A review by adancewithbooks
Fathomfolk by Eliza Chan

medium-paced

2.0

 Thank you to Orbit and Netgalley for the review copy in exchange for an honest review. This does not change my opinion in anyway. 

 
Fathomfolk has a really pretty cover and an interesting premise. Unfortunately it could not convince me. 

In recent years I have read other books with the theme of surpression of a species or other kinds of people and I have to say that I found that those books worked better at making me feel it. Partially this had to do with the characters but also partially with the writing. M.L. Wangs Blood Over Bright Haven sprung to mind often as I read this book wherein I didn't care for most characters, but her writing and set-up delivered exactly what she set out to do. Fathomfolk does not. 

Returning back to the characters, they are slightly on the flat side. I liked Mila but she doesn't really move forward. She is very passive in her situation and it didn't make for a very compelling read. Nami on the other hand was immature. It was so very obvious that she was being used. There was absolutely no sublety about it and it was frustrating to see that she didn't want to see it. 

The world in itself is interesting. Water species that can have a human body when on the land and that makes the human and the other species clash. But there is very little description of the various water species. I have an idea of what most of them are, but the whole point of books is that you show and describe them to me. I also wondered a lot about the relationships between the various species. There are some hints here and there but mostly it was the humans versus the fathomfolk. I think that was a missed opportunity. The brief glimpses of the under water life that we got, most of them seemed to be in their human bodies or living life like how they would on land. It felt a little weird and like this aspect wasn't giving a whole lot of thought. 
Expand filter menu Content Warnings