Today’s team review is from Jenni.
Jenni has been reading Tales Of The Risen by David M. Reynolds.
Peter Pan meets The Odyssey and Water World in this truly delicious, genre bending adventure from David M. Reynolds. New to novel writing, though a veteran in other forms of storytelling if my research tells me right, Reynolds brings the eye of an experienced craftsman to his debut novel with rich characters and settings not always achievable by the first-time writer. Tales of the Risen Tide follows Jymn, a boy seemingly born to crawl around the belly of one of the colossal workships trawling Earth’s post-apocalyptic oceans, and Nix, a girl who speaks with her hands and holds in her head the secrets to a hidden island. Thrown together out of desperation, they find themselves outside the lives they’ve always known, sailing on the Archeron with a crew of young pirates searching for treasure, mischief, salvation, the edge of the known world….
Just about anything, really.
Leading the Acheron’s scapegrace young corsairs is the enigmatic Captain, a young man with too much past, many secrets, and a fanatically loyal crew of misfits from every corner of this rich and varied world. I can’t say that Jymn and Nix fit right in – everyone involved needs to do some growing and changing for that to happen – but when they do finally, officially join the crew, the moment is satisfying.
Religion wars with science, superstition proves to be fact, nature and nurture must battle it out, and monsters are indeed real on the edges of the map in the world that Reynolds has created. A place where people can be spliced with animals, where technology (teck) can be both miraculous and dangerous, and the secrets of the past can be both ancient, and lie just beyond plain sight.
Swashbuckling in the extreme, Tales of the Risen Tide blends Homer, Barrie, Costner, and a special, world building sauce all Reynolds own in a coming of age novel that is not to be missed by the young, or the young at heart.
Book description:
On a map redrawn by the rampant sea-level rise of the twenty-second century, survivors war over the ruins of high-ground whilst pirates and slavers plague the vast new seas that surround them.
But amidst the ashes of the world there remains a place for the young and the brave to call home: The Archon — a ship crewed by orphan thieves, escaped prisoners, and heretic runaways.
They are the Archonauts, and this is their tale.
