Book Review: Somewhere Beyond the Sea by TJ Klune

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: Somewhere Beyond the Sea
Series: Cerulean Chronicles, #2
Author: TJ Klune
Publisher: Tor Books
Publication date: September 10, 2024
Length: 416 pages
Genre: Fantasy
Source: Purchased
Rating:

Somewhere Beyond the Sea is the hugely anticipated sequel to TJ Klune’s The House in the Cerulean Sea, one of the best-loved and best-selling fantasy novels of the past decade.

A magical house. A secret past. A summons that could change everything.

Arthur Parnassus lives a good life built on the ashes of a bad one.

He’s the master of a strange orphanage on a distant and peculiar island, and he hopes to soon be the adoptive father to the six dangerous and magical children who live there.

Arthur works hard and loves with his whole heart so none of the children ever feel the neglect and pain that he once felt as an orphan on that very same island so long ago. He is not alone: joining him is the love of his life, Linus Baker, a former caseworker in the Department In Charge of Magical Youth. And there’s the island’s sprite, Zoe Chapelwhite, and her girlfriend, Mayor Helen Webb. Together, they will do anything to protect the children.

But when Arthur is summoned to make a public statement about his dark past, he finds himself at the helm of a fight for the future that his family, and all magical people, deserve.

And when a new magical child hopes to join them on their island home—one who finds power in calling himself monster, a name that Arthur worked so hard to protect his children from—Arthur knows they’re at a breaking point: their family will either grow stronger than ever or fall apart.

Welcome back to Marsyas Island. This is Arthur’s story.

I absolutely loved The House in the Cerulean Sea, and I’m happy to report that the newly released follow-up book, Somewhere Beyond the Sea, is just as lovely and wonderful as the first book.

In The House in the Cerulean Sea, Linus Baker is the main character — a caseworker with the Department in Charge of Magical Youth (DICOMY) who is sent to evaluate the Marsyas Island orphanage, run by the kindly Arthur Parnassus.

Somewhere Beyond the Sea is Arthur’s story, showing his past as well as his continuing story after the events of the first book. As we pick up from where we left off, Arthur and Linus are in love, and are happily providing a warm, safe home for the magical children in their care. But outside forces are aligned against them and seem poised to rip apart everything they’ve built.

Once again, we get to spend time with the wonderful children of Marsyas, who are joined by a new addition, a yeti named David. David is funny, dramatic, and enjoys scaring people (just for fun — he doesn’t have a mean bone in his body) — yet he’s also sensitive, and cries ice cubes when he’s upset.

The child at the center of much of the action, and whose mere existence sends DICOMY into a tizzy, is Lucy… short for Lucifer. Lucy is the Antichrist… but he’s also a seven-year-old child who loves old-timey music and needs comforting when his nightmares strike.

Lucy also gets some of the funniest lines in the book:

“Are we going to sleep in the forest?” Lucy asked, tugging on his pant leg. “I’ve always wanted to see if there were night monsters. I bet they’re big with fangs and claws and filled with rage that only subsides when sucking out the marrow from the bones of unsuspecting—”

“There will be no marrow sucking,” Linus said sternly.

Lucy hung his head, shoulders slumped. “Yet another thing we can’t do with bones. What’s the point of even having bones if we don’t get to play with them?”

“Anarchy!” Lucy shrieked, eyes burning red. “Chaos! Buffets with a never-ending supply of macaroni and cheese! Hellfire!”

The evil representative of DICOMY who arrives at Marsyas to inspect the home and the children is absolutely awful, and is startlingly reminiscent of Dolores Umbridge, which I can only assume is entirely deliberate on the part of the author. (Read his afterward to understand his thoughts on J. K. Rowling).

The lesson proceeded with minimal interruption, usually from Miss Marblemaw coughing pointedly or clearing her throat when Linus or the children said something that she obviously did not approve of. Linus attempted to ignore her, but the longer the lesson went on—going from the wide and mysterious world of mathematics to history—the more Miss Marblemaw made a nuisance of herself, muttering under her breath as she scribbled on her clipboard.

TJ Klune’s writing is, once again, imaginative and funny and heartwarmingly sweet. The characters shine with warmth and humor, and the relationship between Linus and Arthur is romantic and loving and oh-so-perfect.

