This is truly one of the more vibrant stories I've had the chance to read lately. I will say, I found myself slumping through this, struggling to get through the book, but I would definitely agree that this story has a lot of potential. I enjoyed the characters, the worldbuilding is strong in this one, but one of the things I found myself struggling a bit with, which made reading this a little slower than I expected, was that it partially felt as an essay on our society nowadays, barely disguised as a fantasy story. It has a lot of politics, a lot of backstory, and also a lot of details pertaining to how the characters were raised.

While I do of course understand that it is important to the characters and their backstory, it doesn't always drive the plot forward as much, and while I understand as well that it is sometimes necessary, I found that the story sometimes really slumps and even stagnates a little bit. I understand it is important that we know x character grew up a certain way, but I also do not need it to be thrown back into the mix every time, or to know every single thought a character might have about a subject. So I would warn those of you that love plot based stories and aren't too keen on those types of stories that this might not be for you!

Otherwise, the story is a solid 3,5/5 for me. It felt a bit like an essay at times but I grew to like the characters and am quite curious to see what happens in the next instalment!

Fathomfolk by Eliza Chan
3.5 Stars

Let me just say, I think this book would of easily been a 5 star, if it wasn’t Third Person. I think First person would have made it so much more interesting. First person gives a deeper connection to characters, and this just didn’t.

The whole premise of this book would have been absolutely brilliant. The war between people of sea and people of land. The Humans Vs the Fathomfolk, literally everything about it screams I should of absolutely loved it. But it fell short. The Third Person POV didn’t help, at all and I think it would be so much better as First Person.

However, the world building was absolutely mind blowing. The descriptive writing from Chan is breathtaking and I am here for it. It was the plot and the descriptions that made this book 3 stars for me. I absolutely loved the plot, with the mix of politics, hierarchy and fantasy. But those are the only things I can rate positively. The rest just wasn’t there for me.

Fathomfolk by Eliza Chan is such a good book. I rated it 5 stars. So so good. I loved every single second of it and I couldn't be more grateful to have read this book.

In this world, there are humans and fathomfolk—beings who live underwater. With the oceans polluted, many fathomfolk are seeking better lives for themselves and their families in the human city of Tiankawi. However, humans often see their gills as a sign of being "too different," with many expressing their prejudice in cruel ways. Since fathomfolk include powerful beings like sirens and dragons, they are often forced to wear devices that harm them if they even consider threatening a human, further cementing the imbalance between the two groups. The ending of this story completely caught me off guard, and I can’t wait to explore more of this world and read more from Eliza Chan!

Unfortunately, this book lost me with the world building and the writing.
It took me a whole while to understand what the (main) plot of the book is.
I kept drifting off while reading which resulted in me switching to a "more skimming than actually reading" situation.
A lot of the time I couldn't really tell if the characters are under water or on land, until there was this random "object floating next to their head" hint.

However, what I really liked was how political and social issues were translated into a sea creatures-human setting and how it all played & worked out.
I also loved how all the characters were connected with each other, in one way or another.

Cordelia, a sea witch, was giving Ursula-vibes and I am here for it. Anything else was really more like "meeh".

I wish I would have loved it more. This book might a potential reread candidate for some time in the future.
But for now, I will not be continuing this series.

I really wanted to rate this one higher but I just couldn't get into the story properly. I like the world EC has created and definitely think it has potential, so hopefully the sequel will suit my tastes a bit better

First, let's address the elephant in the room. These days I feel like a lot of us check the ratings of books before reading them, and it was the reason I was scared to dive (pun intended..) into this one. And I feel like I can understand the poor ratings in the sense that this book is kind of a mix of YA and adult and it might be hard to satisfy the readers of just one of these age groups.

I feel like the characters were not that original and very YA feeling, and I was often quite frustrated with their decisions. The worldbuilding, however, felt pretty adult to me- it had quite a lot of details and in a sense, it felt like its own character. And that was the reason I've ultimately rated this book 4⭐. I've kind of shifted my focus to the world as my main character and tried to flow (yup, that's another pun) with the story, not really thinking too deep about whether character's actions were compelling to me. Because of my anxiety, I really have a poor memory when it comes to the plot of books, but I remember the vibe quite well, and here I feel like the vibe was really strong and atmospheric.

I think fans of The Drowning Empire by Andrea Stewart might like this book.

I requested this because I was intrigued by its billing: an adult magical world that isn’t romance-focused sounded so promising. Sadly, it’s taken me a week to get 15% of the way through so I’m DNFing:
👎 This is totally YA. The characters are super young and writing style far too simplistic.
👎 It’s boring: there’s nothing to hook my attention, I don’t feel drawn to the characters at all, there’s a lot of info-dumpy telling.
👎 Pacing is too slow; it was like the author didn’t trust us to infer anything about the world, so we spent an inordinate amount of time with repetitive scene-setting through a huge cast of characters.
👎 The third person perspective isn’t working for me: all the characters are blending together, none of them feel distinct (or interesting).
👎 The inequality themes in this were a bit too raw for me as an immigrant reader. I’m not in a space where I want to spend time with a prominent xenophobic theme.

This put me in the worst reading slump I’ve had since I joined NetGalley. 😕

**Thank you, Netgalley UK, for approving my request in exchange for a honest opinion.**

I found myself having to read it unwillingly because I received an eARC copy to review. I am very sorry about this because i had a very high motivation to read it. There is a severe shortage of modern novels with mythological sea creatures and above all there is a shortage of good, solid non-romance novels! When I read the back cover, I had already imagined that it would be the best book with sea creatures, given the multitude of mythological creatures and troublesome current issues such as pollution and discrimination.

The world is indeed rich, well-researched and well-thought, but what annoyed me the whole time is that names of spirits and creatures are thrown into the book without explanation (and at least in the arc copy without a glossary). In order to understand what the author was talking about or how that newly introduced character looked like, I had to constantly google them. A few examples are: kappa, saltlick, Fumiho, chang-bi, chinthe. What I would have liked to see is fewer sea creatures (characters), but fully fleshed out ones.

The characters felt very flat to me. I could never tell Nami from Mira, who was the half-mermaid and who was the water dragon because they had the same voices. The same goes for Kai who was supposed to be the finacée of one two, but it didn't make any difference. I thought it was an initial difficulty due to the fact that I had to orient myself in the new world and adapt to the new characters, but unfortunately this difficulty remained even at the 60% reached. Furthermore, all three of these characters seemed very immature to me and I didn't get attached to them.
the only voice distinct from the others was Cordelia the sea witch who plots and manipulates characters to her personal advantage from behind the scenes. hard to get attached to her, though :D

Unfortunately, the story didn't grab me either. i got the impression that nothing happened in the first half of the book and events start to happen towards the second half. unfortunately, by that point i had already lost interest in the whole thing.
What I did appreciate, however, was the premise of dealing with difficult issues such as social injustice, xenophobia and environmental pollution, and I think the author has done a great job with this, dealing with it in a mature way.

In conclusion, this was a book I had high hopes for, as I love sea creatures and found them very suitable for difficult issues, but it left me disappointed.