Early Review – A Dark and Drowning Tide by Allison Saft (3/5 stars)
Reading Level: Young Adult
Genre: Dark Fantasy
Length: 384 pages
Publisher: Del Ray
Release Date: September 17, 2024
ASIN: B0C775D8N1
Stand Alone or Series: Stand Alone
Source: eGalley from NetGalley for Review
Rating: 3/5 stars
“Lorelei Kaskel, a folklorist with a quick temper and an even quicker wit, is on an expedition with six eccentric nobles in search of a fabled spring. The magical spring promises untold power, which the king wants to harness in order to secure his reign over the embattled country of Brunnestaad. Lorelei is determined to use this opportunity to prove herself and make her wildest, most impossible dream come true: to become a naturalist, able to travel freely to lands she’s only read about.
The expedition gets off to a harrowing start when its leader—Lorelei’s beloved mentor—is murdered in her quarters aboard their ship. The suspects are the five remaining expedition mates, each with their own motive. The only person Lorelei knows must be innocent is her longtime academic rival, the insufferably gallant and maddeningly beautiful Sylvia von Wolff. Now in charge of the expedition, Lorelei must find the spring before the murderer strikes again—and a coup begins in earnest.
But there are other dangers lurking in the dark: forests that rearrange themselves at night, rivers with slumbering dragons hiding beneath the water, and shapeshifting beasts out for blood.
As Lorelei and Sylvia grudgingly work together to uncover the truth—and resist their growing feelings for each other—they discover that their leader had secrets of her own. Secrets that make Lorelei question whether justice is worth pursuing, and if this kingdom is worth saving at all.”
Series Info/Source: This is a stand alone book. I got an eGalley of this from NetGalley to review.
Thoughts: This was okay. The characters were hard for me to really engage with throughout, and I expected more adventure from the description. This has some adventure but is more of a who-dun-it mystery with a lot of politics going on in the background. I almost stopped reading this a of couple times because I just didn’t enjoy the story or the characters all that much. The second half of the book was better than the first.
The story follows Lorelei, a folklorist from a religious group that’s been prosecuted often. She is hoping to help lead an expedition with her mentor on a search for a magical spring that will provide unlimited power. When her mentor is murdered early on in the expedition, the only person she thinks she can trust is her academic rival, Sylvia. The other five expedition members are all, like Sylvia, in competition either for or in support of the king’s throne in one way or another, and all of them have reasons to want the expedition to succeed but the people around them to fail. As Sylvia and Lorelei are forced to work together, they realize that they may be closer to each other than they realized.
I really loved some of the adventuring parts here. There is a lot of awesome adventuring, fantastic creatures, and tough situations to survive. However, that is entwined with this odd “who-dun-it” mystery and a lot of political turmoil in the background. I didn’t really like any of the characters in this book. Lorelei was too aggressively angry all the time, Sylvia was too dense, and the other expedition members had equally off-putting personalities. The story just wasn’t well-balanced and wandered a bit too much for me.
The ending feels very abrupt (I feel like I have said that a lot about books lately). I just wish the story had focused more on the journey and the magic and less on a bunch of back stabbing characters with historical issues with each other trying to destabilize the kingdom. There is just too much going on here; some parts are very dense and some are very lyrical.
My Summary (3/5): Overall this was okay but not great. There was too much back-stabbing and political maneuvering for me, and I didn’t like any of the characters. If we could have focused on the adventure, the magic, and the journey more, I would have liked this. Itfeels like there is too much going on here; a magical journey, cut throat politics, a who-dun-it mystery, a romance, and a search for a mythological truth. I liked “A Far Wilder Magic” better. However, even in that book, Saft’s writing felt a bit unbalanced to me. I am on the fence about reading books by her in the future. I sucked into reading this one by the stunning cover and the intriguing synopsis.
