Liberty's Daughter

Liberty's Daughter by Naomi Kritzer.

Sadly the rich were not eaten

Beck Garrison lives on the seastead, the classic libertarian dream of a sovereign nation in the middle of the ocean. If one ever made it further than the 'buying a cruise ship' phase. In Beck's universe they made it quite a bit further than that, and the book's strongest point is building out what these seasteads would look like.

A few different 'nations' have sprung up on the converted cruise liners and sea platforms, from the debauchery of New Amsterdam to the unrestrained techno-capitilism of Sal and the anarchy of Liberty. Beck lives on Min, a more middle of the road stead, where she's taken on a part time job of procuring mundane things made difficult to obtain by being, y'know, in the middle of the ocean. The story begins when one of the debt slaves hires her to find their sister, cracking Beck's idealistic view of the steads as utopias before her new boyfriend and subsequent events shatter it completely.

Not that it really matters, because soon after an existential threat appears, causing all the rich 'stake' holders (including Beck's father, essentially a macguffin to explain her being able to do what she does) to bail out on their yachts. Beck and the friends she's made along the way are left to clean up the mess left by the rich, maybe creating a more equitable society along the way. Beck is decent as a character, she clearly managed to pick up some basic morality from... somewhere, but without the status and access afforded by her (big time criminal) father she'd be moral and dead, so I'm not sure the author gets across the message they seem to be aiming for there.

There's also a general air of things just happening to go right for her even when they shouldn't, and any consequences she does suffer are so minor as to be meaningless. Despite her being a native to the stead it reads more like she's a tourist, just gliding through and showing us all the class warfare going on without being touched by it. Beck worries about consequences a lot, which she kinda has to in order for the reader to feel any tension, because none actually materialize. At times it feels like the author just wanted to criticize the kind of people who'd build a place like this (entirely fair) but couldn't come up with an actual story with stakes to do so.

Regardless, I did enjoy reading this and finished it in a couple days. If you can put aside the Mary Sue-ness of the protagonist and lack of real (any?) consequences for the people who created this awful system there's some interesting worldbuilding here. I wouldn't necessarily recommend it unless the concept appeals to you, but if that's the case give it a try.