Reviews with content warning for Xenophobia - Fathomfolk

Reviews tagging 'Xenophobia'

Fathomfolk by Eliza Chan

14 reviews

book_gremlin42's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging 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

3.5

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authorash's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional inspiring reflective fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

This is one of my favorite books of the year so far. There is a very intricate political weaving and the book tackles the racism between humans v fathomfolk in a fascinating way. You get the POV of 3-4 characters, all in different aspects of the hierarchical/class level. I enjoyed seeing the different perspectives that weave the story together. I wanted one character to see the massive red flags but then was rooting for them. The character development for this book is done extremely well, and the romance isn't the book's focus at all, if romance could be considered. It's a character-driven plot, and I adored it. This book is an amazing representation of south Asian mythology.

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snowdropdaisy's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging emotional reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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deescribe's review against another edition

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adventurous hopeful tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

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lila_still_reads's review against another edition

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adventurous slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

As the oceans continue to get more inhospitable, the gleaming city of Kiankawi beckons Fathomfolk towards the shore– suppress your waterweaving and join the humans to gain access to the hope of a better life! The reality within the city is, of course, much less pretty- the journey is dangerous and new arrivals face slums, prejudice, and the looming threat of further government crackdown.

Mira is the half-siren captain of the border guard who’s done everything right but still isn’t respected by her human peers. Her relationship with Kai, a Fathomfolk diplomat, has brought her closer to comfort, love, belonging- the things she’s always felt were just out of reach, but she still can’t bring herself to be happy when her success feels so precarious.

Nami is Kai’s wayward little sister, kicked out of her underwater home for a revolutionary scheme gone wrong. Sent to investigate the Oneson Engine, she instead falls in with the Drawbacks, a group of insurgents, and their kelpie second-in-command Firth. Will her work undermine everything her brother has tried to do from within the government? Or is Kai’s battle one he can never win?

Meanwhile, Cordelia the seawitch makes deals and the tension between human and Fathomfolk only grows. Maybe there’s a hope for a peaceful future, maybe there’s change on the horizon. Or maybe everything is about to get a whole lot worse.

2.5/5 stars, rounding up because it’s pretty well written.

What I liked:

Lots of kinds of magical creatures! I loved how Chan pulled from different mythologies and traditions to make Fathomfolk of diverse kinds- I thought it underlined her points about people who are in fact from wildly differing cultures getting lumped together as the same under an exterior gaze and both the difficulties and interesting community that can form as a result.

I love interlocking stories. It took some time for the pace to pick up, but once it did, Chan did a good job weaving Cordelia, Nami, and Mira’s POVs together in a compelling manner. There’s also a strong cast of secondary characters- there’s A LOT of them, but I remember and was able to keep track of most of them (the Chinthe didn’t really stick), which points to good writing.

Something about her early descriptions of Kai made me always picture one of my friends when she talked about him (probably because they both rock cool antlers in the club sometimes). I liked thinking about my friend :)

What frustrated me:

There’s a lot of interesting grey area in stories about violent revolution, about where lines of morality fall- when it comes to fighting fire with fire, how far is too far?- but Fathomfolk seems uninterested in these questions. Chan grasps for this nuance with Mira and Nami both realizing their ways of approaching making things better (working completely within the system vs. reactive opposition to the point of rejecting incremental change) need a bit from the other, but the ball has already been dropped by making the ‘change from within’ side Kai and Mira, two likeable, moral, main characters, while the ‘oppositional revolution’ side (Lynnette and Firth) is nearly comically evil, tricking and drugging their own followers and doing that big stupid thing near the end of the story.

And Nami- poor, poor Nami- I can forgive a naïve teen character (as a neurodivergent young adult I often see a lot of myself in them) but Nami was frustrating for 85% of this book. I also found Nami’s final decision in terms of ‘taking responsibility’ to be a foolish understanding of justice- I would buy Nami suggesting it, but how could Mira encourage it? They’ve established the system as an unfair one, I would not trust them to treat Nami fairly. I was left wondering, damn, does Mira hate her? Nami needs adults in her life, Mira!

Cordelia was almost there for me- aspects of her story I can’t quite spill without spoilers (let’s just say her relationship to her family) were very interesting to me, but her motivations stayed muddled in a way that felt messy rather than mysterious. She’s also…she’s literally Ursula, right? And I was able to look past that until a climatic set piece got a bit too Disney’s Little Mermaid and took me right out of it. I know Ursula doesn’t own that entire brand- I was letting it slide- until that set piece!

