Review: A Sea of Storms

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It seems to me that nautical tales don’t get near enough attention. At least within the fantasy genre, that is. There aren’t many that I can pull to mind. Red Seas Under Red Skies by Scott Lynch, Robin Hobbs’ Liveship Traders books, Tide Child books by RJ Barker. There are some really cool steampunk airship books around too — Chris Wooding’s Ketty Jay books, Butcher’s Cinder Spires — but they only kind of count. I did come across another one from Tor a while ago: The Sin in the Steel by Rayn Van Loan, that was pretty decent (review to come).

There are obviously more out there that I’m not listing here, tons of little stories from authors that relatively few have heard of and some that are just escaping my normal bear-trap of a mind, but still it seems like it takes more effort than it should to come up with any kind of significant list. Now, I’m not one that necessarily goes out looking for specific things in my fiction. The semi-recent rash of marketing efforts that I’ve seen in this vein are more than a little ridiculous. But, if you happen to have noticed the same dearth of ocean-faring fantastical tales and find yourself in the mood for something out of the ordinary, this book might be just the one for you.

Rowan Donchaad is the captain of a sailing vessel that plies the wide-reaching oceans in search of leviathans, creatures of the deep that only infrequently rise to the surface. Think, massive spiny whale analogs and you won’t be far off. These beasts, like their non-speculative cousins, are big and dangerous and yet some small portion of the population of the world has still decided to wage war on them. In general, these creatures stay in the cold deeps because of the massive amount of heat that their bodies give off. This aspect of their bodies also gives them away as they near the surface, causing the water to boil and throw massive, billowing pillars of steam into the air. The leviathans are killed for the gold that their bodies hold, collected in streams and strands beneath their skin, which is also used to protect the sailors that would try to kill them.

More than that though, it is believed that the oldest and largest of these creatures have a connection to deity, and in fact may even be gods in their own right. And therein lies the rub of this tale, because like Donchaad’s distant literary cousin, Ahab, this captain is out to kill one of the oldest of these massive beasts. Not for the simple slight of taking his leg, but for turning his head away from Rowan and his young, expectant wife, Birgitta, in their time of extreme need, leaving her to die. Even Rowan doesn’t know what will happen when he finally kills this god, if any of the world will even survive, but he’s bent to the task and there is nothing that can stop him from trying.

This story starts in a great place. Donchaad has commissioned a well known weapon-smith to forge several new cannons for him. Instead of throwing cannonballs though, these launch spears. They’re a special weapon of Captain Donchaad’s own devising, meant to allow him to hunt the largest and most dangerous version of leviathan.

The author has three PoV characters that get page time. Rowan is absolutely the one that this story belongs to. He’s the one making all of the choices, and he’s also the one that is suffering all of the consequences. A second PoV comes in relatively early in a young boy named Marek. When he first came up, I was a little taken aback, as I hadn’t expected such a large change in the story. Marek’s story is pretty far-removed from Captain Donchaad’s for much of the book. He’s a delivery boy and runs into a spot of trouble with the trouble-causing sons of the local nobility. Most of his time felt ancillary and more focused on building a bit more of the world around them. Eventually, the the two storylines merged through the third PoV, Mark’s uncle Aifric, and the fallout of that initial part of Marek’s story got left behind. I’m kind of expecting that it’ll come into play later in the series, given how much time was spent there, though.

Secondary characters were well drawn, and there were quite a few of them just within the crew. In general, they were differentiated and unique enough that I could follow them from one scene to the next. This wasn’t always the case, but it didn’t annoy me overly much when it got a little difficult. Large casts of characters are always a trick to handle, and none of them played particularly large roles in the storyline. One exception is the guy that stays up in the crows nest (which isn’t called a crows nest), but eventually I figured out who he was, and the part he plays, I thought, was one of the coolest pieces of world-building in the bunch.

Lots of the story is driven by the individual characters and their decisions. In the main, I felt like those decisions and the emotions governing them were justified. There were a few places that felt a bit clunky, where a bit of explanation might have helped elucidate a little better what was going on inside of a given character’s head, but those times were few and far between. And the plot line, though simple, held enough excitement, conviction, and sometimes heartache, to keep me reading late into the night.

This was a fun, engaging read, and from what I understand, he’s hard at work on the second in the series. Can’t wait to see where this one goes.