Book #59: Fathomless, by Jackson Pearce
Sep. 18th, 2012 07:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
grav_ityHere’s the thing about trilogies: you have to really want them. So many trilogies fall prey to “second book syndrome”, and then sometimes also “third book syndrome”, and Pearce managed not only to make each book in her Unhappily Ever After series compelling, but she went the additional mile of linking them all together in ways so beautiful and terrible they kind of MADE MY HEAD EXPLODE.
I was five when THE LITTLE MERMAID came out. As far as I was concerned, Walt Disney had personally made this movie for me. We only had a black and white TV in those days, so I didn’t even know Ariel was a red-head until I saw the video at a friend’s house. But the soul of the movie was music, and a girl who loved things, and I loved her. I drove everyone crazy singing. When my sister told me how the story really ended, I was confused. I didn’t understand. So I held on to that Disney ending until I was old enough to appreciate that happy endings don’t always look the same.
And then I discovered Jackson Pearce, and her fairy-tales. I loved SISTERS RED so hard, and SWEETLY was a beautiful thing I should probably read again someday when I’m not freaking out about being unemployed, but FATHOMLESS…FATHOMLESS blew me away.
KIDDING!
It’s an alarmingly perfect book. When Naida walks on the beach, her feet bleed and it feels like knives, like the sea-witch promised it would. Celia, the girl on land, can’t sing. Jude, the boy who nearly drowned, remembers a song and loves a girl who can’t make music.
And underneath the surface, there’s a storm. Because the Fenris are here, and they are incorporated in a way that is so perfect I nearly died of awesome. And because Celia has two sisters, each with gifts, and in this age of fairy-tales, we do not shy away from the prices that come with power.
Jackson manages to pull off that thing where she gives me, the reader, absolutely everything I need, and then lets me put the pieces together myself. There’s no heavy-handed or even particularly clever hints. It’s just there, like bread crumbs on the forest floor, and if you’re looking for them, they show you the way. The best part, though, is that it’s so UNDERSTATED that it took me a while to realize that I should be looking at ALL. I love the subtlety of it, the trust that I’ll get what I need to get from it, and put the story together.
I can’t even really talk about how brilliant the story was, how well it put everything together. I haven’t really recovered. But it was beautiful and sad and a bit scary. And there was even a call-back to Ariel, whatever her name might have been. It was stunning.
You have to really want a trilogy. You have to want the first book, really want the second book, and believe that writing the third book is your destiny. That is the feeling I got from FATHOMLESS. If SISTERS RED was the weft and SWEETLY was the pattern, FATHOMLESS was everything you do to finish off the tapestry, all the finishing stitches and the final decorations. It’s absolutely art.
10/10 for surpassing all my expectations, for being one of the most brilliant conceived stories I’ve ever read, and for, one again, taking a story I know and love, and making it into something I love even more.
I was five when THE LITTLE MERMAID came out. As far as I was concerned, Walt Disney had personally made this movie for me. We only had a black and white TV in those days, so I didn’t even know Ariel was a red-head until I saw the video at a friend’s house. But the soul of the movie was music, and a girl who loved things, and I loved her. I drove everyone crazy singing. When my sister told me how the story really ended, I was confused. I didn’t understand. So I held on to that Disney ending until I was old enough to appreciate that happy endings don’t always look the same.
And then I discovered Jackson Pearce, and her fairy-tales. I loved SISTERS RED so hard, and SWEETLY was a beautiful thing I should probably read again someday when I’m not freaking out about being unemployed, but FATHOMLESS…FATHOMLESS blew me away.
KIDDING!
It’s an alarmingly perfect book. When Naida walks on the beach, her feet bleed and it feels like knives, like the sea-witch promised it would. Celia, the girl on land, can’t sing. Jude, the boy who nearly drowned, remembers a song and loves a girl who can’t make music.
And underneath the surface, there’s a storm. Because the Fenris are here, and they are incorporated in a way that is so perfect I nearly died of awesome. And because Celia has two sisters, each with gifts, and in this age of fairy-tales, we do not shy away from the prices that come with power.
Jackson manages to pull off that thing where she gives me, the reader, absolutely everything I need, and then lets me put the pieces together myself. There’s no heavy-handed or even particularly clever hints. It’s just there, like bread crumbs on the forest floor, and if you’re looking for them, they show you the way. The best part, though, is that it’s so UNDERSTATED that it took me a while to realize that I should be looking at ALL. I love the subtlety of it, the trust that I’ll get what I need to get from it, and put the story together.
I can’t even really talk about how brilliant the story was, how well it put everything together. I haven’t really recovered. But it was beautiful and sad and a bit scary. And there was even a call-back to Ariel, whatever her name might have been. It was stunning.
You have to really want a trilogy. You have to want the first book, really want the second book, and believe that writing the third book is your destiny. That is the feeling I got from FATHOMLESS. If SISTERS RED was the weft and SWEETLY was the pattern, FATHOMLESS was everything you do to finish off the tapestry, all the finishing stitches and the final decorations. It’s absolutely art.
10/10 for surpassing all my expectations, for being one of the most brilliant conceived stories I’ve ever read, and for, one again, taking a story I know and love, and making it into something I love even more.
