Whew! Reading this novella while 7.5 months pregnant was a TRIP. The prose was beautiful and the horror both easy to believe and otherworldly. The story is densely told—short novella, but packed with themes and hints at backstory. I read through slowly, savoring it. Despite that, I’ll be honest and say I don’t think I fully comprehended the tale, but that’s been a problem for me as of late. (Thanks, exhaustion and third trimester brain fog!) Overall, this was a lush and beautiful dark fantasy debut novella.

Thank you TorDotCom for providing an advanced electronic copy in exchange for an honest review.

When I saw this book being likened to Rosemary's Baby and Octavia Butler, I wasn't sure if it could live up to those comparisons. But any doubts I had were quickly put to rest by Rocklyn's mesmerizing prose, which lends Iraxi's thoughts and feelings a visceral potency that sticks with you. Though the book is short, Rocklyn packs it in with powerful moments, though she never spells anything out too directly, preferring to let the reader feel the story than track it plot point by plot point. It's a lush tale of isolation, vengeance, agency, and motherhood that left me excited to see what Rocklyn does next.

Flowers of the Sea was an incredibly dark yet captivating read that really grabbed me. Although it was a very short read the writing was superb and it’s definitely a memorable story. The blend of horror and fantasy was also executed spectacularly.
Full review to come on YouTube.

Please see my full review on CemeteryDance.com: https://www.cemeterydance.com/extras/review-flowers-for-the-sea-zin-rocklyn/

This was such a fascinating book. The worldbuilding was lacking in the first part of the book, but I really enjoyed how much we got to know Iraxi and her experiences. The dark themes were handled well.

Flowers for the Sea is the debut dark fantasy novella by Zin E. Rocklyn that follows Iraxi, who is one of the few survivors of a flooded kingdom aboard a lonely ark with few supplies and surrounded by people who look down at her, as well as, ravenous beasts that hunt the ship. She is also resentfully pregnant with a child that will be the first to be carried to term and survive. However, the baby may also be more than human. Iraxi also battles with the pain of her past, the self loathing of her current circumstances and the rage that will fuel her unknown fate, that is both powerful and destructive.

This is a dark and gothic fantasy novella, filled with detailed descriptions of disturbing imagery, that could be uncomfortable for some. However, that is the beauty of Rocklyn’s writing. The descriptions of what one’s body goes through after months on a ship were quite severe. As well as, the gruesome details of childbirth. So do not mistake the shortness of the story to not carry a significant weight. So those seeking a quick light read will not find that here. However, the mesmerizing way the words are crafted to execute such a detailed and immersive story is not something a book lover should miss out on.

Iraxi is an outsider on the ship, isolated from everybody while she struggles with carrying a child she doesn’t want, but is viewed as the last hope to those on the ship. Her past decisions haunt her and the only thing keeping her going is her rage. Which will later prove to be the key to a greater and darker fate than she could ever dream of. While I found it hard to root for Iraxi at times, I still found her relatable in some moments. I don’t want to spoil the story, but let’s just say her ending was very satisfying and made me wish the story was a little longer.

In conclusion, I found this novella to be intense, beautifully dark, tragic, laced with gothic overtones and supernatural elements that left me wanting to know more. I am giving it 4 stars, because while I found this story to be beautifully written, there were some moments that were difficult to get through. However, I still highly recommend this novella for those readers seeking something that will challenge them and need a read outside their usual preferences.

Trigger warnings: body horror, gruesome childbirth

Zin E. Rocklyn's latest novella, Flowers for the Sea, was marketed as being perfect for fans of Octavia E. Butler, with a Rosemary's Baby flare. That was certainly enough to have caught my attention (Plus that cover? Chef's kiss!)

Iraxi is one of a depressingly small number of survivors fleeing a flooded kingdom. But she's also more than that. She's the one her people hate – as she had the nerve to turn down their prince. Now, she's pregnant with a baby that will very likely be more than anyone could ever have imagined – literally.

Flowers for the Sea is arguably the heaviest book I've read all year. Not literal weight, mind you – but it weighed heavy on my mind. The situation Iraxi is in it...a lot. Losing her home, having her people hate her, seeing monsters outside hunt the remaining few, and an unwanted pregnancy on top of all of that.

This is not light reading, is what I'm trying to get at. I honestly don't think that this is a book for everyone, and that's okay. There's a lot of anger and pain within these pages, and it resonates loud and clear.

TL;DR: An excellent, vaguely horror-fantasy novella guaranteed to have readers burning with rage and righteous indignation. My rating: 4 of 5 stars.

