I think this series is dumb.

Not because it’s geared towards teens, but because I think it severely underestimates a teen’s ability to put two and two together. To write effectively to a teen demographic, you have to be at least a little bit smarter and more emotionally mature than your audience. Beth Revis is not.

(Yes, I’m putting on my bitch hat for this review. It rarely comes off.)

So in the last book, we learn that the Godspeed’s propellant engine (separate from the life support engine) has been losing efficiency, so the spaceship is many hundreds of years behind their scheduled arrival at the planet they’re meant to colonize. This is stupid and makes no sense. In space travel, you really only need thruster capacity twice: to get up to speed, and to slow back down. Inertia takes care of the rest. The ship does not require constant acceleration to fight friction/air resistance, the way a car would on Earth. Wtf is this reveal? I was annoyed.

We kick off book 2 with Elder gathering his engineers and presenting exactly this issue. Why would the engine losing efficiency mean that the trip is behind schedule? Wouldn’t the main issue be that they can’t slow down and might fly right past the planet?

I had a moment for a breath of relief, thinking this meant that between book 1 and 2, the author had actually put even a tiny bit of research into her scifi series that fucking hinges on astrophysics for the plot to work. (And this is basic physics—literally Newton’s laws of motion.)

But then the engineers tell Elder that no, actually the problem is that the engine is entirely dead, and the ship has stopped moving????? And they’re just… no longer making any progress toward the planet????????? Which is exactly the nonsensical issue Elder was just refuting??? Unless you put the whole engine into reverse to stop the ship's motion, why the fuck would they not be moving anymore?

And Elder accepts the engineer’s words as making perfect sense and moves on.

Stupid shit, seriously.

If you’re going to write about space travel, at least try to adhere to basic physics. Or make up some sci-fi tech that does whatever you want it to. Do not try to fucking convince me that Newton’s laws of motion don’t exist.

In my review of book 1, I already touched on how dumb the worldbuilding is, and how it reads like a white Christian persecution fantasy. That gets worse in book 2. Poor Amy has to cover her pale skin and red hair wherever she goes because the terrible brown-skinned natives will hate her for being white! Not to mention how she has to hide her cross necklace and defend her right to pray because, you know, everybody hates Christians or whatever. What a clever point, Beth. For sure, the white Christians are the victims. I hate you, btw.

This is exacerbated by the fact that Amy is clearly an author insert, and she sucks. Not in a fun way. She’s stupid, and loud about it, and the tone of the book is constantly on her side. Even from a characterological standpoint, she’s inconsistent and unconvincing.

I do still enjoy Elder, and I felt for him in this book. He’s a sixteen-year-old trying to hold together a spaceship full of people who all have no interest in the wellbeing or safety of the ship, the leader, themselves, or each other. And on top of that he has to put up with Amy’s bullshit.

One thing I will say is that the book handles trauma decently. Suicide and sexual assault are both prevalent themes, and presented with appropriate gravity. The trauma shapes the survivors and influences their behavior.

Such a beautiful series. Eerie, melancholy, fantastical, haunting… I love the atmosphere of these books.

The Mer characters, especially Faro, are written so well. Faro is distinctly inhuman, reminiscent of a trickster spirit who’s always laughing, even when he’s leaving you to die. He doesn’t understand Sapphy’s human side nor her moral compunctions, and he has no interest in changing for her. But at the same time, he’s loyal, strong, and so strange that he’s compelling no matter what.

I had a massive crush on Faro when I read these as a kid, ha.

Sapphy is also well characterized. She’s a child who thinks like a child, with all the stubborn bravery and stupidity and sweetness that entails. As her connection to Ingo, the sea, strengthens, she begins to lose her grip on her land-bound life. Everyone around her can see that she’s slipping into very dangerous territory. A part of her can see it too, but she can’t resist.

Over the course of these books, she’s been inching ever closer to sharing her father’s fate—walking into the sea one day and never coming back.

And that’s really the cherry on top of this series: it’s scary AF. It’s disturbing. Ingo is not some kind of fantasy fairy land. It’s the ocean, and it wants to consume you. It may just convince you to give yourself over entirely.

Super cool series, I recommend for kids and adults.

DNF 15%. Contains some of the most egregious instances of info-dumping I have ever encountered. Chapter 3 consists entirely of a main character reading government files on like 15 different criminals to a table of said criminals. At length. None of it abbreviated or even relevant to the plot. Jfc

Plus ridiculous levels of telling not showing.