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! :)

This was an excellent fantasy with fantastic world building and really well written characters. I loved the real world themes in this book and it kept me engrossed throughout

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this arc

A mid paced based fantasy full of political intrigue, abounding in plot twists. Fantastic and unique world building and engaging characters.

Spectacular ending!

Arc curtesy of netgalley.