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satumaria's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
inspiring
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
3.75
spacewhombus's review against another edition
adventurous
funny
inspiring
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
The main thing I loved about this book was the world-building (especially the linguistic aspect). At its core, this is a book about people with different worldviews and cultures coming together and learning to not only live with each other, but respect and value each other too. I am a sucker for this type of story! Fans of The Galaxy, and the Ground Within or any other Becky Chambers books, for example, would probably love this one too as they have a similar vibe- just fantasy instead of sci-fi.
There are three main groups of people in this book: the Alabans, Naridans, and Tjakorshi, and the storyline jumps between these different places and characters within each group. Each of the groups is presented in a way that they each have interesting and positive cultural aspects, but are each not without their own flaws as well. Together, they can bring out the best and the worst in each other.
The main part of the story takes place in the coastal city of Black Keep in Narida, where a group of Tjakorshi have recently come ashore hoping to settle, after fleeing rising danger in their remote, cold island home to the south. Traditionally, the Tjakorshi have raided Naridan settlements and so there is much conflict as the Daimon of Blackkeep and Saana Sattistutar of the Tjakorshi must learn to trust each other. The Tjakorshi bring with them much more progressive ideals about women in society and as leaders than the Naridans possess, and the Naridan language is much more specific and intentional about referring to oneself by one's position in relation to the other person. That made the cultural evolution as these societies met quite fascinating!
Some parts of the story take place in Tjakorsha, where a new threat to the entire world is growing. However, most of the rest of the story takes place in the northern tropical islands of Alaba. I loved this setting the most, mainly because the author made such a cool choice with their language. Alabans represent their gender through different diacritics over their pronouns (ex: me, mé, mē, mê, mè and më) and it is considered very intimate to share your gender identity at all with someone. This society was also very blended, due to the islands serving as a central port and crossing-point for the lands of this world. Here we follow street kid Jeya as shé befriends someone surprising, and the King's sister Tila as she plots an assassination.
This might sound like a lot going on, and it was, but it was really well written and thought out! However, if you don't like books with multiple viewpoints and storylines then steer clear of this one.
The only reason it was not a five star read for me was that I just didn't feel the tension of the plot that much, and didn't feel super strongly for the characters. It was interesting, but not to the point that I couldn't put it down. However, I would really recommend this as a progressive and feminist fantasy!
There are three main groups of people in this book: the Alabans, Naridans, and Tjakorshi, and the storyline jumps between these different places and characters within each group. Each of the groups is presented in a way that they each have interesting and positive cultural aspects, but are each not without their own flaws as well. Together, they can bring out the best and the worst in each other.
The main part of the story takes place in the coastal city of Black Keep in Narida, where a group of Tjakorshi have recently come ashore hoping to settle, after fleeing rising danger in their remote, cold island home to the south. Traditionally, the Tjakorshi have raided Naridan settlements and so there is much conflict as the Daimon of Blackkeep and Saana Sattistutar of the Tjakorshi must learn to trust each other. The Tjakorshi bring with them much more progressive ideals about women in society and as leaders than the Naridans possess, and the Naridan language is much more specific and intentional about referring to oneself by one's position in relation to the other person. That made the cultural evolution as these societies met quite fascinating!
Some parts of the story take place in Tjakorsha, where a new threat to the entire world is growing. However, most of the rest of the story takes place in the northern tropical islands of Alaba. I loved this setting the most, mainly because the author made such a cool choice with their language. Alabans represent their gender through different diacritics over their pronouns (ex: me, mé, mē, mê, mè and më) and it is considered very intimate to share your gender identity at all with someone. This society was also very blended, due to the islands serving as a central port and crossing-point for the lands of this world. Here we follow street kid Jeya as shé befriends someone surprising, and the King's sister Tila as she plots an assassination.
This might sound like a lot going on, and it was, but it was really well written and thought out! However, if you don't like books with multiple viewpoints and storylines then steer clear of this one.
