I have no idea wtf I just read. I'm normally a big fan of Scott Snyder, but giving The Wake two stars feels particularly generous.

The Wake is basically two separate but connected stories. In the first half, a cetologist named Dr. Lee Archer is asked by a shady government agent to help investigate a strange whale call and comes face to face with a disturbing monster from the deep. In the second half, the story follows Leeward, a descendant of Dr. Archer who lives in a dystopian water world and gets enough money to get by by killing the sea monsters that have caused the oceans to rise up and swallow large portions of the world. Leeward is determined to find the mythical net that is said to be able to save humanity, even as the local government tries to stop her. The story goes from a monster horror story that seems more typical of Snyder to a bizarre and confusing story of the history of humanity and these mermaid monsters. By the time I finished the book, I had more questions than answers and felt like Snyder was trying to create this ambiguous mystery that made the reader think and did so poorly enough that all we got was a jumbled mess. This basically captures my view on the whole thing:



Full series review here