Alert! Red Alert! We have a f/f science fiction book with strong romantic elements featuring an Asian-Northern American heroine who trains genetically-engineered sea monsters to attack ships and who is forced to work for pirates! This is not a drill! Catnip ahoy!
The Abyss Surrounds Us is a science fiction YA in which Earth’s political and geographical boundaries have been altered by flooding. Seventeen-year-old Cassandra Leung comes from a family who trains Reckoners, genetically engineered animals who protect ships at sea. On her first trip as a solo trainer, Cas’s Reckoner is killed and she is captured by pirates. She’s supposed to take a suicide pill, but she puts it off for too long and is forced to stay alive. The pirates have their own Reckoner pup (basically a giant and ferocious sea turtle) and they want Cas to train it for them.
This book dodges one overused YA trope but abuses another. First of all, the positive: there is no love triangle. I don’t object to love triangles on principle – I’ve read some wonderful stories that use love triangles to devastating effect. They are simply overused. Post Twilight, there was a period in which it seemed like every YA I picked up had a love triangle. The “love triangle” trope became like a song that is perfectly good but is played on the radio so many times that you can’t listen to it anymore without your fingernails going all scritchy. So anytime I pick up a YA, if there isn’t a love triangle, I rejoice.
Alas, this book does abuse a common trope in the most irritating way, and that is the use of first person, present tense narration. Again, there’s nothing inherently wrong with either first person or present tense narration. When used properly, present tense provides a sense of urgency, while first person shows us exactly what is going on in the heads of the characters. This works best when the protagonists are people who are hiding their thoughts, feelings, and plans from other people – think Katniss in Hunger Games, or the three narrators in the adult book The Girl on the Train. When first person narration, or present tense narration, or both, are used for a specific purpose, the results can be thrilling and insightful.
The reason first person present tense narration gets such a bad rap is that so very, very often it’s used for no apparent reason. It’s used in YA so frequently it suffers from the same “overplayed song on the radio” syndrome as love triangles. Cas has something of a hidden plan, but she’s not so wily that the only way to explain the story is to make her the narrator. She’s also one of the less interesting characters in the story. Cas is likeable enough, but for someone who trains giant sea monsters to be ruthless killers she’s surprisingly bland. Keeping the focus entirely on Cas’ point of view makes sense in theory, because it forces the viewer to share her sense of disorientation and outsider status. Unfortunately, Cas isn’t a sufficiently complex character to hold up an entire book, and the supporting characters seem much more interesting than she does. And since a lot of the book involves waiting for things to happen, the sense of urgency is, much of the time, flat.
I did like a lot of things about the book. For one thing, the book is quite diverse. Because Cas doesn’t know the other characters well, and because the boundaries of the world have changed, we don’t know the specifics about each character’s ethnicity, but the pirate captain is named Santa Elena and she is described as having “golden brown skin and a wide nose,” while Cas is described as being of Asian descent and from the continent of North America. Meanwhile, Cas’ captor and roommate, Swift, is blonde and blue-eyed, and other crewmembers come from Hawaii and the “Aleutian Colonies”. The world seems to be one in which class differences are a source of serious and often deadly conflict but gender, race, and sexual orientation are not.
Because the book is so focused on Cas’ point of view, the romance between Cas and Swift is a bit sketched in. Swift remains fairly enigmatic throughout. However, the romance works beautifully when the two teens giggle together, fight, and meet Swift’s family. They both experience a lot of angst and hand-wringing and sulking over their various problems. They both have crushing responsibilities and deal with confusing and depressing ethical quandaries. But they are also seventeen-year-old girls, and when they relate to each other as two teens instead of as a pirate and a Reckoner trainer, they get to forget about their responsibilities for a few minutes and be two goofballs. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it’s delightful.
My favorite thing about Cas and Swift is that they resolve, by mutual accord, to refrain from having a romantic relationship as long as Cas is a prisoner and Swift is in the role of captor/guard, because they both realize that the power imbalance in that kind of relationship is, in Cas’ words, “messed up.” They stick to this resolution, which is incredibly mature and shows much more insight into what true consent and equality looks like than a lot of romances demonstrate. It also means that there is considerable emotional and sexual tension, since it’s apparent fairly early on that they are attracted to each other and this resolve keeps them apart, even when they are on the same ship, in the same room, and in one case handcuffed together.
You would think that the most interesting relationship in the book would be between Cas and Bao, the Reckoner she trains. But even though Cas spends almost every waking moment with Bao, her feelings towards him never go beyond a sense of resentment and grudging responsibility. She never bonds emotionally with the Reckoner, because she’s forced to train him under duress. And certain plot lines never pay off. What are the consequences of Bao eating a person? Cas is panicked when this occurs but nothing seems to happen. A sequel is coming in 2017 so maybe we’ll hear more about Bao – I hope so.
It’s something of a sideways compliment that my problem with the book was that it felt so incredibly promising in terms of world and character that I wanted more of it. This book tells a complete story, but it doesn’t feel entirely satisfying. I wanted a longer introduction, with Cas’ family and how they work with Reckoners. I wanted more Reckoners, period. I wanted to spend more time in the heads of the pirate crew. The Abyss is so intriguing that I wanted it to go deeper, no pun intended. It’s the author’s first book and I’ll be curious to see if she goes into more detail in future books. In the meantime, I enjoyed the setting, the relationships between people on the pirate ship, and the Reckoners, even though I wanted more.
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> We have a f/f science fiction book with strong romantic elements featuring an Asian-Northern American heroine who trains genetically-engineered sea monsters to attack ships and who is forced to work for pirates! This is not a drill! Catnip ahoy!
I made a choking gasping noise at my desk.
I don’t typically read YA, but I may dabble for this one.
There is SO MUCH CATNIP that I may have to ignore the first-person because…f/f and sea monsters and pirates and science and…OMG…
I loved the idea of this book so much, but it needed to be at least twice as long to fully develop its ideas. The romance fell flat, the moral quandaries weren’t fully developed… I still enjoyed it but I kind of felt this needed to be an adult fantasy novel.