The only reason it was not a five star read for me was that I just didn't feel the tension of the plot that much, and didn't feel super strongly for the characters. It was interesting, but not to the point that I couldn't put it down. However, I would really recommend this as a progressive and feminist fantasy!
beze0's review against another edition
2.5
It was. Fine. But like this book single-handedly put me into a reading slump which, honestly, for a book to be able to do that to *me* is impressive. Especially when I didnt actively dislike it—it truly just. Was so aggressively nothing special I feel like. Idk.
skycrane's review against another edition
5.0
This book was really good. It starts with a big old fantasy map with tons of little towns and cities labelled, but for the most part it's a story about a single small village and its few hundred inhabitants. The seafaring Brown Eagle clan show up demanding to be allowed to settle, and the town of Black Keep, half-emptied by plague, is unable to resist them. So most of the story is about Daimon and Sanna's attempts to get their people to live together, despite their cultural differences and long history of conflict. Some of the differences are obvious or stereotypical, you have egalitarian, violent barbarism versus hierarchical, peaceful civilization. But there are a lot of subtle or surprising differences as well, with their competing views on gender and sexuality being particularly interesting. I really liked how both Daimon and Sanna at times either rebel against or conform to their societies' views of honorable behavior. In a sense, they both sacrificed honor to save their people, but there are still expectations they have to uphold if they want to keep their people's respect. And of course, there's a personal element, where they try to navigate an uncomfortable but necessary relationship.
That only takes up most of the book though. There's also chapters about the assassination of royal pretenders, a supernatural creature conquering the seafarers' home islands, and a street urchin who falls in love with a prince. It's all really good stuff, and the pacing of the different plot threads is well executed.
That only takes up most of the book though. There's also chapters about the assassination of royal pretenders, a supernatural creature conquering the seafarers' home islands, and a street urchin who falls in love with a prince. It's all really good stuff, and the pacing of the different plot threads is well executed.
sneaky's review against another edition
Page 1: overly aggressive stereotypical woman who slaps someone for absolutely No reason. No thank you
knittyreader's review against another edition
4.0
Good fantasy stories always make me happy.
This book is full of rich characters, all with their own stories and backgrounds and emotions and all, who merge together into what makes a world of interesting cultures forced to merge together by circumstances. I had a little difficulty keeping the places and people from each other at the start, because the story switched between quite some of them, but I ended up caring about them all.
I received a free copy through Netgalley in return for an honest review.
This book is full of rich characters, all with their own stories and backgrounds and emotions and all, who merge together into what makes a world of interesting cultures forced to merge together by circumstances. I had a little difficulty keeping the places and people from each other at the start, because the story switched between quite some of them, but I ended up caring about them all.
I received a free copy through Netgalley in return for an honest review.
cassidychivers's review
4.0
I was having a hard time figuring out what to rate this book but have settled on a low 4 star.
Parts of this book were 100% five star for me.
I LOVED what was happening over in Blackkeep but any other POV really fell short for me. I understood that these POVs were setting up the over arching plot for the series but felt like it could have been done just a little better.
I also kinda felt like the ending of this book was a little rushed.
BUT as I said parts were five stars, Daimon and Saanna were so dang intriguing. I loved watching the different cultures struggle to learn to live together in harmony. To get over there prejudices and also kinda just grow from one another. I also enjoyed what the book did with gender and sexuality.
This book is not heavy fantastical in terms of magic, it's more the world is built on fantastical elements. And you know there are dragons (that don't fly) !
Also nvr realized how much we say the word "I" in writing as, instead of using "I" characters say "this man" and man that happens often.
I enjoyed this book and can't wait to see where it goes. But it can be convoluted in terms of writing style and may not be for everyone.
Parts of this book were 100% five star for me.
I LOVED what was happening over in Blackkeep but any other POV really fell short for me. I understood that these POVs were setting up the over arching plot for the series but felt like it could have been done just a little better.
I also kinda felt like the ending of this book was a little rushed.
BUT as I said parts were five stars, Daimon and Saanna were so dang intriguing. I loved watching the different cultures struggle to learn to live together in harmony. To get over there prejudices and also kinda just grow from one another. I also enjoyed what the book did with gender and sexuality.
This book is not heavy fantastical in terms of magic, it's more the world is built on fantastical elements. And you know there are dragons (that don't fly) !
Also nvr realized how much we say the word "I" in writing as, instead of using "I" characters say "this man" and man that happens often.
