Reviews with content warning for Racism - Fathomfolk

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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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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bookboxbabe's review against another edition

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challenging emotional reflective tense fast-paced

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

2.75

*thank you netgalley and the publisher for sending me an arc in exchange for an honest review*

(2.75)

folks 👏🏻

this was…something. a good something? not particularly

let’s start with what i enjoyed:
the world. this was asian inspired and the world was very unique, although it wasn’t fleshed out well. the author just kind of throws you into the deep end (pun intended) and you’re just supposed to figure things out with no support

now, onto my gripes.

1) you could make a drinking game out of this book. take a shot everytime the word fathomfolk is used. you’ll be drunk by chapter 3

2) i didn’t care about any of these characters. you’re supposed to feel betrayal and love and all these emotions clearly, but i just could not care any less about anyone in this book. who am i even supposed to be rooting for? i have no idea cause everyone is flat and confusing

3) what in the world was the plot? things just kind of happened for the sake of happening and it felt like nothing really served an overarching purpose besides at the very end. i don’t like that.

4) the pacing. we would be with these characters for hours and then the next paragraph would be a time jump for some unknown reason. you never really understood when or where you were until halfway through the chapter and then it jerks you the other way again. was very jarring and i hated it

if you liked the movie raya and the last dragon & also love the little mermaid an ungodly amount, you might find aspects of this enjoyable

i’ll still read the next book because i’m mildly curious where the hell we’re going from here, but i’m not shaking in my boots for it

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errie's review against another edition

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3.0

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