This was a book I was most excited to read; but unfortunately no matter how hard I tried, I could not get through this book. I found myself churning to finish it. The beginning was hard to get through as it felt like it dragged a lot. And so it became a DNF for me. I will say though that the blending of Asian cultures was very interesting. It did give me that same vibe of Raya and the Last Dragon which to be honest is not a compliment. There was no distinction given to any of the cultures which is very sad.

Fathomfolk by Eliza Chan was an excellent fantasy read that hit a little harder than I was expecting. I went into this read because the idea of a fantasy city where part of the city is literally in/under the water got my attention. What I did not expect was the deeper themes around oppression, personal identity, and interpersonal relationships. would give infinity out of five stars if it was an option. I will definitely be checking out any other titles this author writes.

Interesting premise with imaginative world building and interesting characters. Pacing was really uneven throughout the book and often I felt a little lost within the plot. I really wanted to love this more. I’m interested to see how the author may grow. Decent Ya Novel.

Oh, this is not a good book. I should have DNFed.

The world needed to be edited down. The author threw every type of underwater mythological creature under the sea and called it a day. I wish she had chosen a few select creatures and fully fleshed them out.

dnf because i found out this author is a zionist and i dont care to read from people who support genocide and ethnic cleansing. the other reviews for this book were very poor too.

Had to DNF at around 65% because it just got to the point of I was tired of waiting for the the story to get interesting. Too many characters that are clueless and irritating to read about. I couldn't get invested in any of the characters stories.

This was an immersive story that built an interesting fantasy world. I enjoyed the world building and the politics that the characters were facing. The social issues addressed were important issues and I always appreciate perspective on them. I will say it took me some time to keep track of the different view points that the story was told from. There are three perspectives and at first you don’t know how they intertwine. It also made it harder for me to connect to the characters. Overall it was enjoyable to read and a nice debut.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

My Selling Pitch:
The Little Mermaid meets Zootopia. Reads like a YA, but is supposed to be an adult political fantasy. Great concept, bad execution.

Pre-reading:
This cover is gorgeous, and I love sea dragons and seahorses. I have heard no buzz about this book.

Thick of it:
Whatever editor let “fist palm saluted sarcastically” through failed this book.

I want a Kelpie romance book so bad. (And this book did not scratch that itch.)

Lynette is a terrible name for a butch horse girl lesbian.

It’s an urban fantasy, so it’s reminding me of Threads that Bind.

Different smell.

Oh shit, is her boyfriend gonna die or betray her lol? (The former lol.)

The note thing is nerdy but real cute.

Oh, they’re shenaniganning early, so I guess this isn’t a YA? Well actually, it did fade to black. YA rating stands.

I bet the book ends with the egg hatching. (You bet wrong!)

Little Bride-y there.

This is fun! Finding Nemo but make it fantasy.

Triptych

Ariel!

I assume Serena has water powers and she’s trying to prevent people from finding out. (You assume correctly.)

Adroit

I’m enjoying the political commentary.

Artichoke maybe? I love artichokes.

Ursula, baby!

Salubrious

Poor unfortunate souls🎶

I was gonna ask how they ate underwater lol.

This book has a lot of potential rn.

I like the privileged college commentary.

Oh, Serena is def a creature.

I’m really enjoying this so far.

This is good world-building. And it’s parceled out between chapters, so it’s not overwhelming.

I’m in murders and executions. Haha. I like this book.

Haha, my cabbages!

This book was really effective when it introduced Kai as a likable character and then slowly started poisoning the audience against him alongside Mira. That was good work. (Except we’re supposed to like him so-)

I don’t trust Firth. I think he’s gonna seduce and betray Nami. (Yup.)

Is Kai on the drugs? (Negative.)

Ooo this is good racial commentary.

It’s like the NYC subway. This is fun.

OK, the world-building is excellent, but can we please move the plot forward?

Oh wow, I didn’t even think of that aspect for self-defense on the bracelets. That’s such a good detail.

Detritus sin

Oh, she’s a very compelling villain.

Did not know this was an Ariel retelling.

Is that Dan from earlier? Did the Drawbacks buy him?

Lynette is truly the worst name they could’ve chosen for this character because she’s very interesting otherwise. Why isn’t her name Parker as in Sarah Jessica Parker? It’s just sitting there.

