I like this book, I feel like it has built a strong base for the author to be able to continue writing other instalments for this series. I liked most of the characters and their backstories, however sometimes I felt like there were too many chapters from the pov of one character. I'm happy I persevered through the first few chapters because that is when it starts to get good, those chapters were kind of slow due to the world building which is completely understandable because the author needs to set the scene (but I have to admit that sometimes it was kind of hard to imagine the world because of the amount of information). I loved/hated the ending, loved because I think it is a good start for the next books, and I hated it because .... (but to discover why you should definitely read the book). The book was very focused on the politics, and the author was very successful in making it interesting and not overwhelming for people that are not used to reading these kinds of books. If you feel like the synopsis is intriguing (or if you like this amazing cover) you should definitely give this a try.

Eliza Chans writing is beautiful and well paced.
I have to admit that initially I was a little scared of this book because of the multiple characters and how they all fitted together but I am so glad that I persevered as this is by far one of my favourite fantasy books of the year.
Well written, fantastic world building, characters you will either love or hate and a storyline that I found refreshingly interesting.
Highly recommend.

The cover art and the synopsis, 10/10. The world building was well done and I really liked the magic system and all the different mythical creatures involved in this book.

Unfortunately, there are some downsides - the main ones being; there are so many characters to keep track of, it's a slow starter, I struggled to connect to some of the characters, and Nami. Nami is beyond naive, and because of it she causes sooo many problems with her choices. She really annoyed me at times.

I wanted to love this book so bad, I'm actually devastated I didn't.

Overall - 3.5⭐️

Thank you to netgalley and Little Brown Book for the ARC in exchange for an honest review🤍


My review will be published on goodreads (goodreads.com/bookish_kirst), storygraph (https://app.thestorygraph.com/profile/bookish_kirst), and Instagram (instagram.com/bookish_kirst) on Feb 21st 2024.

‘Fathomfolk’ featured excellent world building and a fantastical, water-based magic system. It also raised enticing hints at what has happened to Earth as we know it. The author has obviously done their homework on mythology; borrowing from many tales and creatures of lore, while adding her own unique flair.
Marked down to 3.5 from 4 for the pull-the-rug-from-under-you ending that I really didn’t like. To be fair, it was foreshadowed a number of times, but given events shortly before this, I’d dismissed the warning signs.

Disclaimer: thank you to netgalley, Eliza Chan and the Little Brown Book Group for a free arc in return for an honest review.

Book Review 📚
Fathomfolk by Eliza Chan - 3/5 ⭐

Unfortunately, this one wasn't for me. It started off stong and was leading to what seemed a great story, but I couldn't pass 47%. I ended up DNF'ing.

The world building was absolutely fantastic and couldn't fault it at all, but the characters were just undeveloped and "boring". They really let the book down.

Thank you to NetGalley and Little Brown Book Group for allowing me to read this ARC - this is an HONEST review from my own personal opinion.

I DNF’d at 30%. This is a fantasy rife with politics, examining the class system, political power, rebel factions, and racism through the Fathomfolk/human divide and although I really loved the sound of it I struggled to get into the story. It felt like there were lots of POVs, too many different characters, and nothing was happening. The writing in itself was good but I wasn’t engaged with the story and by a third of the way through I was expecting less scaffolding for the plot and more action to get stuck into so although I’m sure that this will intrigue other people, it wasn’t the book for me.

I struggled a lot with trying to rate this book, if I'm being honest.
There's nothing objectively wrong with it, I guess, it's just a matter of personal taste - I simply couldn't warm up to the characters. But the story in itself is still great! I adore the world of Fathomfolk and all the world building that went into it. It's so lush and intricate with all its' descriptions, I could probably read a book made up of Eliza Chan's descriptive prose alone!
So that's how it still gets 4 stars, even if I disliked some of the characters quite a lot.
Thank you so much for providing me with a copy!

Unfortunately not for me. I felt that it had merit but was disjointed and I couldn't connect to the story. Interesting concept and world building, however it was not executed well.

There were aspects of this that I enjoyed, like the setting and worldbuilding. That being said, when I finished the books, I felt like there were aspects missing.

The human world, it's a mess.

