Told from the first person, the prose is stylized enough to draw you into the world without annoying or alienating the reader. The epigraph reads, "To Courtney, for teaching me that my anger is a gift." And there is anger in this novella. Ostracization, vengeance, and fate are key themes woven into the text. All their hopes lie on her, and so she begins the story confined to quarters. Enter our protagonist, Iraxi, an outcast who has been wronged by many if not all who are aboard, and who is very far along in her pregnancy, further than anyone else. On top of all that, there have been no successful births since the kingdom sank. It has been years since they've seen land, their crops and livestock are dead and dying, and they are nightly plagued by giant, carnivorous birds. In this novella, the survivors of a sunken kingdom inhabit a large boat. It's not the kind of book one wants to put down once they've started reading it. It's short enough to be read in one sitting, which is exactly what I did. Rocklyn's novella Flowers for the Sea is a great debut.
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