humbleboar 's review for:

The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune

1.75

hopeful lighthearted medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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i have a lot of issues with this book:

1. why was the panel of "extremely upper management" comprised of three men and one woman? why did the "unimportant" men get descriptors in place of names but the woman remained merely "the woman?" why were four of the six children at the orphanage boys?
   why is the seventh child (i'm not gonna read the next book) another boy?
   why did we not learn of phee's backstory until the second to last chapter, when she wasn't even present?
2. why did the sole black child's magical power have to be one that literally turned him into a dog? why did he have to be sent to marsyas due to being "violent" in the past?
3. why did linus' weight have to be played as a joke more often than not? why the focus on him constantly sweating? why the focus on him dieting? why did his neighbor have to make the point that he lost weight while away at marsyas--while he was happier than he'd ever been?
4. where was this set? when was this set?
5. why was the little white boy the only child allowed to have multi-faceted interests? why did he get to discuss philosophy during his down time? the gnome was all about gardening. the wyvern, his hoard. the sprite, nature--although we hardly ever get to see this, since she's always off with zoe. chauncey, his career. sal, his writing. lucy gets to have nightmares and talk about philosophy and have favorite musicians. i found the rest of children to be flat, two dimensional archetypes rather than actual characters i liked and the obvious preference given to the little white boy rankled me.
6. how does the mayor stay elected when her way of problem solving is to threaten people into doing what she wants?
7. how does the ferryman stay in business? where else is he taking people on his boat?

and, my biggest issue, was the fact that the book was inspired by the genocide of indigenous peoples. you can't write a ~cozy-feel-good-love-conquers-hate~ book inspired by genocide. and even if the book weren't so twee and saccharine, if the orphanages were portrayed as something horrific rather than "uwu found family", i'd still have an issue, because a white author would still be profiting off of the trauma of indigenous peoples.

while i understand why this is a comfort read to so many people, it ultimately felt rather shallow and overwhelmingly white (and thin!) to me. i did enjoy some of the technical aspects of the writing and found klune's use of repetition to be particularly effective, especially don't you wish you were here and the spider imagery.