Reviews - Sharks in the Time of Saviors

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2.01k reviews for:

Sharks in the Time of Saviors

Kawai Strong Washburn

3.89 AVERAGE

katerdate's review against another edition

4.75

dark emotional sad slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

onceandfuturereads's review against another edition

4.5

adventurous emotional hopeful medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

One thing about this book: it's immediately clear that Washburn has a gift. Inside these pages are musical sentences that buzz with rhythm. The story follows each member of the Flores family: Malia, mom, Dean, oldest, Noa, middle child, Kaui, baby, and Augie, dad. Each family member has their own voice and that is where I think the narrative really shines.

"Sharks" is a great addition to the canon of magical realism, and even if you don't tend to read the genre, this book is still 100% worth it. The magic in this book is not really magic at all, it is heavy on the realism. In a story as gritty and real as this one, every word rings true.

oleksandr's review against another edition

3.0

This is a modern literary fiction imbued with magical realism in line with Latin American literature. A very strong debut novel about a Hawaiian family, estranged from their ancestral land and thrown into the modern world. I read is as a part of monthly reading for May 2020 at SFF Hot from Printers: New Releases group.

There four different voices that tell the story of the family: a mother and her three children, two boys and a girl. The mother, Malia, is a simple loving woman, straightforward in her story, which may seem ‘impolite’ for some western readers, for she readily speaks about sex or farting just like about work or preparing a dinner. Once, her younger son, Nainoa, fell overboard, but sharks instead of eating him, nudged him back to the boat, which is seen as a divine intervention. After that people started to ask him to cure them – quite a pressure on a young boy. His older brother, Dean, thinks that parents love his brother more, he is special, and thus tries to win their love by exceling in basketball, planning to get rich and take his family to the mainland USA. Their sister, Kaui, also thinks that the parents care for the brothers much more than for her. The family faces financial hardships, each sibling finally enters big universities and go on living in San Diego, Portland and Spokane.

The novel has a classic cycle: an idyllic (even if not very easy) pastoral life on an island is exchanged on empty promises of a big city, while the home calls for you… a very well written book, but it is not exactly what I prefer to read.

shiqick's review against another edition

3.5

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious sad medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

g_treads's review against another edition

3.0

This novel follows the members of a Hawaiian family throughout their children's early childhood to college and adulthood, however there are aspects of Hawaiian spirituality throughout that play a large part in the plot and character development. In my opinion, all of the spirituality missed the mark, it was interesting until it fizzled out and wasn't given much of a backstory or context. The conflicts were well-written and important but the author should've chosen one of the other, it almost feels like two different stories. You're reading about someone dealing with accepting their sexuality, taking drugs, a brother going to jail and then all of sudden the music and magic of the world is everywhere and the dead are among us, it just wasn't fluid.