The Marian Series

Fifteen-year-old Ethan Denby doesn't know how he got on the Marian. He just woke up one day inside the body of its captain. The Marian is unlike any ship Ethan has ever seen. It crawls on long, metal legs over dunes of salt in search of water, despite laws granting exclusive harvesting rights to a corrupt organization known as HydroSystems Worldwide.  

In a desperate attempt to return home, Ethan has killed a high-ranking government official. Now there's blood on his hands and a bounty on his head. As an army of mercenaries hunts Ethan and his companions, he turns to the only source of answers he has left: an audiobook containing dark power that threatens to consume anyone who listens to it. 

When the bomb dropped, everything changed. Even worse than the mountains of salt where oceans used to be, worse than the armies of mercenaries, worse than HydroSystems Worldwide's rise to power, was the Cloud. In the area closest to the bomb's blast, the very fabric of reality was damaged. The air there can steal a person's humanity, even as it gives great power.