A Letter to the Luminous Deep - Sylvie Cathrall - ★★.½

AUTHOR: Sylvie Cathrall

SERIES: The Sunken Archive, #1

GENRE: Epistolary Fantasy-Romance.

PUBLICATION DATE: April 25, 2024

RATING: 2.5 stars.

In a Nutshell: An epistolary underwater fantasy with tremendous potential that doesn’t get fulfilled to the fullest. Good characters and world-building. Almost-zero plot and slow pacing. First of a duology; cliffhanger ending. Could have worked much better in a different format and with stricter editing.

Plot Preview:

When introverted E. Cidnosin discovers something new outside the window of her underwater residence, she writes to classification scholar Henerey Ciel for his opinion. Thus begins a virtual connection, with their initial letters being on topics of mutual interest, and slowly moving on to personal emotions and heartfelt confessions.

A year later, another Cidnosin-Ciel correspondence begins, this one between E’s sister Sophy and Henerey’s brother Vyerin. Their aim is to resolve the mystery of their siblings’ disappearance using the letters, notes, and sketches they left behind. As Sophy and Vyerin learn about the budding love story between their siblings, they also discover the presence of something far bigger than they had anticipated.

The story comes to us through various letters and other epistolary content, mostly written by the four characters.

The blurb offered a hint of several themes/tropes I enjoy: magical academia, underwater fantasy, and epistolary approach. The possibility of a missing-persons mystery also stoked my interest. Unfortunately, this debut work tanked under its own ambitions. It’s not a total dud, but it is absolutely not what it could have been.

Bookish Yays:

⛲ The concept and the potential: outstanding, all the more for a debut work.

⛲ The main characters. Sophy and Vyerin were a bit more appealing to me than Henerey and E. This could be because the former two have more in-depth discussions and thus we get to know them better. (I guess we’ll see more of the latter duo in the sequel.) But there’s no denying that Henerey and E also were charming. These four characters saved my rating to a great extent.

⛲ The LGBTQ+ representation is amazing, with both Sophy and Vyerin being in same-sex relationships, and this fact being a natural part of the storyline instead of being hammered at us. The way we got insights about their personal lives even when they were writing letters to each other on other topics was nicely done.

⛲ The focus on E’s anxiety disorder. An excellent depiction of how mental health issues affect real-world interactions.

⛲ The cover: Gorgeous enough to be framed. Someone give the artist a raise!

Bookish Mixed Bags:

🌊 The worldbuilding – fascinating with stunning descriptions of the underwater locations, the Deep House, and the other places. Unfortunately, the descriptions are somewhat restricted thanks to the epistolary approach.

🌊 Some parts of the story work nicely for the academia theme. The focus on nepotism and discrimination is especially praiseworthy. However, this again is limited due to the letters being our only source of information. The story would have worked excellently as a dark academia plot had it focussed more on this theme than on the romance.

🌊 I’m never a fan of romance in non-romance genres, but I admit that the mention of “penpal romance” in the blurb got me intrigued. (Fun Fact: In real life, the author is married to her former pen pal.) The relationship between Henerey and E blossoms realistically, with tentative emotions and hesitant declarations at the start. It gets too cheesy at times, but I suppose on the grand romantic scale, cheesy is still better than insta or steamy. (At least for me.)

Bookish Nays:

💧 The letters, which contain descriptions, revelations, banter, confessions, and digressions. The content isn’t the problem. But the tone is. Each letter, whether professional or personal, sounds exactly the same, with loads of parentheses and exclamation points and editorial revisions. It would have been okay if one character displayed this quirky approach towards letter-writing. But would every single character, including professional journalists, write in this informal enthusiastic-teen tone? Impossible. The distinctness of the individual character voices – so important in the epistolary format – is completely missing.

💧 For a book where the blurb indicates a kind of investigation into the disappearance of two key characters, most of the book is not about figuring out the puzzle but about getting to know said characters. As such, the mystery feels are mostly lacking.

💧 The pacing is terribly slow. For two characters who want to learn what happened to their siblings, Sophy and Vyerin seem to be taking things in too relaxed a manner, with only a few letters and notes being exchanged at a time instead of meeting up immediately and hashing out a plan of action. Their feelings were visible, but not any sense of urgency.

💧 The watered-down plot. This book reveals absolutely nothing that’s key. So all we get for most of the book is the background to the main issue. The key content comes only in the final quarter. Considering this is only a duology, the division of the story between the two books seems very lopsided. My GR friend Sarah wrote in her review that this book could have been a prologue. I couldn’t agree more!

💧 The final quarter suddenly changes the direction of the plot, with an infodump reveal that indicates where the sequel will go. As this is crucial to the plotline, it would have been better had this direction been indicated in hints from the start. The swerve is too abrupt.

💧 Waving a tiny flag of protest at all the weird names. Does fantasy necessarily involve concocting novel names and inserting syllabic extensions? What’s wrong with good old “Henry”? (If you think Sophy is a normal-enough moniker, wait till you discover her actual name. I don’t even want to get started on E, but she has all my sympathies!)

All in all, while I did enjoy the little bits such as the underwater setting, the charming characters and the budding relationships, I was also mostly bored by the absence of a concrete storyline. Having a story through letters is fun only when the letters help progress the plot. If the letters just provide a background sketch of the characters and they don’t even sound distinct enough, then they aren’t serving their purpose.

When I first got this book, I wasn’t even aware that it was the first of a planned duology, forget that it ended on a cliffhanger. It’s only thanks to reviews that I decided to wait it out till the sequel was in my hands. Boy, am I glad I did! The cliffhanger is a major one! That said, had I not already had the second half of this debut duology in hand, I doubt I would even have read it because there’s simply no curiosity in me to discover what happens next. But as I do have the book, I can only hope it reveals the missing pieces of this jigsaw in a speedier and smoother manner

Recommended to readers who enjoy a slow-burn epistolary fantasy with magical and underwater vibes. Not for those who prefer books with a strong plot.

My thanks to Little, Brown Book Group UK and Orbit for providing the DRC of “A Letter to the Luminous Deep” via NetGalley. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.