The Fathomfolk are all the people of the sea, be they sirens, kelpies, or even the highest of water dragons. The partially submerged city of Tiankawi gladly offers them a safe haven from their conflicts, living happily side by side with the humans there.

At least, that’s how the humans probably like to think about it. It turns out that “side by side” isn’t really true in any sense of the words. Neither are “gladly”, “safe”, nor “happily”, if we’re keeping track. But other than that, entirely spot on.

This debut novel by Eliza Chan expertly blends a variety of aquatic mythologies and contemporary influences into a fascinating fantasy setting. The world building is notable, but also drawn on a small enough scale for you to actually take in the little details.

The story is mainly told from a couple of perspectives. There’s Mira, a half-siren born in Tiankawi and the first of the fathomfolk to be promoted to captain of the border guard. And then there’s Nami, who is a complete disaster dragon who has never met a bad decision she didn’t fancy. To complicate matters further, she’s also the sister of Mira’s high-ranking ambassador boyfriend, Kai. All of them are trying to improve the life of their people in their own different ways. The antagonists are complicated and even occasionally sympathetic - apart from one moustache-twirling kelpie, who I disliked immediately and you will too.

The story is something of a slow burn for the first third as we’re introduced to the world, and accelerates quite rapidly after that point. My only complaint, which is not really a complaint, is that the city is left in such an intriguing state by the end of the book, that I’d quite liked to have seen a little more of the consequences of what happens. But it’s quite the hook for the next one.

All told, I’m eager to read more in this world, and I highly recommend this debut.

Thanks to Little Brown Book group for the advance copy.

I love when world building is so intriguing and unlike the norms of other books! So reading the synopsis of this and the cover had me adding it to my tbr.
Though this book was fun to read. It was still lacking in some of the most important areas - the romance, an mc you continuously root for. I love love love a slow burn! Friends first and then slowly trickling in with the romance. An Insta love puts me off a story really fast. Tho I didn’t hate the romance, I just wasn't invested as much. Plus the female ML has moments where I’d wanna pull my hair cos of the decisions she made. No spoilers but I’d pick up book 2 just with less investment in the romance or ML. Or maybe it’ll be much better in book 2

Thank you Little brown book and NetGalley for providing me an e-arc in exchange for an honest review. My review is my own and not influenced by others.

First of all the cover is really nice looking and the story sounds interesting. However, I found the writing style chaotic and there were to many characters and the chapters were too short to feel a connection with it. I just couldn’t see the picture clear and remember who were who in this story to feel encaged.

Seeing the other overall good recensies, I think this book could work well for others. Unfortunetly, I wasn't one of them.

Tiankawi is an affluent above water city where fathomfolk and humankind live side by side, supposedly representing affluence, unity, peace, and prosperity.
However, Tiankawi may be above the waves, but it's not the flawless paradise they pretend it is.

Mira (half-siren) was the first fathomfolk in the military and the first to reach captaincy.
Kai is the dragon prince, the ambassador for fathomfolk trying to work towards a better future for his people.
Nami is Kai’s opinionated and stubborn younger sister who is exiled to the above-water city by their mother after a failed heist to steal a dragon pearl. She is determined for drastic change and falls in with an anti-human rebellious extremist group.
Cordelia is the ambitious, selfish wife of one of the most powerful councillors. However, she manipulates from behind the scenes, striking deals to better her position as she conceals her fathomfolk identity.

She wished she could take a blade and shave away the rot, but the deeper she dug, the more she realised the veins ran right through her. All she could do was acknowledge them. Try to change them.

This is magical and reminiscent of a fairytale. The Asian-infused descriptions of cafes and bars giving it a cozy atmosphere of familiarity, community, and roots whilst being shadowed by contempt, pride, and fear.
This book deals with xenophobic-adjacent issues and behaviours and looks at how a society can come together, or fall apart, when forced to integrate, work together, and confront long-held prejudices.

The romance felt quite juvenile and very insta-love like. In this vein, everything felt fairly predictable however I’m hoping a side character I really enjoyed in this book who randomly kept popping up will have a greater role in further books and add further queer representation to the main cast.

Whilst the plot felt quite predictable, the slant on the sea and fathomfolk and the visuals (vibes?) of the atmosphere kept this fresh.

