The Abyss Surrounds Us

This book was honestly such a surprise! I picked it up because I saw a good review, and thought it sounded vaguely interesting. Like, ALL I knew coming in was sapphic pirates, and something about sea monster trainers.

Which sounds amazing, of course! It was enough to make me pick this book up after seeing only one review, which I rarely do. But still, I went in with exactly zero expectations.

And then the beginning was a bit slow...

But this book blew me out of the water! (I'm sorry, bad ocean puns... I can't help it...)

I LOVED this book! It was SO good! And I haven't stopped flailing about it and yelling at everyone to read it ever since!

Okay so the CHARACTERS!!!

Cas was an awesome protagonist! I really liked her, and something about her show more voice was just... really refreshing to read. She was just... I don't even know. She wasn't perfect. She wanted to stay alive, and she sometimes went against everything she'd been taught in order to do so. But she wasn't selfish or anything either. She was just... I don't really know how to explain it (by which I mean I read this too long ago and only half remember...). But I loved her. A lot.

Swift was also amazing! Swift was honestly my absolute favourite! She was so hard and prickly and rude, but she had a heart of gold inside, and I just adored her! Also her snark and sass was great!

The other side characters were great too! I just... don't remember any names, so I can't really offer much more in the way of details. But they were great.

And the ROMANCE!
It was adorable. And look, just don't question my definition of 'adorable', okay? They were adorable as they spat insults at each other and threatened to murder each other, and they were even more adorable when they had their soft, sweet, touching moments. And AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

The world-building was good too. It wasn't as developed as it could have been, but the book was really short, so it was pretty good for it's length, and I'm hoping we'll learn more in book two as well. And the development truly was good, just not spectacular.

Plus the plot was fast paced and I couldn't put it down.

All in all, this was an amazing book, and I would like the sequel RIGHT THIS SECOND PLEASE?!?!

***Initial Reaction, June 1, 2018***

SO. GOOD. Can I have the sequel RIGHT NOW please?!?! RTC. show less

So not only have I been captured by pirates - I've had the misfortune of being taken in by theatrical ones

I loved this book. Actually, more than that, I have been WAITING for this book. YA sci-fi/fantasy books are chock full of brave teenage narrators but almost all of them are achingly, depressingly heterosexual.

Not here. Cassandra Leung, our protagonist, has dated girls in high school and has feelings for a young pirate girl named Swift. That's a major part of the book, not the main plot, but their relationship weaves itself through the narrative.

The Abyss Surrounds Us is a bit like Naomi Novik's [b:His Majesty's Dragon|28876|His Majesty's Dragon (Temeraire, #1)|Naomi show more Novik|https://d2arxad8u2l0g7.cloudfront.net/books/1376392909s/28876.jpg|726205] meets Waterworld, except it vastly improves upon both by having the main character be an Asian teenage lesbian rather than the dull, dime-a-dozen straight white man.

I found the conflict between the pirate captain, Santa Elena, and Cassandra to be far more interesting than the portions of the book dedicated to Bao, the titanic creature bred to attack ships. The lack of emotional connection between Bao and anyone else just made it hard to connect. Especially when compared to the machinations of the women.

Bao sees the hurricane behind Santa Elena, and he respects it. He sees no storm in me.
Not yet

The end definitely left me excited to read the second part; I want to find out what happens between Cassandra, Swift and Santa Elena. show less

The Abyss Surrounds Us is set sometime in the future. Genetically engineered sea monsters known as “Reckoners” were developed to protect larger ships from pirates, and Cassandra Leung is a Reckoner trainer anxiously embarking on her first solo mission with her favorite Reckoner, Durga. Unfortunately, things go very wrong, Durga is killed, and Cas ends up captured by Santa Elena, the captain of the Minnow, a pirate ship. She learns, to her horror, that the pirates have not only somehow gotten their hands on a Reckoner pup, they also expect her to train it to protect them. She reluctantly agrees, hoping that at some point she'll learn the identity of the traitor who supplied them with a Reckoner pup and related equipment, and that show more she'll live long enough to pass that information on.

