I thought this book was full of adventure and observations of the human condition. Bright Sands Beach is a tough place to live and the way Nailer and his crew live are awful. There is a whole upper class out there, but none of the ship breakers are liable to see it...until the hurricane. This world has been inundated by water from the melted ice caps and life has changed. No fossil fuels means that the huge ships of the past are all grounded and being cut up for scrap. It is dangerous work and the rich are profiting off of it while the poor are barely scraping a living out of it. When Nailer meets a 'swank' (a rich girl) whose ship was wrecked on his beach, he finds out that the only thing separating the rich and the poor is money....the swanks and the rust rats are all the same at the end of the day. Everyone's looking to get a little blood on their hands.Nailer is forced to learn several life lessons and grow up even faster as he tries to help his new crew mate back home. He has to make his first kill and live on the streets of an unfamiliar town. He tries to explain to Nita (the swank he rescued) how they are different. The only reason you think you've got morals is because you don't need money the way regular people do. The book very definitely takes a side on fossil fuels and global warming. The 'evil villain' of the story is the one who wants to make billions by selling a fossil fuel that will make the world even worse and the unpleasant smells of oil and gas are frequently mentioned as part of the poor and terrible side of society while the rich are all clean and using wind power. The characters also remark about how the people of the past didn't adapt quickly enough because they were in denial and that caused their cities to be destroyed. The rich people on the 'good' side are refusing to sell the new fossil fuel product because of environmental damage. 
 Just because a market exists doesn't mean we have to serve it. Another theme is family and just who makes that family up. Nailer has not been lucky in that respect and he realizes that family is what you make. The blood bond was nothing. It was the people that mattered. If they covered your back, and you covered theirs, then maybe that was worth calling family. Everything else was just so much smoke and lies.