The pacing picked up in the back third but it took a while for the story to get moving and a little longer for me to feel invested in the characters. The twist about the Oneson Engines felt a little out of left field- it hurt my perception of Kai and Mira, which I don’t think was interrogated enough, and once again took something that could be metaphorical and powerful and made it literal and blunt (also it once again made Nami look foolish! If so many people know about it, work there, how was she able to learn nothing about it??). And there’s another big twist near the end that felt just a little under set-up to be the big bad final thing (or for Lynette’s actions around it to make sense).

TLDR; not going to read the sequel, but I would read something else by Eliza Chan if it looked interesting to me

Thank you to NetGalley and Orbit for an eARC of the book in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

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lettuce_read's review against another edition

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4.0

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maregred's review against another edition

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adventurous hopeful mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.75

This book is a little difficult to review. I thought I would like it more l, but it’s pretty firmly middle of the road fantasy for me. While it’s advertised as an adult fantasy, it reads more YA.

I found the world building to be confusing and lacking. While I generally dislike infodumps, I feel like some explanatory dumping would have helped. There were also points in the book where it felt like a plot point came out of left field without any foreshadowing as well. The beginning of the book is very slow, but it does pick up. I find the writing gets stronger the further into the book as well.

There are three POVs: Mira, Nami, and Cordelia. Cordelia was my favorite POV. She has heavy Ursula vibes and schemes like Cersei Lannister. Unfortunately, her motivations became very muddled as the book went on. I rooted for Mira the whole time. Nami was almost too naive and trusting (to the point of annoyance), and her romance with Firth is just gross.

I received this copy through NetGalley and Orbit Books for an honest review.

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yourbookishbff's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional mysterious reflective tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

This is a promising debut - deeply character-driven, with multiple rotating POVs and an intricately-built pan-Asian/post-apocalyptic/semi-drowned world. I loved how many sea creatures exist among the Fathomfolk - kelpies, sea dragons, sirens, mermaids, and more - and how Chan is blending mythological inspiration and fairy tales (East Asian dragon lore meets The Little Mermaid makes for a great premise).
I'm still grappling with a few of our characters, though, and their roles as the series progresses. Mira, in particular, half-folk and a border agent for the city, attempting to affect change from within, has me unsure of Chan's intention for the story and thoughts on resistance to violent systems. I'm interested to see where the series goes from here, as I really enjoyed the expansion of the world at the end, the potential directions the sequel can take, and the many possibilities that lie ahead for all of our characters. I am grateful to have multiple POVs, and probably enjoyed our sea witch's story the most. These are all flawed characters, grappling with their own insecurities and ambition as they question their loyalties to each other, and fantasy readers who particularly enjoy character work will appreciate this series start.
Thank you to Netgalley and Orbit for an advanced reader's copy!

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errie's review against another edition

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3.0

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sarrie's review against another edition

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dark emotional medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

TL;DR: Full of promising themes and a beautiful world, however cold and distant characters truly killed the story.

My very short pitch for Fathomfolk would be Babel, but make it wet and a touch whimsical? This follows three primary points of view as political tensions come to a head between the Fathomfolk and the humans. We see this entirely through the Fathomfolk lens, as different levels of political alignment fight to either tip the scales into war or find a compromise.

Our three leads are Mira, Nami, and Cordelia. Mira is the first of her kind, a half siren police officer who is dating the Fathomfolk ambassador to the humans. Nami is the sister of that ambassador, and also young and beyond impetuous. Cordelia is probably the most interesting, attempting to play all sides for her own gain. She fills many roles and I’m not going to talk on her much, as much of her story is spoilery. The thing about these characters is that we are so disconnected from all of them there is little to no emotional impact when things happen within the story. We aren’t shown much, traumatic moments are either shown in stark detail or we’re teased an event that never happened. Because of this it’s either very jarring (no emotional stakes till suddenly there are dead bodies on a ship), or very lackluster (oh no, I saw that coming a mile away). Besides that I had huge problems with Nami who is nothing but a young teenage girl stereotype and is written to be too stupid to live. She is a plot device to show us the more pasion driven side of things and it was, just not great. Mira starts interesting but quickly becomes cold and uninteresting.

This should be a fast paced and tension filled story. And it is at times. I loved where Eliza Chan was trying to go with this, some of the conversations she started to make. However the style of writing, which kept us farther than arms length and at times couldn’t decide if it wanted to be whimsical or serious, really stopped it from speaking it’s truths.

Give it a shot if you’re SUPER interested in the world and setting, otherwise it might be a skip.

3 out of 5

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