I’ve been a mess lately with picking reads without really knowing what I’m getting into. Trashlands by Alison Stine is yet another one on that list, but it turned out okay. I got a copy from Alison herself through Twitter in exchange for a review, and I rolled with it. I mean, the cover featured a couple of my favorite colors, so what could go wrong? Lol.
While told from several different characters’ perspectives, Trashlands centers around Coral. She’s a 30-something (redheaded!) mom, living in a bus with the guy who adopted her and the older man who is her long-term partner. They are just trying to survive in a dystopian world where plastic is currency. Coral and other “pluckers” collect plastic from toxic rivers, which is either traded or sent to factories to be sorted and melted into bricks. Children do the sorting, including Coral’s son who was taking from her. She’s trying to save up enough plastic to buy her son’s freedom, which is really the heart of the story.
I went into this expecting more action, so it took me a while to get into the story. I kept waiting to figure out the big plot, which didn’t ever come because it’s really a story about this near-future world and Coral’s journey. Once I got that through my thick skull and focused on the human element, it was much more enjoyable.
The best part of Trashlands is the worldbuilding and description. Stine does a stunningly beautiful job creating this junkyard community and strip club nestled into a post-climate crisis society. The older characters remember the world we’re living in now, so Stine ties it into things the reader understands, but also explains how the world changed with the flood into what the characters are experiencing and living out as normal.
Believe me, attempting to TL;DR the concept of plastic as currency to my boyfriend did not go well, so Stine did a much better job of making it believable than I could. Kudos to her creativity and execution that I’d talk about it as if it’s totally normal and look around and my apartment wondering if I have enough plastic items to survive. I guess this novel makes you think a bit about the climate and rules of the world we live in, as well as poverty’s impact on families. They are all topics we probably should think about more.
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