The ultimate showdown between the forces who want to shut down Marsyas and control the children and all magic, versus Arthur, Linus, and the people of Marsyas village, is a wonder. It’s pure delight to see the townspeople rally around the magical children and declare them a part of their community. Somewhere Beyond the Sea shows found family at its best.

Somewhere Beyond the Sea is a lovely, cozy read, with both surface-level entertainment and deeper emotional impact. If you loved The House in the Cerulean Sea (didn’t we all?), Somewhere Beyond the Sea is a must-read.

23Aug2024

Book Review: The Wind Knows My Name by Isabel Allende

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: The Wind Knows My Name
Author: Isabel Allende
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Publication date: June 6, 2023
Length: 253 pages
Genre: Historical/contemporary fiction
Source: Purchased
Rating:

This powerful and moving novel from the New York Times bestselling author of A Long Petal of the Sea weaves together past and present, tracing the ripple effects of war and immigration on one child in Europe in 1938 and another in the United States in 2019.

Vienna, 1938. Samuel Adler was six years old when his father disappeared during Kristallnacht—the night their family lost everything. Samuel’s mother secured a spot for him on the last Kindertransport train out of Nazi-occupied Austria to the United Kingdom, which he boarded alone, carrying nothing but a change of clothes and his violin.

Arizona, 2019. Eight decades later, Anita Diaz, a blind seven-year-old girl, and her mother board another train, fleeing looming danger in El Salvador and seeking refuge in the United States. However, their arrival coincides with the new family separation policy, and Anita finds herself alone at a camp in Nogales. She escapes through her trips to Azabahar, a magical world of the imagination she created with her sister back home.

Anita’s case is assigned to Selena Duran, a young social worker who enlists the help of a promising lawyer from one of San Francisco’s top law firms. Together they discover that Anita has another family member in the United States: Leticia Cordero, who is employed at the home of now eighty-six-year-old Samuel Adler, linking these two lives.

Spanning time and place, The Wind Knows My Name is both a testament to the sacrifices that parents make and a love letter to the children who survive the most unfathomable dangers—and never stop dreaming.

The Wind Knows My Name is a compact but powerful story about lost children, sorrow, and resilience. It’s also quite political, which I didn’t have a problem with, but some may readers may wish to know that the author is very up front in her thoughts on a certain former President and the current, ongoing immigration crisis.

But beyond the politics and the highly charged topics, The Wind Knows My Name is deeply affecting because of the individual characters, their painful childhood experiences, and the way unexpected connections help them forge new paths forward.

The book opens in Vienna, 1938, as the horrors of Kristallnacht unfold. For young Samuel Adler, it’s the night his whole world falls apart. Eventually, to save his life, Samuel’s mother sends him off to England on a train filled with other Jewish children — and while Samuel does go on to live a long and fulfilling life, the early trauma never leaves him.

Later, we meet Leticia, a Salvadoran girl whose father crosses the border into the US with her after their entire family is murdered in the massacre of their small village.

And still later, closer to the present day, we meet Anita — also from El Salvador, cruelly separated from her mother at the border as they seek asylum from extreme danger back home.

As these three people come together, with assistance from Selena, a social worker, and Frank, the ambitious lawyer who finds his true calling in pro bono work helping undocumented children, their complicated pasts offer reflections of commons experiences, even while each has suffered in their own unique and unforgettable way.

At less than 300 pages, The Wind Knows My Name is a fast read, especially as it’s so compelling that it’s difficult to pause and come up for air once you start. Each character’s story is absorbing and tragic, and yet, there are rays of hope in each of their stories as well — even more so as they come together in an unusual but lovely found family.

My main quibble with this book has to do with the storytelling itself. Isabel Allende is a masterful writer and has a beautiful way with words, and she’s highly gifted when it comes to evoking her characters’ inner lives, dreams, and nightmares. However, the writing in this book relies too often on telling rather than showing. Especially in the later chapters, new interludes open with a recitation of what the characters have been doing. We don’t see these events unfold; we hear about them after the fact.

The story itself and what the characters experience is never uninteresting, but there’s a distance because of this narrative approach that left me feeling the emotional impact a little less than I’d expected.

