Book Review: SEA CHANGE by S.M. Wheeler

sea-change

Lilly is the unhappy child of two powerful but dysfunctional parents who despise each other. The girl, however, finds solace at the ocean, where she meets and befriends an eloquent, intelligent sea monster, a kraken, whom she names Octavius. Octavius wants to hear stories all the time and, in exchange, he teaches the girl about friendship, loyalty, and family.

Upon learning Octavius’s true nature, which is monstrous at least in her eyes, Lilly forbids him to harm humans. As a result of this injunction the kraken is captured by seafaring traders and sold to a circus. Lilly becomes his only hope for salvation and, desperate to find him, she strikes a bargain with a witch that carries a shocking price. Her journey to win Octavius’s freedom is difficult. The circus master wants a Coat of Illusions; the Coat tailor wants her undead husband back from a witch; the witch wants her skin back from two bandits; and the bandits want some company, but may just kill Lilly first. Lilly’s quest tests her in every way, emotionally, physically and psychologically, but her journey ultimately transforms her in unexpected ways.

S.M. Wheeler’s debut novel, Sea Change, follows a loosely conventional structure as spelled out in The Hero’s Journey – the ordinary world, a crisis or invitation taking the hero (heroine, in this case) on an odyssey in search of a particular goal, encountering challenges, a mentor and various obstacles along the way. In this respect, all well and good – the structure is the staple of most mainstream Hollywood movies, after all. But if at first it wears its mythical structure slightly heavily, my reservations about the book in that respect were swiftly swept away by what comes later. The journey from A to B to C, with its conventional archetypes of trolls, witches, bandits, demons and so on, would have been be less interesting were it not for the fact that Wheeler really pushes the boundaries of convention. She also drops in some steampunky clockwork automatons.  Within these pages she handles issues such as gender roles and sexuality, abusive parents and the nature of personality itself. And, she does so with a deft touch that never lets its sexual politics interfere with the thrust of the tale.

The nominally domestic drama that occupies the first quarter of the book does not prepare one for the grim and sometimes graphic and faster-paced events which follow.

In a market filled with reactionary post-Tolkein fantasies, which go nowhere and take far too long about doing so, Wheeler’s compact narrative is deserving of high praise. Certainly it has its faults but, as Sinatra put it, “too few to mention.”  I would, though, ask the editors to take note about the way that anachronisms, not to mention some awkward sentences, have slipped through the net. Given that Sea Change appears to be set in an unnamed though clearly historical Western European setting  — there are references to the French language and to Arabs, for example, while witches and trolls are stock mythological characters from the West —  the linguistic errors keep popping up. Use of the word “gotten” is American, and more modern than the language the book is trying to evoke — “had got” would have been more accurate than “had gotten”; and I’m fairly sure people didn’t use terry towels back in the mists of time. Having said that, such annoyances also crop up in Dan Simmons wonderful novel, The Terror, and neither author can be blamed for missing them, though I would have thought a good editor would have picked them up.

I really savoured the admirably slow start to Sea Change, which gave breathing space for character development and illustrated the early growth of the friendship between Lilly and the Kraken, as well as her difficult relationship with her parents. Lilly’s plummet into darkness and danger is a real surprise, taking the tale by the throat and dragging the reader nervously in its wake. As the narrative draws to a close it becomes rather emotional. The price Lilly pays is profound and heartbreaking. But the bittersweet finale affirms the novel’s worth as more than an adventure –  though it is that, too – but as a serious work full of truth and beauty.

S.M. Wheeler is definitely a name to watch and it will be fascinating to see how she develops as a writer and what strange and wonderful places she will take us to in the future.

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John Dodds Review by John Dodds

John Dodds is the author of The Kendrick Chronicles crime novels (Bone Machines and Kali’s Kiss ) and, under a pseudonym, JT Macleod, has written a collection of historical/paranormal/erotic/romance stories called Warriors and Wenches, as well as the first novel in YA steampunk series called The Mechanikals.

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