Flowers for the Sea is a harrowing debut novella about a woman, pregnant, shunned, and trapped on a boat with people who hate, fear, and manipulate her. Although somewhat disorienting at times, Rocklyn crafts a narrative that expertly captures a large spectrum of human emotions. In particular, the main character thrives in her mounting anger, reflecting on it:

"My anger. My first child. My first choice. It has returned to me, honed my pain to an edge of purpose. And for once, I feel protected"

Women, and especially Black women, are so often criticized and shamed for expressions of anger. Thus, the validation, and even celebration, of the main character’s anger and its value felt transgressive to read.

My only critique, which frankly says more about my own feelings about the novella genre than this book, is that I could have used a little more context about the flooded kingdom these people fled from, and how the protagonist came to be so reviled.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Macmillan-Tor/Forge for giving me advance access to this book in exchange for an honest review.

I didn't enjoy reading this but it was a good read, if that makes sense. The combination of cosmic and pregnancy horror was very well-done, though the timelessness and general feeling of being unmoored from space and time did throw me off a bit (which I'm sure it was supposed to, so well done).

In a flooded world, Iraxi is ostracized and pregnant aboard a ship, but the baby she is carrying may not be human and once it’s unleashed onto the world, there’s no telling what will happen.

Flowers for the Sea by Zin E. Rocklyn is an engrossing and unsettling Lovecraftian pregnancy horror novella.

First off, I really loved how visceral the writing in this novella was. The author managed to create a fantastic sense of atmosphere and claustrophobia, and their vivid descriptions of body horror left me squirming in my seat.

Lastly, I do want to point out that this story is weird—wonderfully weird, so if you’re looking for a story about an eldritch baby like in Bloodborne, this one’s for you.

I am kind of at a loss about how to review this book. Because it was atmospheric, and it certainly made me feel things for the main character, which are pretty significant wins, right? But I also have... well, not a whole lot of knowledge about what exactly I read? And look- please understand, this may be a million percent on me, and not the book. I have no idea! If it seems interesting, you should absolutely go for it, because 1) It is really short, 2) The atmospheric thing I mentioned, and 3) If you understand it, then you can explain to me what the heck is happening!

At the start, I was wholly immersed. As I mentioned, the atmosphere is beyond incredible, and from the start, it is clear that this world is bleak, and you can certainly feel a tremendous amount of empathy for Iraxi. She's pregnant, and not super thrilled about it. Add to it, she's on a boat, drifting to who knows where, and it isn't exactly a luxury cruise liner- it's dire conditions, basically. And now Iraxi is not only dealing with her own despair, but the thought of having a child to care for too.

All of that was awesome, as was the writing. The author certainly has a way with words, that is clear. From the conditions of the world and the ship, to Iraxi's hopelessness, the author flat out nails it. The thing was, I just don't understand what actually happened? I know. That is vague, which is annoying. I get it! But I cannot explain it, for two reasons: First, spoilers. Second, I couldn't even try if I wanted to! So yeah, maybe it is just me, and my inability to figure out what I was reading. Or maybe not, but I think it's worth it even if you don't get it either.

Bottom Line: Worth reading for the incredibly atmospheric and emotive writing. Bonus points if you can make sense of what happened.

Flowers for the Sea is a horror book by author Zin E. Rocklyn published by Tor/Forge. The book has an airy, almost cosmic horror feel (despite taking place in water, not space) that carries well throughout the book. The main plot features the last members of a dying race. Including Iraxi, the main character, a woman who refused to marry a prince and led, in part, to the destruction of her family and the ostracization of her people on a raft in a water-logged world.

Of course as this book touches on hatred, prejudice and elements of power, abuse and control, it must be made clear that Iraxi is only the victim of circumstance, through powers beyond her control. As she is pregnant and there are beasts that patrol both the water and the sea, making death a near-certainty for the few remaining people on board. The story is a very quick read, I read it in one night. I felt the pacing, including the birth, the discovery of the horror elements and the monstrosities that lie in the dark was really astounding.

I find it gauche to make comparisons of any book featuring cosmic dread to Lovecraft, but the very flowy language mixed with setting a scene very tastefully do remind me in some ways of a Dagon-like place. My criticisms and the lower rating come with some of the pacing. I did feel the book was rushed (not simply because it was a novela) and that the decision to pace it the way that it did, focusing too quickly on some parts I'd like to learn more about and focusing too heavily on things I did not, did not appeal to me. I feel the ending may have been rushed for some people, or it may leave others scratching their heads, but I personally don't consider this in and of itself a negative. Overall, I would definitely recommend this book to any fans of horror, but would caution to read trigger warnings as this is definitely not for children.

