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A review by inuyasha
A Dark and Drowning Tide by Allison Saft
adventurous
dark
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.25
ughhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
TL;DR this is a 4/5 romance and a 2/5 political fantasy.
Picked this up because I really enjoyed Allison Saft's A Far Wilder Magic - the world building and magic system in that wasn't amazing, but the plot was relatively simple and contained, and I liked the characters and their relationship a lot. The two leads in that were really isolated so there wasn't a lot of noise, just a really nice fantasy romance. These same problems carried over into A Dark and Drowning Tide - except here this world was too big and the plot too ambitious for where Saft's technical skill is at when it comes to world building. I still don't even know *what* the magic system was. There were vague mentions of aether but ultimately everyone was just a waterbender for some reason???? anyway.
I didn't quite get the beginning of this book or really the reasoning for why the plot kicked off tbh - you're introduced to a large cast of characters very quickly who you are told all have long-term relationships to each other... EXCEPT our POV character. This leads to a lot of dynamics being told to you rather than shown. The main group are representatives of essentially each of the colonized nations that are now ""united"" under one central kingdom. These characters all kind of take on caricatures rather than feeling fully fleshed out, which would be fine if so much of this book didn't hinge on you caring about them!! There's a few deaths that are meant to be shocking/impactful and it's like.... you just killed off a background character actor called Jock Bully! idgaf! Even in terms of the romance, our protagonist Lorelai is really unobservant of Sylvia's crush on her, which makes their switch from enemies to lovers feel a little too quick. I've seen a few people mention that this book would be more enjoyable without a lot of tweaks from Sylvia's perspective and I'm inclined to agree - we'd be closer to the magic/folklore creatures this book keeps telling us is important, we'd have more insight into the various dynamics at play, and I think even Lorelai would come across as more compelling - the grumpy accidentally rude love interest in the flavor of Mr Darcy!!
I really enjoyed Lorelai and Sylvia in concept - like. I'm always going to eat up whimsical esoteric fairytale swan princess femme x dark and defensive and grounded to earth butch**. I'm a simple woman. And I think Allison Saft is soooo talented at writing really great romance scenes - I thought for a while I didn't care for this book and then the romance kicked in and I was like ohhhh I'm Locking Tf IN. Every scene was so sweet and tender and felt so fully actualized in the midst of a book that otherwise felt incredibly hollow. And if I were rating this solely on enjoyment of the romance this would easily be 4/5 stars - but GOD I just did not care for anything else about this.
**but also now that I'm thinking about it.... in a world where there is a lot of religious and cultural persecution this book does a stunning lack of consideration re: gender. like all the other women in this book are traditionally feminine except lorelai and it's not that i want to experience homophobia or butchphobia in the text, but it is interesting.... i almost wonder if lorelai was at one point a man and that switched during drafting because honestly outside of pronoun usage there really is nothing indicative of her gender expression despite it seeming like something that should be significant. **
The politics in this are.... well. troubling. I try not to be the friend that's too woke about fantasy plots and kind of just roll with the punches but when authors are so insistent upon using things from our world - both in name and symbology - it's hard not to scrutinize. You can't have literal, actual, real Nazis in this book where the main villain is motivated by a fear of the threat of colonization/mass extermination AND make me try to see colonization as a favorable option for peace AND see squashing of a civil war as resistance to cultural assimilation as a GOOD THING?????? Are you fucking crazy.
I enjoyed the Jewish mythos in this a lot and I think the message of this being about how antisemitic a lot of fairytales are and trying to subvert that through Lorelai's character was interesting but ultimately went nowhere? Just a lot of people being antisemitic to her that we were supposed to enjoy and feel sad over them?
Overall, I feel like this book was really derivative. It's skeleton at large (representatives from each community in a kingdom come together to try to hunt down something that will give their community power/an upper hand.... then suddenly there's a murder amongst them and our protagonist must play whodunnit and team up with someone who she acts like she hates but it's a defense mechanism because they really love them..................) is normally something I enjoy. In fact, it's basic plot structure is almost identical to Gideon the Ninth. Lol. But this lacked any loveable characters or catharsis for a sympathetic villain. Things just kind of felt like they were happening to or at the characters, not like I was witnessing the characters enacting the motions - if that makes any sense at all.
