A review by bugle
The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune

lighthearted
  • 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

this book did not live up to the hype for me. in fact, I really disliked reading most of it. there was a lot of repetition in ways that felt lazy instead of emphatic, and I found pretty much every character to be either two-dimensional or inconsistent. Linus in particular was unrelatable and often unlikable. very different characters used very similar phrasing when they spoke, the same pieces of dialogue and setting descriptors were used repeatedly, and having a character who only cared about one thing and was always doing that thing with almost no variation was frustrating. parts of the story that were clearly meant to reflect reality in this world of (imo) mediocre fantasy we so divorced from it that it left me feeling ungrounded and annoyed.
in what world would one woman mayor be able to get an entire village of xenophobic shit stains to heel? the reason for her influence was inadequately explained. and the fact that Lucy assaulted someone, regardless of the reason or outcome, would never have been brushed off so easily. sal, a teenager, in the van after the outing reverently sharing the life lesson Linus taught him that day with little prompting was clearly written by an adult who has forgotten what it's like to be a child.
one word was highlighted as a slur (or a word otherwise unacceptable to use in the house) early on by one of the adult MCs, but it was used after that point in the narration and in the dialogue of both adult MCs. the conflicts and resolutions felt like they were written by a white liberal for preteens (which I say judgmentally as a queer trans anarchist, not as a conservative). some things were mentioned like they were important and never brought up again,
like the fact that the orphanage received no funding.
the only character whose race was mentioned was the Black one (and Black wasn't even capitalized), setting whiteness as the baseline.
and I still don't understand 1) how a person is supposed to be a phoenix, and 2) what TF "classified level 4" is even supposed to mean if Linus received no conseqences for having the photo on his desk. and how does this organization even have a classification tier that high if they can't even catch an employee at high risk of stealing and sharing org secrets of doing just that? lastly, I absolutely hate that Linus co-opted Sal's writing like he did, and it makes no sense that he was able to memorize that entire poem to recite it back to him weeks later.
Three stars instead of two because part of the reason I'm so annoyed is because of how hyped this book was, which is not the author's fault.
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