I know the book is spelling out the scheming for me because it’s intended for a younger audience, but it would be stronger if they would stop fucking feeding it to me. Trust your audience to read between the lines. (This was intended for an adult audience. It does not read like that.)

It’s giving Crescent City.

We’ve had so much set up. Let’s get moving.

Damn, you think he hung like a horse then? (Samantha, jail.)

This is gooooood race riot commentary. Now if only this book was paced better.

This is such good immigration and racial commentary, but the book’s plot sucks. It’s too slow.

The only characters unaccounted for are the king and queen dragons and the kelp guy. Is one of them the figures at these events? I genuinely don’t know whodunnit. Respect, book. I think we’re sitting at a three.

It took me by surprise too lol.

Me: this book has no chemistry
The author: hold my beer (Except literally only hold it for this one paragraph.)

Wow, super convenient Mira’s neither of those, but also both.

Oh look, I was right about Mira being neither lol.

Detritus sin again

Oh shit, did her dad give his pearl life to power the engine?

Heliacal

Damn, asking your foil characters to solve the trolley problem in back-to-back chapters is so smart. And it would work so well if we cared about them. But the book has moved at such a glacial pace that I don’t care. I’m not invested in Kai. I’m not invested in their relationships. There’s no sense of urgency.

This trolley scene is written for TV. It reads like a bare-bones script. And visually it would be great. But this is a book, not TV, so the style doesn’t work. There’s no detail. It’s rushed. It’s hard to picture. This keeps being a problem in her action scenes.

She has done fake-out death scenes with all of her characters. It makes it read like a YA. Like I’m not scared for their lives, and that’s a flaw.

I’m bored. I just want to be done, and I feel bad because this book is trying to say something about racial tensions. It’s just not good enough.

My girl is a lawyer. (Samantha, jail.)

I want to like this book more than I do. Like I have such a fondness for what it’s doing. It’s just not good enough. It’s so upsetting.

Ariel meets Zootopia with racial and immigration commentary on American politics.

I love that her husband knows the truth. I did not expect that. That’s a pleasant surprise.

Detritus sin x4

sampans

taraibune

He better not actually be dead.

But giving them all gills negates all the work your book just did to parallel racism.

Oh man, and this book can’t stand on its own. That’s so frustrating.

Post-reading:
This book was published before it was ready.

It’s such a great idea, and you can tell that the author put a lot of work into translating modern political issues into a fantasy world. Unfortunately, it reads like a YA. The pacing absolutely cripples this book. It is 80% world-building. The audience isn’t able to form a connection to the large cast of characters. The deaths are all fake-outs, so the book doesn’t feel like it has any stakes.

The action scenes are clunky and unwieldy and hard to visualize.

You have extraneous characters in this book. The librarian love interest is never relevant. I mean it’s obvious she’s gonna wind up with Nami, but you could take her out of this book and it would be unchanged. That’s a problem.

I am all for a book with lots of kooky sea creatures from myths and legends, but I’m gonna need you to define them within the text. Your audience is not gonna pause to Google what that creature is. They’re just gonna gloss over another fantasy word and keep it moving. That is very bad for visual aspects in your novel.

You set up a phenomenal, manipulative villain and ruin her by spoon-feeding the audience her schemes instead of trusting them to figure out what’s going on. The other villains have tonally alienating names that make them seem like non-threatening jokes from the get-go. Your extremist terrorist group never feels threatening or all that unhinged. If you’re going to market this as an adult novel then you need to go there with the violence. You’ll linger on the description of a dead child to emphasize immigration issues, but all your villains’ threats happen off-page.

And I think that’s the main problem of this book. I don’t think we’re starting the story early enough. I think this story would have had a much stronger arc if this was a trilogy. This first book should’ve introduced us to the world and made us care about Kai and Mira‘s relationship. It should’ve started with their enemies to lovers romance. That gives you enough time to linger over the world-building while propelling the story with a will they won’t they relationship. It positions you better to illustrate why Serena is such a threat instead of just telling the audience that she is one. Book one should end essentially where this story starts. Hey girlypop, now that I’ve established our great romance and the audience is rooting for us, I’ve actually never told my little sister about you and there’s this whole underwater community that the audience needs to learn about. Then you can have the events of this book without having to waste pages and pages on world-building. You can ratchet up the racial tensions. You can make the terrorist group actually inflict some terror. And then your audience will actually care when one side of your romance sacrifices himself.