I enjoyed this book and can't wait to see where it goes. But it can be convoluted in terms of writing style and may not be for everyone.
thatssoleo's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
emotional
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
theshaggyshepherd's review
4.0
The Black Coast // by Mike Brooks
The Black Coast is one of those books that all of a sudden popped up all over Twitter as my favorite SFF reviewers started to get their hands on it. Of course, I didn't want to be left out so I made sure to get in on the action as well. I'm really glad I did because even though it wasn't entirely perfect for me, it still had some very interesting aspects to it that I'm excited to explore more when the series continues.
The biggest thing that stands out about this book is the attention to detail when it came to the different cultures that we were introduced to. After reading an article about the world-building by the author himself, I realized that the big goal for this book for him was to write those different cultures with varying language structures that could be used in the English language but would be easy to tell apart from each other without having to resort to borrowing words from other languages or making up an entirely new one. One people, the Tjakorshi, use English the way we are used to ourselves. The Naridans, who feel strongly about identifying their own roles in relation to the people they are interacting with, do not use the personal pronouns "I" and "me." That in itself did not bother me so much but rather that someone would refer to themselves as "this man" but then in the same sentence use "we" as well. It didn't feel inclusive of themselves but rather as if they were talking about a man separate from the group referred to as we. This also though made a little more sense after reading the above mentioned article. The most interesting language device for me though was how he decided to distinguish between different genders in the city of Kiburu ce Alaba. The use of diacritics allows people to identify themselves on a spectrum of gender (or as non agender) or to keep their identity to themselves if they so wish. I don't want to take too much space to talk about the use of language here but this is definitely something I very much enjoyed once I thought about and evaluated it more in relation to the story itself.
Something else that was different about this story was the focus on finding similarities in each other's cultures and trying to live together in peace rather than conquering and destroying each other. While I wasn't 100% happy with its execution, it stills was a nice change of pace compared to a lot of other books lately. In some areas, this took away a little bit from the believability, for example when a previously much feared person showed a lot of unexpected mercy. Don't get me wrong. There is still a lot of violence in this book. We are after all talking about nations full of warriors and soldiers. But it really was nice to see an author attempt to reach a goal of unity rather conquest for once.
These two things really propelled the story forward for me and kept me glued to the pages. But there were a couple of things that I felt would've benefitted from some more fine-tuning. A language example that has nothing to do with the cultural differences but rather is something that probably stood out to me because English is my second language: Saana's speech patterns felt inconsistent. Most of the time, it is obvious that the Naridan language is new to her by the simple sentence structures she uses, but every once in a while she would use much more complicated words and sentence structures that stood out in a big contrast. In the same vein, for the most part, the languages felt like they often do in fantasy books: while not necessary medieval, definitely still older. Here and there though, very modern phrases found their way into the book, which just didn't seem to fit well. The dialogue overall felt a little choppy. It didn't always flow as well as it could have and it sometimes seemed to hinder the characters more than help. Their conversations really pulled me out of the story a few times, both due to their flow as well as their word choices.
The author tried to cover a lot of different things in his book. Some are popular fantasy genre-related things, such as dragons and honor, while others were current issues in our own society, such as LGBTQIA+ rights and gender identity. All of these are things I enjoy reading about but I felt as if they were covered mostly superficially and that it was more important to get them in there at all rather than explore their importance more deeply. I also sometimes felt that their priorities were a little... off? Two of the main characters seemed to enjoy arguing over little things while ignoring the big glaring issues that would've helped them prepare their peoples more for upcoming conflict. What I did find awesome though was that there wasn't one nation that was accepting of all kinds of people and therefore portrayed as "the best" out of the three. Each country had something they were accepting of but also biased against, showing that nobody is perfect and that there are things to learn for everybody.
Overall, I am really glad to have read this book. It took me a couple of days to really get my thoughts together. Reading up on the author's process also helped put things into perspective for me. It makes me want to look into more authors' writing processes because there are probably more things I have missed that may influence my opinion of their works. Contrary to popular belief, we reviewers aren't perfect either (I kid I kid). I do want to take this moment to point out though that I don't consider myself a member of the LGBTQIA+ community so take my opinion on those aspects of this book with a grain of salt. The plot for this book is really intriguing. The author has shown that he puts a lot of thought into his work and I am looking forward to see what he presents to us in the next book of this series!