I picked this up because I was expecting a story that would be doing that creepy, uncomfortable straddle over the place where dark fantasy bleeds into horror. But that wasn’t quite what I got – although there was plenty of uncomfortable, downright painful straddling in the book itself.

Having finished the book, it feels like I got the middle part of a story that had a lot more depth to explore – but that those deeper elements just weren’t present in the part I got.

The story begins aboard a ship that has, or at least had, some very interesting magic. The ship is and has been, floating in an endless sea, its passengers permanent exiles from a shore they left behind. Originally, the ship fed and protected and sustained them easily, but the magic is dying, or the sea is dying, or it’s all fading away.

Our perspective on the ship, its inhabitants and its circumstances is through the mind of resentful, pregnant, angry, ostracized Iraxi. She is angry at everyone on the ship, and everyone on the ship is resentful and afraid of her. Even though they all hope that the baby she has zero desire to carry or bear will save them all.

Iraxi’s perspective is an uncomfortable one. She is, herself, extremely uncomfortable in the last days of her pregnancy, and very, very angry at everyone and everything around her. Including most especially, herself.

But Iraxi’s anger is a much bigger thing than one woman – or even one ocean – can contain. All she has to do is accept it, and accept the past that brought her to this point, and it will become big enough to encompass the world – and destroy it.

Escape Rating C: Even after finishing this book, I still had more of a sense of what it was supposed to be from the blurb than from reading – actually listening to – the entire thing from beginning to end. Not that the reader didn’t do a good job, because she most definitely did, but because the story didn’t quite gel for me – or perhaps it gelled in the wrong places.

The blurb describes Flowers for the Sea as Rosemary’s Baby meets Octavia Butler, in other words a combination of horror and SF. I was expecting something at least a bit like Rivers Solomon’s marvelous The Deep, in the sense that I was expecting a story that was intended to reclaim the Middle Passage of the slave trade for its victims and away from its perpetrators.

I didn’t exactly get either of those things. Admittedly that’s at least in part because both the author and the narrator did an all too excellent job of portraying Iraxi’s unwanted, undesired, unwelcome and utterly resented pregnancy and eventual childbirth as a internal horror of anger, fear, hatred, loathing, disgust and pretty much every other negative emotion in a way that hit me right in the nightmare to the point where it overshadowed the entire story.

The other reason the story didn’t gel is that we see the entire thing from Iraxi’s perspective, and Iraxi is angry almost to the point of incoherence pretty much all of the time. She hates her circumstances, she hates her pregnancy, she hates her baby, she hates all the people aboard the ship for the way that they have forced her to carry this unwanted pregnancy to term, the way that they in their turn hate and fear her and only give a damn about the child she is carrying. She’s lonely, she’s resentful, she’s afraid and she’s hiding the reasons she is in this circumstance from herself and from the reader, only dribbling out clues and then shutting herself down before we learn what we need to know.

Paradoxically for a story that didn’t work for me, I wish this had been longer. We don’t know anything about this world, although we learn that it isn’t exactly ours. We don’t know nearly enough about Iraxi’s people, their background or how they got into this fix. We eventually get hints, but they’re not enough. More pages, more scope to learn more, would have made this work better – at least for this reader.

Your reading mileage may vary. I’m headed off to gibber in a quiet corner someplace until the nightmare passes.

I…what the fuck did I just read? I don’t know what I expected but I feel like this novella was sideways of what I thought this would be; I think I expected something along the vein of The Deep by Rivers Solomon, but Flowers for the Sea is not that.

Iraxi is an outcast on the ship that holds all the people left from the community she grew up in, that was drowned by the sea. She is also despised because she is pregnant and the baby is still alive, while so many others lost children and their lives since the loss of their land. But the pregnancy is unnatural and uncomfortable for Iraxi. And when the child is born, she remembers the truth of their conception.

This is a weird story, and I don’t think it was exactly to my taste, but it was definitely compelling. This may appeal more to fans of horror and work better for them. Overall this just felt like an odd book where I wasn’t quite sure what I was reading until the conclusion.

If I had to describe Flowers for the Sea in one word, it would be: visceral. This horror/fantasy novella hybrid features gripping prose to describe gruesome, stomach-turning events, all underlaid by a simmering sense of eldritch rage.

The novella follows Iraxi, who is pregnant and has been stranded on an ark with the last of her people for over 1700 days. Because this novella is so short and dense, to say much more about the plot would be counterproductive. The prose in this story does a fantastic job bringing to life a mixture of horrors both cosmic and human.

