The end-of-a-series Blues

I hate it when I finish a series. Hate it. Perhaps I am too attached to characters and their fictional lives but the very nature of a story makes you believe there could always be more if someone would only think it up and write it down! Most recently, I finished up Suzanne Collins' amazing Hunger Games trilogy (yes, I am shockingly behind the times) and I've fallen into my usual funk. Just in case any of you are in the same sad boat, I am here to offer you a lifeline--literally! In the same vein, Paolo Bacigalupi's Ship Breaker is an exhilarating, futuristic dark work where the remains of sunken ships in the Gulf of Mexico have become a vicious dog-eat-dog world of scavengers--scrap wood, copper, oil, eyeballs, it's all fair game and makes life precarious at best.
And that's not even considering the mutant half men (actually a nasty mix of hyena, tiger, dog and human) that the crime bosses use as thugs and bodyguards.  Nailer and his crewmate Pima are complex and compelling teens, struggling to remain true to the code of the crew while not letting the chance of a "lucky strike" go to someone more ruthless (which describes everyone they know).  And best of all?  Bacigalupi, pronounced BAH-chuh-guh-LOO-pee, has a companion book coming out in May 2012 called The Drowned Cities.  I'll be looking for it in the catalog soon...