Given to the Sea
3.5 starsWell. Hmmmm. I'm not sure how I feel about this one. It's grim and dark, featuring a protagonist doomed to die for the good of her people. There were four POVs, which I think was a bit excessive for the length of the book, and I thought that Dara and Witt's chapters weren't really needed. Though, honestly, that opinion might be because I didn't really care for either character.
Khosa is descended from a line of women who have all given their lives to the sea to keep the water where it belongs: in the sea and not swallowing up the land and lives of the good people of Stille. When the army from Pietra descends upon the small village where she is being raised, she runs away to the capital, where, confronted with the sea, she is overcome with the compulsion to merrily dance into the raging waves. Saved against her will by Vincent, the prince, because she hasn't produced a daughter to replace herself yet, she is hailed as a hero and taken to the castle. Once there, she spends her days avoiding choosing a mate, instead reading history texts in the massive library.
Yes, this is about a sacrificial lamb who accepts her impending doom - sort of. While she whiles away time in the library, Vincent and his adopted siblings Dara and Donil, the last members of a wiped out race, worry about the arrival of the army from Pietra. Stille is a peaceful nation, with plenty of farmland for crops to feed the ever growing, and aging, population. Witt, the leader of Pietra, is a young man raised to be completely emotionless. His duty is to expand the ever shrinking lands of Pietra, where the people won't farm because it's a task beneath them. They rely on fishing to feed their people, but the catch has been steadily decreasing. His people, once they are deemed unproductive, are set out to sea in a tiny boat to feed the sea monsters. Yeah, this is an uplifting read.
I guess I was enthralled by the weirdness of this world. You have one kingdom that cheerfully gives up each generation of a certain line of women to drown in the sea to save their own hides, and you have another kingdom that is warlike and feeds its elderly and infirm to the sea monsters. You have a king quietly endorsing the violent rape of a young woman who is going to die to save your not so worthy life, and a leader who would prefer another way of doing things, but can't because of tradition and the knowledge that he will be fed to the sea monsters if he attempts to change things too much. So it's off to war against those soft neighbors in Stille, who will be as easy as sheep to overcome.
I found parts of this novel intriguing, and others pointless, and what is up with Dara and Donil except to create conflict between Vincent and Khosa? Khosa can't bear to be touched, yet she yearns for Donil’s caresses. Minor spoiler - Dara's magic is death, and Donil's is life, and I didn't see the need for either one.
While I enjoyed Given to the Sea overall, I'm not sure if I'll jump onboard with the sequel. I'm not dying to learn what happens next, and wish instead that the novel had been the end of the story.
