This novel is clearly heavily inspired by Moby Dick which, fair warning, I have not read. It's on my list of things to read, but admittedly it's not very high up that list. I just can't make myself get excited at the thought of tackling it, classic though it may be. I did enjoy this YA scifi version of it, though.

Seventeen year old Ishmael leaves Earth, which has become a crapsack world, to work on a not-whaling ship on the idyllic planet of Cretacea. I mean, it's a whaling ship in every meaningful sense, but what Captain Ahab's after isn't the great white whale, it's the great white stingray. Oh, the stingray's called a terrafin, but it's essentially a stingray, and it's not happy about being hunted. Why would it be? In these stories, I'm always on the side of the grumpy homicidal beast, so it didn't matter how boringly virtuous Ishmael was, I was still hoping he'd get chomped.

He didn't, but there's a decent twist at the end which I found entertaining. I do think that the book's a bit repetitive, and it probably could have lost at least a third of its bulk with no ill-effect, but whenever I look at a copy of Moby Dick on a library shelf I think the same thing there too, without benefit of reading, so take my preference for concision with a pinch of salt.