The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea - Axie Oh

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AUTHOR: Axie Oh
GENRE: Fantasy, Korean, Retelling.
RATING: 2 stars.

In a Nutshell: Minority opinion alert! This wasn’t my cup of tea. Sorry. But it just didn’t click with me.


Story:
Mina’s village is ravaged by severe storms since decades. To appease the Sea God, a pretty young girl is thrown in to the sea to serve as his “bride” so that someday, he will choose the right bride and be appeased, thereby ending the calamities. This year, it’s the turn of Shim Cheong, the most beautiful girl in the village to be the Sea God’s bride. However, Cheong is in love with Joon, Mina’s beloved older brother. To keep the two lovers united, Mina makes a last minute sacrifice and throws herself into the sea.
Swept away to the Spirit realm by an underwater dragon, Mina is stunned to see that the Sea God is in an enchanted sleep. All she has for company is three strange young men – Shin, Namgi and Kirin – and a few spirits. But whom can she trust and who is out to get her? Will she able to serve her purpose and save her village?
The story is written in the first person perspective of Mina.


Where the book worked for me:
👌 The cover is outstanding. One of the main reasons I requested this book, other than the high praise it has been getting.

👌 The author is a Korean-American, so it is an #OwnVoices story in a way. She does justice to the traditional aspects of the myth.

👌 There is a fair bit of debate on Gods versus humans and the duties and responsibilities of each. I enjoyed this aspect of the plot.

👌 There are some really interesting secondary characters in the book.


Where the book could have worked better for me:
👎Lots of things seemed rushed, and paradoxically, lots of other things seemed dragged out. The pacing is so uneven that I didn’t get into a clear reading rhythm almost till the final quarter.

👎There is a lot of back and forth in the timeline at the start. After a while, I was irritated with the constant mulling over past events while in between a scene in the present. Thankfully, this is mainly in the initial 10% or so.

👎There’s hardly any character development. You get to see what the characters do but you don’t get to KNOW most of the characters. It felt very tough to connect with any of them because there’s just a surface-level exploration of their thoughts and actions.

👎I found the world building quite average. While some parts of the spirit world were outstanding – especially the river of souls, most of it left me feeling like I was gazing at a regular human world with spirits & other creatures instead of people.

👎The story becomes more and more convoluted as it progresses. Hardly anything makes sense and the plot development goes more in the “fit in the jigsaw pieces as and when you see them” approach. Too many coincidences, too many conveniences, hardly any complications or conflicts, some unexplained plot points.

👎There is the mandatory romantic arc but it is quite underdeveloped and rushed.

👎This is supposed to be a feminist retelling of a Korean myth. But the original myth also has a woman taking matters in her own hands, and this book too has the same, though admittedly, at a greater scale. Simply having a one strong lead woman doesn’t make a story feminist when most of her actions are still within the dictates of patriarchy. Mina is a good character but the plot isn’t a one-man show…oops, sorry…one-woman show; there are many strong male characters who have a major role to play in the proceedings. And most of the other female characters are stereotypical. Nope, this is not feminist enough to be called “feminist”.


Basically, the overall writing seemed very amateurish to me. I would have let this go if it were a debut author, but that’s not the case here. The only excuse could be that this is written for the YA age group. Could it be that I missed out on something because I am not in the target age range for this book (though I did enjoy another YA fantasy just a few weeks back… Huh!) or was it simply a case of bad book timing? Not sure. All I know is, I found this overhyped. But as I said, this is a minority opinion. Quite a few readers have enjoyed this story. So do read other reviews before you make up your mind.


My thanks to Hodder & Stoughton and NetGalley for the DRC of “The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.

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