Though the writing itself was gorgeous, I felt disconnected from the world at large and the motives of the characters, which in turn led to me enjoying this less than I hoped. The pacing also seemed off to me; the novella ended right where I would expect a larger story to begin, and without any real satisfactory resolution—ambiguous or otherwise—for the reader.

For readers in search of a dark, powerful, dense read full of unsettling depictions of the monsters that lurk within and around us, Flowers for the Sea is a debut effort worth checking out.

Thank you to Tordotcom and NetGalley for an advance reader copy. All opinions are my own.

Great for fans of Rivers Solomon, Flowers for the Sea follows a pregnant woman who is both outcast and only hope for the people she shares a boat with. Dark with some body horror that was not for me, Flowers for the Sea is beautifully written and capable of digging hooks into your stomach and tugging. Is it strange that I could barely finish it and yet I know it will deserve the praise it gets? Still, if you have more tolerance for body horror than I do, pick it up.

Really stunning read... the second time around.
FLOWERS FOR THE SEA is a hypnotic read–even when I struggled to engage with the first few chapters, I wanted to keep reading because of how exquisite the prose was. I'm glad the style kept me hooked, because I definitely felt a bit lost until about 80% into this novella, and then I realized I was almost to the end and was crushed that I didn't have much more to read.
Given the length and the in media res start, this is a good novella for those who enjoy sitting and luxuriating with a text, going back to reread what they may have missed before (or just to enjoy what the caught the first time around).

Flowers for the Sea by Zin E. Rocklyn [Tor dot com publishing, 2021]

From one hard-to-capture but accomplished novella to another! Flowers for the Sea is an intensely visceral experience, one which makes us feel every moment of its protagonist's journey in a way that blends dreamlike horrors and psychological weirdness with a constant grounding in physical sensation. That protagonist, Iraxi is one of a group of survivors who have been at sea for years after their Kingdom flooded, an increasingly desperate voyage made even worse by attacks from supernatural creatures both above and below the water. Iraxi is pregnant, and appears to be the only person on the ship able to carry a child to term, but she's also despised for events in their former kingdom, and the combination of valuing her body while shunning her as a person means Iraxi is kept trapped below decks, in the squalor of a dying vessel. And, just to cap things off, it looks like her baby isn't exactly human.

We follow Iraxi through the navigation of her few remaining relationships on the ship - mostly defined by her pregnancy or sexuality - and through the experiences given to her by her supernatural child - and when I say "experiences", these sort of include the expected things like giving birth and nursing, but the line between Iraxi's physical reality and the world that her baby represents quickly becomes impossible to keep track of, and her baby quickly becomes a conduit for Iraxi to develop new perspectives on her situation and the possible ways out of it. When her journey of pain and isolation and frustration comes to a head, Iraxi finally gets the tools she needs to exert agency over the rest of the boat, and it's impossible not to root for the results even as it brings the story to a grim close. But then, its hard to imagine this ending any other type of way.

Ration: 8/10

I received an ARC from the publisher and am voluntarily posting a review.
I liked the idea of this story, but feel like it fell a big flat in execution. For one, the shorter length didn’t allow for a lot of fleshing out, and I found the ending abrupt. I did appreciate what the story seemed to be trying to convey through a dark fantasy/horror setting, but I found the use of flashbacks made it hard for me to discern the sequence of events.

I don’t understand why this book is considered horror/dark fantasy/ cosmic horror. There wasn’t much cosmic about it except for maybe the description of Iraxi’s child. There’s not much back story. Why is she carrying this creature child? How is her child a creature when the father is human? There are a lot of plot holes and gaps in the story.

Something that really bothered me was the depiction of pregnancy in this story. I’m not entirely sure if the author has children, or has experienced pregnancy, but a lot of the information surrounding it was inaccurate or lazily researched. Also as a mother of 3, I know for a fact no woman wants to have passionate sex while experiencing active labor, and that’s with a human child, nevermind some cosmic creature shredding your insides. I also find it weird how often the author mentions the main character’s vagina scent. It’s odd.

Characters are flat and not interesting. I was confused the entire time about this messy love triangle that didn’t make sense. There are barely any horror elements in this novella and honestly I feel like the plot was thrown together just
To set up for the final scene.

There’s not a lot of information on who Iraxi is, or why she’s having a hybrid baby/creature that can speak full sentences at its birth.

Overall a very messy story. The cover is beautiful and the writing is good so I’ll leave it at a 2 star.

Thank you to TorNightfire and NetGalley for an advanced copy.