If you enjoyed this, I would recommend Daughter of the Drowned Empire, and The Girl who Fell beneath the Sea.

Thank you to Orbit for providing an arc in exchange for a review!

I was so so so excited for this book, from both hype from friends and also just the gorgeous cover artwork (just look at it!!). Unfortunately, while the worldbuilding is gorgeous, with strong melding between East and South Asian cultures, the one the characters dragged the story down.

Fathomfolk is, essentially, Zootopia with mermaids. In the opening scene, Mira, a half-siren (half-folk) is promoted to Captain of the Tiankawi border guard, the first of her ‘kind’ (sound familiar?). The allegories to racism and immigration are extremely blunt, and Chan explores the lives of different folks living in Tiankawi as a way to depict the nuances of how fathomfolk discrimination occurs. It’s an ambitious debut novel, and one Chan mostly pulls off.

The worldbuilding of Tiankawi is incredible. As a city-state that’s been seen as the last refuge to both humans and folk alike, Chan depicts a melting pot of East and South Asian cultures, where mythological water-beings across a range of mythologies have come to cobble a life together. The descriptions of the markets and food made me reminisce of my own visits to family back in Asia. Likewise, Chan is unafraid to really show the brutality of the living conditions of the immigrant folk, especially in contrast to the luxury of human living, making the actions of the characters feel all the more real. Truly, Tiankawi is brought to life in this book.

However, where this book struggles is in the characters. Nominally, this is a multi-POV story, where Mira, the newly appointed half-siren border guard and girlfriend to the dragon-ambassador Kai, Nami, Kai’s younger sister and recent immigrant to Tiankawi, and Cordelia, a second-generation sea witch with her own trappings for power, each offer their own interpretation of Tiankawi’s racial struggles. However, this really felt more like the Nami show, with the other two characters relegated to secondary characters in Nami’s story.

Which is unfortunate because Nami was easily the most aggravating character to follow in this book. With dragons having the most privilege of folk society, being Kai’s young sister, and having only just arrived to the city, Nami has no actual experience of how Tiankawi’s politics function before she just throws herself into the first extremist group she finds, leaving the others to clean up (or encourage) her messes. It’s strong ‘naive college leftist fighting for injustice she’s barely actually experienced”. The entire second half of Fathomfolk could really be summarized as ‘Nami made a bad decision, and then a worse one’.

The strong focus on Nami actually hurt the characterization of the other POVs and depth of the respective worldbuilding. I felt Cordelia’s was well written since she was mostly off doing her own thing, but her chapters shone light on the human politics and their power struggles, something I wish was expanded on more. More importantly, one of Mira’s main subplots was her struggles in her relationship with Kai, and I felt absolutely no chemistry between these two because their interactions felt so minimal. Kai himself barely actually did anything, despite supposedly being ambassador. Generally, there were a lot of small strings left dangling that I think could have been woven together tighter with a strong editing pass.

Overall, I rate this book a 3.5/5. While the worldbuilding of Tiankawi itself is beautiful, I strongly disliked the main character and felt the overall story needed a stronger editing pass to clean up the loose strings.

I recieved the ARC on NetGalley. Thank you for the opportunity to read this book.
Can I just say how beautiful the cover of this book is?!
I really liked how great the world building is.
At some points I didn’t know what was going on as I lost interest. I found that there were a few plot holes and some parts didn’t seem to make sense.
There’s too many characters for me and I was confused on who’s who in the story.
I wasn’t sure who Cordelia, Samnang and Serena’s relationship are. Especially in chapter 30. It sounds like Samnang and Serena are married and then Samnang and Cordelia share a kid?? idk. Maybe I’m dumb.
Nami is so naive it’s actually annoying.
It was a slow start but got interesting when it got to 40% when the boat race day happened.

This was a DNF for me, however I may pick this up again in the future.

I loved the worldbuilding and the creatures aspect. I thought that was very clever and I loved the folklore being woven into the worldbuilding.

However, this really did feel like a flooded NYC, and it felt almost YA in nature. If this is supposed to be a fantasy city, it really didn’t feel like it. It also felt almost cartoonishly sitcom-like. Very Brookly Nine Nine, which is not what I was looking for.

