The Forever Sea

De: Joshua Phillip Johnson

Narrado por: Belinda Fenty, Leo Wringer

The first book in a new environmental epic fantasy series set in a world where ships kept afloat by magical hearthfires sail an endless grass sea.

On the never-ending, miles-high expanse of prairie grasses known as the Forever Sea, Kindred Greyreach, hearthfire keeper and sailor aboard harvesting vessel The Errant, is just beginning to fit in with the crew of her new ship when she receives devastating news. Her grandmother--The Marchess, legendary captain and hearthfire keeper--has stepped from her vessel and disappeared into the sea.

But the note she leaves Kindred suggests this was not an act of suicide. Something waits in the depths, and the Marchess has set out to find it.

To follow in her grandmother's footsteps, Kindred must embroil herself in conflicts bigger than she could imagine: a water war simmering below the surface of two cultures; the politics of a mythic pirate city floating beyond the edges of safe seas; battles against beasts of the deep, driven to the brink of madness; and the elusive promise of a world below the waves.

Kindred finds that she will sacrifice almost everything--ship, crew, and a life sailing in the sun--to discover the truth of the darkness that waits below the Forever Sea.

©2021 Joshua Phillip Johnson (P)2021 W. F. Howes Ltd

A very different ride

I honestly did not know what to expect when I started this book. I will admit that it took me a little bit to get into it because it was slow moving. However that isn't an issue. The book definitely keeps you on edge and wanting to know more about the world around it. The characters are very interesting and just the image of this grass world is quite intriguing. It's a fun and engaging and sci-fi! A bunch of different twists and turns and monsters. I definitely recommend this to anyone who loves sci-fi. I'm looking forward to the next book.

Fantastic imagery, fair story, nonsense characters

One problem with the audiobook, specifically, is that the narrator would often end statements with a rising intonation that mis-labeled them as questions. Often, but not consistently, so it was impossible to adapt to.
As to the book: beautiful descriptions of a unique setting. World building was fine if you don't look too hard, but the rate at which they burn the fuel for their ships (not discussed to avoid spoilers) is so massively out of synch with any plausible replacement rate that the setting couldn't exist under its own rules for more than a week. Economics is an odd thing to pull one out of the story, but this did it.
The characters are passible on the whole, but several of the major figures, especially the main character, make nonsense decisions that tend to make a fairly decent plot come across as contrived. We are told there is a reason, but it always ends up being some vagery that doesn't hold up with that character's own motivations, even inside their own interior monologue.
I did enjoy the setting, I might even continue or re-listen, but the cast borders on insufferable so it depends.

Many good to great things, some problems

I liked the book, and would in general recommend it to fantasy readers with the caveat that has problems.

The book contains a very cool world, a complex main character that I vascilated between liking and nearly hating, and wonderful word choice and descriptions from the author.

But *spoilers following* it is also framed in the "story told far in the future" that is just confusing and doesn't add anything but questions that never get answered. There are times when the writing is overly abstract and confusing or clunky in ways the author probably thought was clever repetition. The antagonists were extremely black and white - very clearly "bad guys' - so when in the times I hated Kindred it made it hard to care because I couldn't root for anyone.