Welcome to Tiankawi – shining pearl of human civilization and a safe haven for those fleeing civil unrest. Or at least, that’s how it first appears.
But in the semi-flooded city, humans are, quite literally, on peering down from skyscrapers and aerial walkways on the fathomfolk — sirens, seawitches, kelpies and kappas—who live in the polluted waters below.
For half-siren Mira, promotion to captain of the border guard means an opportunity to reform. At last, she has the ear of the city council and a chance to lift the repressive laws that restrict fathomfolk at every turn. But if earning the trust and respect of her human colleagues wasn’t hard enough, everything Mira has worked towards is put in jeopardy when a water dragon is exiled to the city.
New arrival Nami is an aristocratic water dragon with an opinion on everything. Frustrated by the lack of progress from Mira’s softly-softly approach in gaining equality, Nami throws her lot in with an anti-human extremist group, leaving Mira to find the headstrong youth before she makes everything worse.
And pulling strings behind everything is Cordelia, a second-generation sea-witch determined to do what she must to survive and see her family flourish, even if it means climbing over the bodies of her competitors. Her political game-playing and underground connections could disrupt everything Nami and Mira are fighting for.
When the extremists sabotage the annual boat race, violence erupts, as does the clampdown on fathomfolk rights. Even Nami realises her new friends are not what they seem. Both she and Mira must decide if the cost of change is worth it, or if Tiankawi should be left to drown.
*****
I received a copy of this book from NetGalley. All thoughts are my own.
Review:
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.
r/Fantasy 2023-24 Bingo Squares:
- POC Author (hardmode)
- Mythical Beasts
- Elemental Magic (hard mode)
- Queernorm Setting (hard mode)
- Coastal/Island setting
Publication Date: 27 February 2024
Publisher: Orbit
Format: eBook, ARC
Pages: 448
Word Count: ~121,000
ISBN: 9780316564922
Buy It Here: Amazon | Google Books | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads