your enjoyment of the novel will depend on how well you can relate to the interactions of the sisters. There are some noticeable exceptions but men often don’t come out of this too well. Although many readers will enjoy the point that the story is firmly and admirably focussed around the relationships of the sisters, if you are not accepting of the grumbles, tantrums, fights and subsequent apologies, other readers may equally find them annoying and be left curiously unmoved.
In the end I felt that perhaps the story’s biggest moral message is that if you are stubborn, you can get things done.
In summary, I think that Saltcrop will be loved by many readers who enjoy the description of the journey the characters make through this blighted future Earth, the engaging written style and the moral messages imbued throughout. Others may like it less.
© 2025 Mark Yon
Hardback | Harper Voyager
SALTCROP by Yume Kitasei
September 2025 | 376 pages
ISBN: 978 000 8764 661
