Reviews with content warning for Rape - Given to the Sea

Given to the Sea is a bit of an underwhelming book. There was something to the language in the dialogue that reminded me of Shakespeare – at once lyrical, pondering, and riddling. But the story itself didn’t hold up to the twists and turns in the writing, and by the time I finished the book, I was happy to see it gone.

There are four POVs in Given to the Sea, but of all the characters (POV or otherwise) only one of them stood out with any kind of interest of variety. Dara was the most developed of the characters, principally because she actually had emotions that bled through the page. Not a lot, but there was a trickle, and most of it was bottomless anger. Otherwise? I found the characters shallow and unmotivated. Each one seemed to have a prime directive intended to color their behaviour. This worked well in another of McGinnis’s books (The Female of the Species) but makes a fantasy feel lacking.

There’s clearly interesting mythology behind this world, particularly with the Indiri, but McGinnis only barely explores it. In fact, the world and plot alike feel stretched too thin. There is a regiment battling their way through the land, the magic pulling Khosa to the sea, Vincent’s ascent, the search for any other Indiri, the love triangle… quadrangle? There’s a lot going on. There’s also the community of the rejected that plays between the two warring (ish?) kingdoms that shows the deep ableism of the characters in the book. Also ageism.

Let’s not forget the attempted rape and obsession with impregnating Khosa. Which probably took up the greatest chunk of the book.

To be honest, Given to the Sea is a mess. McGinnis wanted to do too many things and as a result she did none of them well. Add the lack of interesting characters and the insufferable romance plot/subplot/who knows and the problematic society… this just isn’t worth pursuing. McGinnis’s thrillers are better (if not still extremely memorable), but I recommend steering clear of this fantasy duology.

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medium-paced

Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No

1.0

You would think 2020 would cut me some slack and end the year with books that were good.

No.
No I don’t get that.

Given to the Sea is about Khosa, a girl whose destiny is to be given to the sea so her kingdom isn’t destroyed by a wave. Which sounds interesting enough, but it’s not.
Every character in this book was some kind of infuriating.

Khosa was personality devoid. “But wait” you cry. “Isn’t that the point of her character? At the beginning it shows that she’s not very emotional.” You’re kind of right and I would maybe let that slide if everyone else wasn’t as personality deprived. After so many emotionless characters, Khosa’s lack of emotion and personality looks less like a character choice, and more of an excuse for no characterization.

Then there was Dara and Donil, twins who are the last two people of their race. I found them both ok, just ok. They weren’t horrible but they were also seriously lacking in any personality.

I actually liked Dara a little bit, until about 200 pages in when Dara gets so upset that Vincent might like someone else that she storms off dramatically into the woods. And I’m not saying that she shouldn’t have been upset, but it would’ve been nice if, I don’t know, her character’s story didn’t suddenly shift to revolving around Vincent. Like, she had goals, but the book decided to take a 180 and completely forget them for this awful love dodecahedron. I'm so tired of characters, especially female characters, getting their story lines completely abandoned for a love interest

I have some other problems with the Vincent/Dara relationship, but we’ll get to that later.

I’m not even going to talk about the other narrator Witt because I have never, in all my life, read a more useless POV. It had little to nothing to do with the story.

But the main frustration I had was Vincent, who wins the award for most unlikable character I’ve read in a while. Most of my frustrations are spoiler related so you're just going to have to trust me here when I say he’s not a good character.

Where to begin.

First, is no one else talking about how Vincent and Dara are adopted siblings because I’ve gone through several reviews and no one seems to be talking about that? So if you don’t care about spoilers and haven’t read the book, Vincent’s mom took in Dara and Donil, because they were only children and the last of their race, after their race got massacred. So that immediately threw up some red flags. But I persisted, thinking that I misunderstood what it meant by Vincent’s mom taking in Dara and Donil. I thought that maybe Vincent’s mom didn’t raise the twins, but instead just took them to the castle and made them some other noble’s kids.

But then Vincent says this sentence, word for word about Donil.

“We grew up as brothers, and fights that began with small fists flying ended with arms slung about shoulders, black eyes forgiven as scrapes healed.”

As brothers

Umm… yeah. If you didn’t follow that, Vincent just described Dara’s brother, Donil, as his own brother.

But that’s not even the worse thing.

So it’s also explained that Donil has powers of life, which basically means he’s super attractive to the ladies. And Vincent gets all jealous. Skip a few pages and Khosa is assaulted by this scribe, and Donil rescues her. So Donil is comforting Khosa because it's obviously a very scary thing that just happened to her, when Vincent finally catches up to them and hears about what happened. Donil goes to do something and leaves Vincent with Khosa. And Vincent's first thought isn’t “oh maybe I should be there for my friend who was just in a horrifying situation”
Nah. his first thought is and I quote

“I know she will not take comfort with me as she did with Donil, and that thought sends another streak of anger through my body…”

What in tarnation?

Your friend just went through something horrible, and your first thought is “she likes Donil more.” You asshole. You absolute sack of shit. And he doesn’t even try to comfort her at all, he just kind of sits there?

If you can get past the characters, the plot was almost nonexistent and the stakes were low. Everything was either resolved so fast it didn’t matter, or

the only few interesting plot points were quickly diminished by that rushed ending. I don’t think there was enough time spent in the ending. Why did Dara try to drown Khosa? Dara was mad at her but she’s not stupid. What did Vincent mean by “we are both given to the sea?” Are Khosa and Vincent related too? Who knows? Certainly not me.

The only only good I can come up with is that the worldbuilding gets… a ribbon for effort?

Like they all had their customs, good and bad and I like how none of the countries were portrayed as “the undeniable good guys”. But even the worldbuilding had its flaws. I couldn’t really tell where this was taking place and where the different countries were in relation to each other.

Overall not a good book to end 2020 on. Or maybe it is, given the status of this year. 1/5.

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