I also felt disappointed that Samuel’s adult life is largely skipped and told in summary after the fact, when we meet up with him again in his 80s. I couldn’t help but feel that there was so much more to see and understand. Given the length of the book, perhaps there wasn’t room to go deeper into the characters’ lives, except in terms of how they all connect, but I wished for more, for Samuel and the others. The Wind Knows My Name might have been more satisfying if it had expanded further on all of the characters and let us go deeper into their worlds.

Overall, however, the events and experiences contained within The Wind Knows My Name are deeply moving, and I came to care deeply about all of its people and the relationships they create and nurture.

Highly recommended.

26Mar2020

Book Review: The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: The House in the Cerulean Sea
Author: TJ Klune
Publisher: Tor
Publication date: March 17, 2020
Length: 400 pages
Genre: Fantasy
Source: Review copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley
Rating:

A magical island. A dangerous task. A burning secret.
Linus Baker leads a quiet, solitary life. At forty, he lives in a tiny house with a devious cat and his old records. As a Case Worker at the Department in Charge Of Magical Youth, he spends his days overseeing the well-being of children in government-sanctioned orphanages.
When Linus is unexpectedly summoned by Extremely Upper Management he’s given a curious and highly classified assignment: travel to Marsyas Island Orphanage, where six dangerous children reside: a gnome, a sprite, a wyvern, an unidentifiable green blob, a were-Pomeranian, and the Antichrist. Linus must set aside his fears and determine whether or not they’re likely to bring about the end of days.
But the children aren’t the only secret the island keeps. Their caretaker is the charming and enigmatic Arthur Parnassus, who will do anything to keep his wards safe. As Arthur and Linus grow closer, long-held secrets are exposed, and Linus must make a choice: destroy a home or watch the world burn.
An enchanting story, masterfully told, The House in the Cerulean Sea is about the profound experience of discovering an unlikely family in an unexpected place—and realizing that family is yours.

In these crazy, unsettled times, who doesn’t need a perfect pick-me-up of a book?

If you’re looking for something special and heart-warming, have I got a book for you!

The House in the Cerulean Sea is utterly lovely and altogether charming. It makes me smile just thinking about it.

The main character is a buttoned-up pencil-pusher named Linus Baker, who is a caseworker for DICOMY — the Department In Charge of Magical Youth. DICOMY is a marvel of bureaucracy, supposedly invested in the well-being of magical children, but really focused more on containment and concealment.

And don’t be fooled into thinking we’re talking a Hogwarts-type setting here. In this world, there are magical children, but they’re problems to be solved, not gifted youth to be nurtured. And for at least the children we meet in The House in the Cerulean Sea, they don’t (mostly) have human appearances. These children are very clearly other, and they live in a world in which they’re adamantly and obviously unwanted.

Linus’s job is to visit orphanages housing these children and to file reports. His life and his job haven’t changed in years and years — until he’s summoned to a meeting with Extremely Upper Management, who send him on a classified, top-secret mission to Marsyas Island and the orphanage there. Linus’s new assignment is to spend four weeks at Marsyas, filing weekly reports on the headmaster and the children in his charge, and ultimately to recommend whether the orphanage should remain open or be shut down.

Linus is not at all prepared for what he finds there. First of all, it’s on the sea — and he’s never seen an ocean or a beach before. It’s beautiful, and he’s immediately enchanted. And then there are the children. All are strange and different, and at first, Linus is more or less terrified, yet before long, he sees how truly special the children are… once he gets past the somewhat scary and strange exteriors of a few of them.

The story is just lovely. I loved seeing how Linus reluctantly opens up and connects with the children and headmaster of Marsyas, and how his warmth brings out new interests and confidence in each of them. This is a perfect example of a found family story, and it’s marvelous.

The writing is descriptive and lively and funny, but also has great emotional depth. The author does an excellent job of showing us the individuals living inside each of the odd exteriors that the public sees.

My favorite has to be Lucy — short for Lucifer — a six-year-old boy who’s adorable and also happens to be the Antichrist. He’s prone to making such statements as:

“Mr. Baker… Can I get you something to drink? Juice, perhaps? Tea?” He leaned forward and dropped his voice. “The blood of a baby born in a cemetery under a full moon?”

… and

“There,” he said brightly. “You’re welcome! And I’m not even thinking about banishing your soul to eternal damnation or anything!”

Really and truly, this book was a special read, and was a perfect distraction for me from the chaos and confusion of our current world. But I’m sure that even in relatively normal times, I’d love this book! Don’t miss it.

