Fathomfolk by Eliza Chan

This was another book that I had on my radar, and was set to preorder but I was holding out in the hopes of a Waterstones special edition. Illumicrate then announced that they were doing a Fantasea box, and the artwork on the announcement looked very familiar to the standard cover.

I’m glad my hunch was correct and that I held off because the Illumicrate edition is stunning!

Welcome to Tiankawi – shining pearl of human civilisation 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 top; peering down from shining towers 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 help her downtrodden people. 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 Nami, a know-it-all water dragon – fathomfolk royalty – is exiled to the city.

When extremists sabotage the annual boat race, violence erupts, as does a clampdown on fathomfolk rights. Both Nami and Mira must decide if the cost of change is worth paying, or if Tiankawi should be left to drown.

The book was a good one, I read the whole thing in one day, however, Mira really did annoy me. I know she has a lot going on, and looking after Nami – who is her partner’s (Kai) younger sister, is a lot, but how Mira handles it is so stupid.

She’s got this naive water dragon, that doesn’t know the first thing about being in a world of humans, and Mira just leaves her to her own devices.

Mira and her mother warn Nami about the extremist group known as The Drawbacks, but never go in to detail with Nami as to why they’re so bad.

Mira also takes a lot of her anger out on Kai and flings hurtful insults at him just to make herself feel better. She then apologises and feels bad, but she is so toxic with him. For pretty much the whole book, Kai gives her everything. But Mira gets hung up on the fact that he is royalty, and has become the ambassador to the fathomfolk, and can afford his way in life, whereas she’s had to claw her way up, and is still barely respected. I don’t know why, but it just irked me so much.

Spoilers Ahead

The reason why Mira not explaining The Drawback to Nami annoyed me so much, is that Nami falls into that group. She’s swayed by the Firth, the handsome Keplie and is convinced by him and Lynnette to join. She attends rally’s and slowly starts becoming more and more trusted. Eventually she is taken with them to the Onseon Engine, where Nami realises that the entire city is powered by fathomfolk via the bracelets they are forced to wear. The Drawback decide they’re blowing it up, but Nami wants to save the people inside. Because Mira has been tipped off about this plan, she heads straight to the Engine, where Lynnette then forces Nami to sever the wires connecting the fathomfolk. She manages to save a few, but the rest are killed. All if this probably could have been avoided if Mira and Kai paid more attention to Nami, and spoke to her in detail about The Drawback, rather than just Mira and her mother saying, stay away from them.

I enjoyed Serena and Cordelia chapters more than I did Mira and Nami chapters. Eventually you find out that Serena and Cordelia are one and the same. I hope that at some point in the future, the author will go back and do a Cordelia focused prequel. She’s a seawitch, in very Ursula fashion, her powers come from the deals she makes.

She spends a lot of the book trying convince Mira to bargain another 10 years of her siren song and almost succeeds, until Kai turns up and offers a like for like swap, tricking Cordelia into thinking she was getting his dragon pearl, but actually just got his voice. Despite Cordelia’s attempts as both herself and Serena, to pull Mira and Kai down from public favour, the opposite happens.

Unfortunately whilst all of this is going on, Nami and The Drawbacks have gone to kill one of the sleeping whale gods. Admittedly, Nami was there having been kidnapped after her friend Dan betrayed her. She still saves him and tries to appeal to Firth, who at this point I am suspecting is the true leader. She fails, and something answers the whale shark god’s dying call, sending a massive Tsunami towards Tiankawi.

Nami flees back to the city, where her, Kai and Mira all try to help fathomfolk and humans alike flee to high ground to save them. Nami and Kai get pulled into a fight with Lynette who claims she was like Nami once and was then promptly killed by Firth who had appeared to join the fray, claiming he loved Nami before falling to his supposed death.

Lynette’s statement just really reaffirmed with me my suspicions that Firth is actually in charge, and I don’t think we’ve seen the last of him. Nami and Kai both try to sacrifice themselves to save the city, with Kai winning. He becomes a dragon pearl and gives himself to Nami to use to save the city. She panics and doesn’t know what to do, so it turns out inadvertently gave everyone gills. It basically ends the entire human vs fathomfolk war.

We end with Cordelia eyeing up Mira (who at this point had agreed to be in Cordelia’s debt if she helped save the humans of Tiankawi), and a mysterious figure in a seaweed forest.

There is definitely more to come here!

Overall, a good read! It was gripping even if I found Mira annoying, and I am so thankful that we had multiple chapters because I think I wouldn’t have liked it as much if it was all just Mira.

I am noticing we’re getting a lot of siren/half-siren trope books at the moment. I’m hoping we’re going to be moving on from this phase soon! But I recommend this to lovers of fantasy and the siren trope!