Wednesday, April 6, 2022

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea by Axie Oh

 




The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea is the latest young adult fantasy novel by author Axie Oh, writer of the Rebel Seoul duology.  The story is a take on the Korean folktale of Shim Cheong, retelling the story of a girl who is thrown overboard to please the Sea God, who leaves behind a blind aging father.  Here instead, we follow Mina, a girl who at the last minute throws herself overboard to take the place of Shim Cheong - her brother's love - only to discover a spirit world full of spirits, magical beasts, and deities that has gone very wrong, affecting both that world and the mortal world.   I'd read a variant of the original tale as part of Angela Mi Young Hur's Folklorn and this very different take on it works rather well.  

It's a short novel and some plot turns - a romance between Mina and Shin, the antagonistic grim man she meets in the spirit world at first, the identities of certain mysterious characters, etc. - are rather predictable and paint by numbers.  But the world and its inhabitants shown in this story are so well done, and Mina's story as a girl determined to save her family in the mortal world from a spirit world that is far more cruel and unjust than she could have imagined is so enjoyable that the predictableness hardly matters. 

---------------------------------------------------Plot Summary-------------------------------------------------------
Mina's homeland has been ravaged by storms for generations, due to what they believe is a curse cast by their former protector, the legendary Sea God.  To assuage the god, every so often the most beautiful girl in the land is chosen and thrown into the sea to serve as the Sea God's bride, in hopes that one day the girl chosen would be the one to satisfy and tame the God.  And this year, Shim Cheong, the girl beloved by Mina's brother Joon, has been chosen.  And Joon has no intention of letting Cheong be thrown out to sea.

To save them both, Mina throws herself instead into the Sea, and as a result finds herself where she could never have imagined: the Spirit Realm, with the Red String of Fate tieing her to a sleepy young being who must surely be the Sea God.  But Mina has little time to think what this means before her thread and soul is cut out by a strange man Shin and his entourage, forcing her to chase after him to try and figure out what's going on.  

In the process, Mina discovers that the Spirit Realm - full of lesser gods, magical beasts, and human spirits - is far more in disarray than she could have imagined, with cruelty prominent instead of kindness.  But even with that being so, Mina is determined to figure out the mystery of the Sea God to save her family in the mortal realm....even if that means she has to save the Spirit Realm as well, a Spirit Realm full of beings who all seemingly want to kill her......
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The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea is the story of Mina, a determined girl desperate to save those she cares about, even at the ultimate cost to herself.  This is hardly an unusual character archetype - determined heroines to save those they love is pretty typical - but what makes Mina special is how broadly she expands that category of people she loves and cares for, and how outraged she can be when the world doesn't turn out to be as Just as it should be.  And so Mina jumps into the waters to save not just her brother, but Shim Cheong,, the girl she barely knows, and then when she finds the Spirit Realm to be broken, with gods who don't care for the people they should, with protectors who are cold and irritable, etc. - she acts to save them all and make not just the human realm, but the spirit realm a better place in the process.  

And this story features a world - both human and spirit - that badly needs fixing from someone like Mina.  The Sea God is seemingly asleep uncaring as his curse wreaks havoc among mortals, and he's guarded by a seemingly cold guardian in Shin and his friends.  Shin meanwhile protects the Sea King by severing the ties between the brides and the Sea God, so as to prevent other minor gods in the Realm from being able to kill the Sea God to take his place - not that it stops those other spirit realm denizens from scheming their way to power.  And then there are other minor gods, who are meant to be people that the mortals can pray to for care, but instead are cold, greedy, or arrogant and unanswering.  And this is to say nothing of the other magical beasts that exist here, such as Imugi and Kirin, and of course just the plain old human spirits who are trying to live in this world on their own.  

It's a fascinating world filled with parts of Korean mythology, and the story uses this world to put Mina's somewhat predictable story in a context that is more unusual than the typical Western reader will expect.  So yeah, Mina will indeed fall in love with the one you expect her to, and several characters who aid Mina will indeed turn out to be the people you might have guessed, but these reveals happen in different contexts than you may expect, and are always executed very well.  And hell, Mina's path and actions isn't quite always predictable, with her using her own storytelling and quick thinking to change things in ways you may not expect, leading to an ending which seems like it might be bitter....until one act of Mina's earlier comes back to turn it into a happy one.  

Unfortunately, due to when I read this, I'm not writing this review right after reading this book, so I'm probably not going into as much detail as I'd like - because this book deserves a few more paragraphs as it deals with some interesting themes, interesting characters, and a world that is well worth your time if you're looking for YA or just otherwise enjoyable non-Western fantasy.  

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