Thank you to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the free copy in exchange for an honest review.
The Black Coast is one of those books that all of a sudden popped up all over Twitter as my favorite SFF reviewers started to get their hands on it. Of course, I didn't want to be left out so I made sure to get in on the action as well. I'm really glad I did because even though it wasn't entirely perfect for me, it still had some very interesting aspects to it that I'm excited to explore more when the series continues.
The biggest thing that stands out about this book is the attention to detail when it came to the different cultures that we were introduced to. After reading an article about the world-building by the author himself, I realized that the big goal for this book for him was to write those different cultures with varying language structures that could be used in the English language but would be easy to tell apart from each other without having to resort to borrowing words from other languages or making up an entirely new one. One people, the Tjakorshi, use English the way we are used to ourselves. The Naridans, who feel strongly about identifying their own roles in relation to the people they are interacting with, do not use the personal pronouns "I" and "me." That in itself did not bother me so much but rather that someone would refer to themselves as "this man" but then in the same sentence use "we" as well. It didn't feel inclusive of themselves but rather as if they were talking about a man separate from the group referred to as we. This also though made a little more sense after reading the above mentioned article. The most interesting language device for me though was how he decided to distinguish between different genders in the city of Kiburu ce Alaba. The use of diacritics allows people to identify themselves on a spectrum of gender (or as non agender) or to keep their identity to themselves if they so wish. I don't want to take too much space to talk about the use of language here but this is definitely something I very much enjoyed once I thought about and evaluated it more in relation to the story itself.
Something else that was different about this story was the focus on finding similarities in each other's cultures and trying to live together in peace rather than conquering and destroying each other. While I wasn't 100% happy with its execution, it stills was a nice change of pace compared to a lot of other books lately. In some areas, this took away a little bit from the believability, for example when a previously much feared person showed a lot of unexpected mercy. Don't get me wrong. There is still a lot of violence in this book. We are after all talking about nations full of warriors and soldiers. But it really was nice to see an author attempt to reach a goal of unity rather conquest for once.
These two things really propelled the story forward for me and kept me glued to the pages. But there were a couple of things that I felt would've benefitted from some more fine-tuning. A language example that has nothing to do with the cultural differences but rather is something that probably stood out to me because English is my second language: Saana's speech patterns felt inconsistent. Most of the time, it is obvious that the Naridan language is new to her by the simple sentence structures she uses, but every once in a while she would use much more complicated words and sentence structures that stood out in a big contrast. In the same vein, for the most part, the languages felt like they often do in fantasy books: while not necessary medieval, definitely still older. Here and there though, very modern phrases found their way into the book, which just didn't seem to fit well. The dialogue overall felt a little choppy. It didn't always flow as well as it could have and it sometimes seemed to hinder the characters more than help. Their conversations really pulled me out of the story a few times, both due to their flow as well as their word choices.
The author tried to cover a lot of different things in his book. Some are popular fantasy genre-related things, such as dragons and honor, while others were current issues in our own society, such as LGBTQIA+ rights and gender identity. All of these are things I enjoy reading about but I felt as if they were covered mostly superficially and that it was more important to get them in there at all rather than explore their importance more deeply. I also sometimes felt that their priorities were a little... off? Two of the main characters seemed to enjoy arguing over little things while ignoring the big glaring issues that would've helped them prepare their peoples more for upcoming conflict. What I did find awesome though was that there wasn't one nation that was accepting of all kinds of people and therefore portrayed as "the best" out of the three. Each country had something they were accepting of but also biased against, showing that nobody is perfect and that there are things to learn for everybody.
Overall, I am really glad to have read this book. It took me a couple of days to really get my thoughts together. Reading up on the author's process also helped put things into perspective for me. It makes me want to look into more authors' writing processes because there are probably more things I have missed that may influence my opinion of their works. Contrary to popular belief, we reviewers aren't perfect either (I kid I kid). I do want to take this moment to point out though that I don't consider myself a member of the LGBTQIA+ community so take my opinion on those aspects of this book with a grain of salt. The plot for this book is really intriguing. The author has shown that he puts a lot of thought into his work and I am looking forward to see what he presents to us in the next book of this series!
Thank you to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the free copy in exchange for an honest review.