29Jul2018

Book Review: Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Two families, generations apart, are forever changed by a heartbreaking injustice in this poignant novel, inspired by a true story, for readers of Orphan Train and The Nightingale.

Memphis, 1939. Twelve-year-old Rill Foss and her four younger siblings live a magical life aboard their family’s Mississippi River shantyboat. But when their father must rush their mother to the hospital one stormy night, Rill is left in charge—until strangers arrive in force. Wrenched from all that is familiar and thrown into a Tennessee Children’s Home Society orphanage, the Foss children are assured that they will soon be returned to their parents—but they quickly realize that the truth is much darker. At the mercy of the facility’s cruel director, Rill fights to keep her sisters and brother together—in a world of danger and uncertainty.

Aiken, South Carolina, present day. Born into wealth and privilege, Avery Stafford seems to have it all: a successful career as a federal prosecutor, a handsome fiancé, and a lavish wedding on the horizon. But when Avery returns home to help her father weather a health crisis, a chance encounter leaves her with uncomfortable questions—and compels her to take a journey through her family’s long-hidden history, on a path that will ultimately lead either to devastation or redemption.

Based on one of America’s most notorious real-life scandals—in which Georgia Tann, director of a Memphis-based adoption organization, kidnapped and sold poor children to wealthy families all over the country—Wingate’s riveting, wrenching, and ultimately uplifting tale reminds us how, even though the paths we take can lead to many places, the heart never forgets where we belong.

The story of Before We Were Yours is all the more shocking and heart-breaking when you realize that while the main characters are fictional, the tragedy depicted is all too real.

In this powerful work of historical fiction, we follow the story of 12-year-old Rill, a girl growing up poor but happy on a riverboat with her parents and four younger siblings. But when the children become separated from their parents due to complications of labor and an emergency trip to the hospital, their lives become dark and dangerous. Stolen away by the notorious Georgia Tann, the children are taken to a children’s home, where they’re starved, neglected, and abused before ultimately being adopted out, one by one, to wealthy families who are willing to pay.

In alternating chapters, we follow a modern-day story, as Avery Stafford comes home to South Carolina to support her ill father, a politician from a powerful family. Avery stumbles upon a woman in a nursing home, May Crandall, who seems to have some sort of connection to Avery’s family. What starts as a curiosity for Avery turns into a quest to unravel the mystery of May’s strange tie to Avery’s grandmother, now suffering early stages of dementia. As Avery digs deeper, she begins to see that her family’s hidden past may have intersected with the schemes of Georgia Tann, and Avery must decide if it’s wiser to uncover the truth or let the past stay in the past.

While Avery’s search for answers is interesting, it’s the story of Rill and her sisters and brother that’s truly stunning. The children grow up free and open to adventure, never minding that they’re looked down upon as “river rats”. On board their boat and with their parents, they live in a kingdom of their own. Reading about how this family is torn apart is shocking — it’s amazing how much cruelty was inflicted upon these young children, especially as the story drives home the fact that this happened to thousands of chlidren over a period of more than 20 years.

The mystery of how Avery’s grandmother is connect to May is not revealed until close to the end of the book, and while there are hints along the way, the answer isn’t entirely obvious. Meanwhile, while we see how Rill grew up and changed from the river girl to a woman with a family of her own and a new life, the journey she makes isn’t easy and is no fairy tale. Not all the loose ends are tied up, which is fitting, given that in the historical records of the Georgia Tann scandal, many families never did find their missing children, and many hundreds are believed to have died under the “care” of this awful, twisted adoption industry.

Before We Were Yours is a compelling read, although I was less engaged during the contemporary chapters, particularly when the focus shifted from Avery’s search into family history to dwell more upon Avery’s romantic life and her career choices. Other than that, I found it a quick, fascinating, and terribly sad read.

This was a book group pick, and I’m so glad it was! As with all of my book group’s books, I can’t wait to hear from my bookish friends and to exchange reactions, ideas, and questions.

If you’ve read Before We Were Yours, I’d love to hear your thoughts too!

_________________________________________

The details:

Title: Before We Were Yours
Author: Lisa Wingate
Publisher: Ballantine
Publication date: June 6, 2017
Length: 342 pages
Genre: Historical fiction
Source: Library

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