When I heard that this was f/f YA sci-fi with pirates and giant sea monsters, I knew I wanted to read it. I'd have bought the e-book immediately, except it was expensive and had DRM. I considered buying a paper copy, but, after taking a closer look and realizing that the book was written in first person present tense, I opted for interlibrary loan instead.

Let's talk about that first person present tense POV. An author really has to know what they're doing and be telling the right kind of story for it to work. The only decent book I can think of right now that used first person present tense was Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games. Granted, I didn't love it, but my issues with it had very little to do with Collins' POV or tense choice.

First person present tense was a mistake for The Abyss Surrounds Us. It was why, in an effort to give readers some of the history of this world that a 17-year-old like Cas wouldn't normally know or care about, a random elderly man walked up to Cas to reminisce about the past while she stood there and waited him out. The man was a throwaway character who never showed up again, existing only to give readers that bit of world-building info. First person present tense also gave readers sentences like this:

"'Cas, you wanna explain who that was?' Swift asks, and I notice the harsh edge she's forced into her tone." (203)

Cas didn't actually know that this “harsh edge” was forced – she was guessing, based on recent events. But the author needed to signal to readers that Swift was no longer potentially as awful as she seemed, and there were very few ways she could do that with first person present tense.

First person present tense might have also contributed to Cas feeling like such a flat and bland character, and to Santa Elena just being confusing, period. I felt like I barely learned anything about Cas – what her life had been like when she wasn't training Reckoners, what her relationship with her family members was like, anything. Santa Elena made no sense. On the one hand, the Reckoner pup she'd acquired was a precious resource that could give her a lot of power and prestige. On the other hand, she treated Cas and the Reckoner like they were both expendable and like she'd enjoy hurting or killing one or both of them. Skrutskie tried to humanize her by having her briefly chat with Cas about motherhood (she took over the Minnow while her son was still a baby, and she viewed Cas's efforts to raise her Reckoner as being similar to a mother raising a child), but then kept giving readers scenes in which she behaved like a vicious despot. I'm amazed she made it through the entire book without inspiring a mutiny.

Anyway, I was willing to put up with the first person present tense POV because I absolutely loved the Reckoners aspect, and I still think they're the best thing about this book. Although Cas resented Bao, the turtle-based Reckoner she was forced to train, I loved their training scenes. Had the story gone the way I'd have preferred, Cas would have slowly become more and more emotionally attached to Bao. Her growing affection for him would have mixed uncomfortably with her grief for Durga, who was also a turtle-based Reckoner, and her recognition of the fact that training him to protect the Minnow and its crew meant that one day he'd be killing Reckoners who meant as much to their trainers as Durga had meant to her. Because Bao had imprinted upon the Minnow (Reckoners imprint upon particular ships as part of their training), Cas would also find herself facing a decision to either stay with the pirates or to escape and abandon Bao.

Sadly, the book I wanted was not the book I got. Cas spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to train Bao just well enough to keep Santa Elena from killing her, but not so well that he could truly be used as a weapon. She wanted to figure out Santa Elena's Reckoner source and then escape, but things became more complicated when she began to fall for Swift, the young pirate who'd been assigned to keep an eye on her.

The relationship between Cas and Swift was very subtle, at first. In fact, if I hadn't known this was f/f YA, I'd probably have figured that certain early scenes were laying the groundwork for the two of them to eventually become friends. Cas's attraction to Swift became more apparent later on, but she fought it because 1) she was still Santa Elena's captive and 2) Swift had made it clear several times that her primary loyalty was to Santa Elena.

Then, at the worst possible moment, Cas and Swift's relationship suddenly deepened. In the space of less than a day, Cas went from wanting to escape the Minnow at the first opportunity to wanting to stay for Swift's sake. The speed of it all threw me. It all became clear when Cas was given the opportunity to escape and chose not to. The reason for the sudden deepening of Cas's feelings for Swift was because Skrutskie needed to give her a believable reason to continue to stay with the pirates and do things she might not have otherwise agreed to do. Except it happened so quickly that it wasn't believable. It was like watching a movie and catching glimpses of the lighting equipment or the wires used during a fight scene. The authorial puppet strings moving Cas and Swift into place were so obvious that it was painful.