But I will pick this up again in the future to at least give it another try, as I did genuinely enjoy the folklore aspect and will keep it on my TBR shelf for future consideration.

At the request of the publisher, I will not be posting this review on Goodreads until two weeks before publication date.

Intriguing YA political fantasy that centres conflict and cooperation. Amazingly rich world building too. Possibly a bit young for me.

I can't say why but I simply didn't like this book.
Lots of reviews were saying how great the world building is, and I agree - even from the initial few pages it seemed very rich. But the actual world itself I wasn't a big fan of. It seemed like a semi-modern, semi-fantasy NYC. It just gave me comfort-fantasy vibes (if you've read Legends & Lattes I feel like it has that sort of vibe? I.e. not my vibe at all). In one of my updates I compared it to a cross between Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken and I still stand by that. I also couldn't shake the impression that this book felt incredibly YA just because of how cartoon-ish/sitcom-like the whole story was.

I ended up DNF'ing this because neither the plot or the characters were intriguing enough to continue. I think the writing itself was nice, although a bit frilly at time and a tad over-descriptive.

AHHH I WANT TO CRY (no spoilers why).

Set in an East and SE Asian-influenced fantasy world, Fathomfolk navigates the politics of coexistence and cooperation between water creatures (fathomfolk) and humans. It is refreshing, satisfying and familiar to recognize the names of SE Asian supernatural creatures scattered throughout the novel! I think there are going to be people out there that will throw hands at the fact so many supernatural creatures from different regions of Asia are all seen and thrown into one city but it reflects the fact that SE Asia is a mosaic of cultures and influences. Also, migration (in real life and in Tiankawi)!*

*That's the simplest way to put things...

With snappy pacing and messy characters with layered motivations, heartwarming chemistry and well-thought backstories, it is easy to fall in love with this story and breeze through it! And the WORLDBUILDING! Absolutely wondrous. Mira's cynicism and wariness and Kai's optimism and charisma balance each other out, and their hard-working nature, benevolence and hope for the future make them a good pairing. Nami's naivete, stubbornness and shared hope get her into trouble as she tries to understand while falling deeper into the ideology of the Drawbacks. Cordelia is such a peculiar character with complicated allegiances and an impressive skillset that it is always fun to read her POV and see her scheme.

Reminder to self: keep a thumb on the pulse of this series because the worldbuilding and characters are so worth it!

Many thanks to Netgalley and Orbit for providing me with the e-ARC/DRC in exchange for an honest review.

Thanks to Little Brown Book group and Netgalley for providing me with the ARC too this book in exchange to an honest review.

Can I just start off by saying how much I absolutely adore this cover? This may be one of the prettiest cover I have ever seen and as soon as I saw it I knew I needed to read it.

I loved the world building in this. This is a fantastic, mythical story taking place in a half-submerged city with it's own politics, interpersonal issues which draw you in immediately and keep you enthralled all the way through. There is an abundance of mythical folk all living together which make the story very rich and conflict real, complex and relatable.

While I enjoyed the complexity of the issues presented and the political escapades of the characters I have to admit that sadly the plot kind of got lost to me midway through. I do enjoy a good intrigue and plot-twist but everyone was double-crossing everyone at some point and it started to feel predictable and repetitive. I also felt like there was a serious amount of unrealised potential in certain characters where I would have loved to know more/see the story develop a bit further.

Also, Nami as a character is completely unlikeable in my opinion. She is extremely flawed and not in a 'oh she is so flawed let me protect her' kind of way but in a way that I just cannot stand. How can someone have such a huge role in a 430 page book and not make one good decision throughout the entire story?
I just don't think any character (human or fathomfolk) could possibly be so naive, permanently be taken advantage of, create so many insane issues (I don't want to spoiler anything) and then somehow come out the other end? The romantic aspect involving her fell completely flat - more like she was being helplessly groomed and it made me feel borderline uncomfortable.
Like, just no. I found myself perpetually rooting against her and hoping that she would just return back to Yonakuni and stop inflicting herself on everyone else.

The pacing felt ok for the most part, although I did feel like this book was slightly on the long side. Thumbs up for the ending although it very clearly leads into a book two which normally I am not the biggest fan of when done so blatanly obvious. Hopefully with the introduction of some more likeable characters! :)