Because there is something here. You have an author who has so astutely translated racial and immigration issues to a fantasy world. The idea of a city cannibalizing its immigrant workforce is so relevant. The domestic abuse problem of the bracelets was brilliant. And Mira and Nami are set up as such excellent foils. The trolley problem should be devastating character development. But as it is, the book just doesn’t work.

For all of this book’s wonderful world-building, there’s also some really stupid things. Why do sea creatures need to create air bubbles to eat when evolutionarily there’s no reason for them to ever surface? You have a society that doesn’t swim because of racism, sure, but then why does no one have lifejackets for boat races that they do every year? Where are they getting all the raw materials to make their buildings? Like how are we making these phones? The world is on the back of a creature and we kill it. Why does that trigger a tsunami and not the city sinking?

And the ending is such a fundamental failure of the book’s messaging. Why do all that work to parallel cities’ immigration and racial tensions, if the solution is to homogenize everything? It’s magical ethnic cleansing. I hope the second book will be the naive character realizing that that’s a terrible solution. But it leaves a really bad taste in your readers’ mouths. I don’t think it was appropriate to end the book like that was a feasible solution. It should’ve immediately followed with why this is a problem and how obviously the characters are going to have to correct it in the next book.

I think it’s a debut that bit off more than it could chew and instead of having an editor to rein her in and focus her book, they pushed it through to publishing. And I think that’s a real disservice to this author because this could’ve been something great.

Who should read this:
Urban fantasy girlies
Little mermaid retelling fans
Asian inspired fantasy fans

Do I want to reread this:
No

Similar books:
* Threads That Bind by Kika Hatzopoulou-YA urban fantasy romance, Greek god retelling, emotional abuse commentary
* Crescent City by Sarah J. Maas-urban fantasy romance, magical critters vs humans
* Bride-urban fantasy romance, magical critters vs humans
* Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo-YA fantasy, city setting, ensemble cast
* Sing Me to Sleep by Gabi Burton-YA fantasy romance, sirens
* Faebound by Saara El-Arifi-generic fantasy romance
* Forged by Blood by Ehigbor Okosun-generic fantasy romance, racism commentary
* Zhara by S. Jae-Jones-YA fantasy romance, asian inspired

This hovers between a 2 and 3 star because the story is good, the potential is there, but the execution just didn't work. I personally needed more character development to balance out the political depth. Things kept getting worse in the world and I just couldn't find it in me to care because I felt like I barely knew these characters. And then just kind of...happened? It's not a bad book by any means, it just needs less but also more?

Thank you to NetGalley and Orbit Books for the eARC in exchange for an honest review.

While the idea of the story was unique and interesting, I had a very difficult time staying interested in it or fully caring about the characters. I’m going to give the book the benefit of the doubt and say this was a me problem, not necessarily a book problem. Others with a more invested interest in the story may find this more enjoyable.

I DNF around 15%
The concept of the world building was cool, but overall I was like “wait.. who.. what.. why?” And I intended to try again and get back into it but I don’t think that I will

Thank you NetGalley and Orbit books for an ARC one change for my honest review!

Thank you to Orbit and NetGalley for an advance reader copy of this novel.
DNF at 56%

Fathomfolk is fantasy story set in a world and city that seems inspired by Southeast Asia, particularly island nations, called Tiankawi. I like the idea of the contrast between these intensely developed human cities (and all the good and bad that comes with this kind of development), balanced against a world and people who rely on the sea. This is a more political fantasy, centered around POVs from three characters: Mira, a half-siren who is recently promoted to captain of the border guard, Nami, a water dragon who is essentially royalty but young and exiled to the city, and Serena, a wife of a politician in the city.

The world building is well done and clearly the author was drawing from a range of experiences. We see a whole range of water-based fae and folk types, such as water dragons, kelpies, sirens, and a bunch more that I had not heard of but seem rooted in cultural folklore from these areas. While a nice touch, I feel like some of this did drag down the main narrative.