TL;DR this is a 4/5 romance and a 2/5 political fantasy.
Picked this up because I really enjoyed Allison Saft's A Far Wilder Magic - the world building and magic system in that wasn't amazing, but the plot was relatively simple and contained, and I liked the characters and their relationship a lot. The two leads in that were really isolated so there wasn't a lot of noise, just a really nice fantasy romance. These same problems carried over into A Dark and Drowning Tide - except here this world was too big and the plot too ambitious for where Saft's technical skill is at when it comes to world building. I still don't even know *what* the magic system was. There were vague mentions of aether but ultimately everyone was just a waterbender for some reason???? anyway.
I didn't quite get the beginning of this book or really the reasoning for why the plot kicked off tbh - you're introduced to a large cast of characters very quickly who you are told all have long-term relationships to each other... EXCEPT our POV character. This leads to a lot of dynamics being told to you rather than shown. The main group are representatives of essentially each of the colonized nations that are now ""united"" under one central kingdom. These characters all kind of take on caricatures rather than feeling fully fleshed out, which would be fine if so much of this book didn't hinge on you caring about them!! There's a few deaths that are meant to be shocking/impactful and it's like.... you just killed off a background character actor called Jock Bully! idgaf! Even in terms of the romance, our protagonist Lorelai is really unobservant of Sylvia's crush on her, which makes their switch from enemies to lovers feel a little too quick. I've seen a few people mention that this book would be more enjoyable without a lot of tweaks from Sylvia's perspective and I'm inclined to agree - we'd be closer to the magic/folklore creatures this book keeps telling us is important, we'd have more insight into the various dynamics at play, and I think even Lorelai would come across as more compelling - the grumpy accidentally rude love interest in the flavor of Mr Darcy!!
I really enjoyed Lorelai and Sylvia in concept - like. I'm always going to eat up whimsical esoteric fairytale swan princess femme x dark and defensive and grounded to earth butch**. I'm a simple woman. And I think Allison Saft is soooo talented at writing really great romance scenes - I thought for a while I didn't care for this book and then the romance kicked in and I was like ohhhh I'm Locking Tf IN. Every scene was so sweet and tender and felt so fully actualized in the midst of a book that otherwise felt incredibly hollow. And if I were rating this solely on enjoyment of the romance this would easily be 4/5 stars - but GOD I just did not care for anything else about this.
**but also now that I'm thinking about it.... in a world where there is a lot of religious and cultural persecution this book does a stunning lack of consideration re: gender. like all the other women in this book are traditionally feminine except lorelai and it's not that i want to experience homophobia or butchphobia in the text, but it is interesting.... i almost wonder if lorelai was at one point a man and that switched during drafting because honestly outside of pronoun usage there really is nothing indicative of her gender expression despite it seeming like something that should be significant. **
The politics in this are.... well. troubling. I try not to be the friend that's too woke about fantasy plots and kind of just roll with the punches but when authors are so insistent upon using things from our world - both in name and symbology - it's hard not to scrutinize. You can't have literal, actual, real Nazis in this book where the main villain is motivated by a fear of the threat of colonization/mass extermination AND make me try to see colonization as a favorable option for peace AND see squashing of a civil war as resistance to cultural assimilation as a GOOD THING?????? Are you fucking crazy.
I enjoyed the Jewish mythos in this a lot and I think the message of this being about how antisemitic a lot of fairytales are and trying to subvert that through Lorelai's character was interesting but ultimately went nowhere? Just a lot of people being antisemitic to her that we were supposed to enjoy and feel sad over them?
Overall, I feel like this book was really derivative. It's skeleton at large (representatives from each community in a kingdom come together to try to hunt down something that will give their community power/an upper hand.... then suddenly there's a murder amongst them and our protagonist must play whodunnit and team up with someone who she acts like she hates but it's a defense mechanism because they really love them..................) is normally something I enjoy. In fact, it's basic plot structure is almost identical to Gideon the Ninth. Lol. But this lacked any loveable characters or catharsis for a sympathetic villain. Things just kind of felt like they were happening to or at the characters, not like I was witnessing the characters enacting the motions - if that makes any sense at all.