Things got worse from that point on. Without being too spoilery, in the final few pages Skrutskie jettisoned or stomped on those aspects of the story that might have left me wanting to read the book's sequel despite my issues with her writing. It's possible that she could find a way to fix what she did or undo some of it, but I don't know that I have the trust or patience necessary to find out.

All in all, I loved the Reckoners, but that was about it. The execution wasn't great, the romance was a tool to keep the plot going in the direction Skrutskie wanted, and the world-building had holes you could drive a truck through. I'm still wondering why the Reckoners, who were expensive to breed and train and who even necessitated the creation of a genetically engineered food source so they wouldn't completely clean out the ocean just trying to keep themselves fed, were considered the best way to combat the pirate problem. I'm also still wondering about the book's brief mention of terrestrial Reckoners. If Reckoners were meant to fight pirates, then why would terrestrial Reckoners be necessary?

Rating Note:

During much of the time I spent reading this book, I thought I'd be giving it anywhere from 2 to 2.5 stars, maybe 3 stars if the ending was really good. My difficulty with staying interested in the story plus my hatred of the book's ending lowered my final rating to 1.5 stars.

(Original review, with read-alikes, posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.) show less

So, this was as fantastic as I was hoping it would be. I'm so late to the party but I'm glad I finally read this gem of a book. It's like Pacific Rim if Pacific Rim was gay and there were pirates and the monsters were your friends and kind of adorable. So basically its everything I didn't know I wanted, but I'm so glad exists.

Pirates in the dystopian future, in which seas have encroached on land and states devolved to support smaller groups of people. Those who opted out end up as part of floating cities of stateless people, who have no resources except what pirates bring them home, often fighting huge genetically engineered beasts that accompany others' ships. Our heroine is captured and a study in Stockholm Syndrome beneath a manipulative captain who leads her ship into the future like nobody's business.

Quite fun and recommended! There's a wee bit of romance that builds nicely, and a lot of moral conflict and shades of grey emerging. I loved the worldbuilding. I found the characters extremely human, and appreciated some adult reflections on motherhood. I show more was not entirely convinced by Cas's actions at the very end, but I'm convinced enough -- I'd look for more in this series. Highly recommended as a light YA read! show less

Cas Leung trains genetically-engineered monsters in a future of fragmented states and risen oceans. Kidnapped by a pirate queen to train a stolen monster and turn the tables, Cas must decide what she values most: the code she was raised to follow, or the lives of those she loves.

There's so much to like: a determined and resourceful heroine with a terrible dilemma; a swashbuckling but morally questionable female love interest with a laundry problem; a ruthless pirate queen with an excellent wardrobe; and original monsters with proper grunt. This future is morally complicated, very diverse and properly cinematic (I'd love to see it on the big screen), and if the ending is a little unexpected, it's an interesting set-up for the future.

That show more said - I can't pretend I wouldn't like it better if it had been an adult read rather than YA (the first person present thing didn't entirely work for me here, and I think it would have benefited from more nuance) - but a bit like Daughter of Smoke and Bone, it did enough to win me over in the end. I will certainly acquire the sequel as and when it appears.

I received an ARC via NetGalley from the publisher, in exchange for an honest review.

More detailed thoughts (and only the mildest of spoilers) here. show less

This is definitely a mixed bag kind of story. The world building is intriguing but feels like it fell short. The sea critters/trainer aspect is neat and would have liked to see more to it there. I find the Pirate Queen to be rather meh on the evil scale even if she did feed someone to a monster in front of everyone. Someone who leads with fear isn't usually one who inspires loyalty, so for Cas to suddenly want to sign on to the same crew that murdered her critter? I cannot see where that would be likely especially with the lackluster romance with Swift. I'm curious to see where book two goes.... but not enough to actually read it, I think. Definitely a YA book.