As already mentioned, this novel aspires to be an adult political fantasy. I say "aspires" because I think it falls short of being effective at both being "adult" and at having a cohesive political message. The characters all read as very young in terms of their actions and views of their world, even Serena who is a mother and has some secrets (revealed about 1/4 of the way in). And as far as the political message, it feels like the author tried to cover too much - social oppression, poverty, environmental destruction, police brutality and what is means to resist/rebel. Mira is positioned as basically being an oppressed demographic but within what is essentially Border Patrol/cop, but it doesn't feel like she grows beyond being that position (at least her personality stays kind of flat and with no real agency, though it is possible this changes later in the book). It might be the multiple POVs, but the characters felt flat. Nami was the only one who seemed to stick out to me, but I think her character was still relatively one dimensional, just more extreme than the others.

I put this book down about halfway through and have not felt any real urge to pick it back up. Partially I think my feelings on the attempts at political commentary are based on things that are happening in the real world right now (namely, genocide in Gaza). This book feels like it is almost attempting to make a statement, but then that statement feels watered down by poltiics, the same way it is happening in real life. I don't want my political fiction to pontificate and water down these conflicts, I want it to make a stand. It feels like this book was TRYING to make this stand, but just ultimately falls short. If viewed under a lens of young adult fantasy, some of these issues may be less of a dealbreaker, but since it was a pitched as adult fantasy, I think this is important.

2.5 / 5.0 Fathomfolk by Eliza Chan is a fantasy adventure and queer romance set in a mythological world where humans rule over sea creatures. This book tried to explore racism, colonialism, and anti-queer politics behind a veil of fantasy but it just didn’t work. The overlying vibe I got was that humanity wasn’t held accountable for their actions and there was no expectation of such. It was disappointing and I won’t be reading the next book.

Until Next Time,
MC

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for access to this ARC for review.

An immersive story set in a completely unique world. The characters are wonderfully created, the world itself is captivating, and the story is so well done.

Fathomfolk was one of my most anticipated reads of 2024 ( how could it not be with that cover and the blurb) and unfortunately it fell short for me. The worldbuilding in this book was extremely strong and at no point did that disappoint me. That was the saving grace for this story for me. What disappointed me was how this story was executed, and how it was labeled as Adult when it definitely came off more as a Young Adult novel.
I found myself lost, trying to figure out what POV I was reading because I am so used to when it is a multiple POV story the chapters are labeled that character's name. I wish this book had that because it would’ve been a lot easier for me to follow along. Due to this I couldn’t find myself connecting to each character because when I did have a POV of a character, it was extremely short and then the chapter ended and we were another POV and when we went back to that original character we were in a different spot. I can’t decide if I like one character more than the other. The ending does have me intrigued on what could happen in book two, and although I didn’t enjoy this book as much I will probably pick it up.
Thank you to Netgalley and Orbit Books for the e-arc in exchange for an honest review.

Fathomfolk is a tale of political intrigue set against the vivid backdrop of a half-submerged city populated with both humans and a large variety of mythical creatures.

If you like:
-vibrant world building
-nuanced takes on real world issues through allegory
-East/Southeast Asian inspired worlds
-complex, multi-faceted female characters
Don’t miss this one!

3.5 stars This was a good story with a great setting but the execution was a bit lackluster. It was hard to get to like the characters that were introduced as they never really developed because the story was running from the get-go. The romance was hard to grasp as one can not get invested for the same reasons. I will say if the novel was edited a bit more and more fleshed out of the world I would have easily given this a 4.5 to a 5 star.

I had high hopes for Fathomfolk, a political fantasy novel, but Fathomfolk is the one thing a story should never be boring.

i wanted to love this book so so SO BAD! however, the more i continued within it, the more the story started to drag for me, and i struggled. Though this book may not have been for me, I still think it was well written and others may enjoy!

I was lured in by the lovely cover and intriguing world building - a partially sunken magical city inhabited by humans and mythological creatures alike - but I was absolutely floored by how poor the entire execution was. Not a single character had any depth, the writing was juvenile, the plot twists were incredibly obvious, and any meaningful dialogue was obliterated by one of the worst conclusions I've ever read.

Fathomfolk has a lot to say, but is incredibly heavy handed in its messages. I was anticipating a nuanced adult political fantasy, but this is a watered-down (ha) YA novel that simply states over and over that racism and xenophobia are bad. Above all, this book was just shallow.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC in exchange for an honest review.