The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune
A fantasy book with real life applications. For better or worse.
Summary:
Linus Baker leads a quiet, solitary life. At forty, he lives in a tiny house with a devious cat and his old records. As a Case Worker at the Department in Charge of Magical Youth, he spends his days overseeing the well-being of children in government-sanctioned orphanages.
When Linus is unexpectedly summoned by Extremely Upper Management, he's given a curious and highly classified assignment: travel to Marsyas Island Orphanage, where six dangerous children reside: a gnome, a sprite, a wyvern, an unidentifiable green blob, a were-Pomeranian, and the Antichrist. Linus must set aside his fears and determine whether or not they’re likely to bring about the end of days.
But the children aren’t the only secret the island keeps. Their caretaker is the charming and enigmatic Arthur Parnassus, who will do anything to keep his wards safe. As Arthur and Linus grow closer, long-held secrets are exposed, and Linus must make a choice: destroy a home or watch the world burn.
An enchanting story, masterfully told, The House in the Cerulean Sea is about the profound experience of discovering an unlikely family in an unexpected place—and realizing that family is yours.
Review (Includes Spoilers): 3.5/5
I went in to this book blind. I had no idea what the book was about other than it was recommended by a YouTuber that I follow and had a high rating on Goodreads, so I figured why not check it out.
In the beginning you are introduced to Linus, a probably depressed man living in a gloomy city working a dead-end job, doing a welfare check at an orphanage. Well, technically an orphanage for magical children. There is not much introduction to this world, you simply drop into the story and surmise based on context clues. We watch Linus do his job and move on to the next task. We really get a feeling for the monotony of Linus's life. He gets up, goes to work, comes home, dances, sleep. (The dances are sweet bit). Repeat. All through the apparent never-ending rain.
The real excitement starts when Linus is assigned a special, classified task requiring him to leave the grey and gloomy city for an exotic unknown place for a month. This is where we meet Zoe, Phee, Sal, Chauncey, Talia, Lucy, Theodore and Arthur. Zoe is a sprite, who apparently owns the island. Phee is a child sprite, Sal a changeling that when scared changes into a little dog, Chauncey seemed to be an amoeba, Talia a garden gnome, the only of her kind apparently because she is a girl… did you know gnomes are all male? Lucy the antichrist, Theodore a mini dragon-like creature and Arthur the caretaker.
As the book goes on you get to learn more about the individuals on the island. Their interests, their dreams, their background story, all the while Linus is documenting for his final report. The kids win him over pretty quickly, though he doesn't seem to realize. Eventually they make their way into town where we see the highs and lows of how people handle those that are different. Some people welcome the group with open arms, others quickly shun them. As I read this, I felt the obvious correlations to modern society which I'll touch on later.
Eventually Arthur reveals himself as a magical creature, a phoenix. Once again there is minimal backing information to explain the significance of a phoenix. Obviously, I know they rise from the ashes, so the author probably chose the phoenix as a metaphor for rebirth and starting fresh. But without knowing the importance for phoenixes in the magical world the author created, I was left lacking the importance of the moment. Arthur simply revealed he was a phoenix and Linus was surprised and I think we as the readers were supposed to be shocked, but I was just left lacking.
Once the four weeks is up, Linus has to return to the dark and dreary city and resume his work. Of course, after this experience he is a changed man and acts as such upon his return. He vehemently advocates for the orphanage to remain as is and then protests the idea of the orphanages in the first place. Needless to say he quits and flees back to the island to relatively open arms from the kids and Arthur.
Honestly, the child characters in this book are what make it worth reading. They were sweet, innocent and funny. They made you want to keep coming back to learn more. Everything outside the children was just filler to me. It took a long time to get to a conclusion with any of the adults, but mainly Linus. And I'm sure that was part of his character trait, an indecisive man who follows the rules and believes in the system even when it's failing the people it's meant to serve. But dear lord there were bits that dragged. There were many sections that could have been shortened or cut out completely.
You don't really learn why the kids are at this orphanage. Obviously, you know it is because their family is no longer around, but there is no historical information as to where the orphanages came from. Other than that some time ago a decision was made to segregate the magical and non-magical folk. Was there a major event that made the non-magical beings try to harness the magical ones. Where were the adult magical beings? If you're magical, don't you have power to take over the non-magical? Why was that not exercised?
It's also weird- maybe that is my bias - but the magical kids are all technically creatures. They aren't people. Except for Sal and Lucy. Everyone else is not human so it was hard for me to understand this world. Like are there also wizards? Are there sorcerers? Genies? The focus was on these kids, but I need to understand the org structure. This is why I can't do science fiction - I have too many questions if the world is not built well enough.
My main issue with this book was the assumed knowledge that the reader would possess. I don't normally read science fiction books, therefore do not know much about magical characters outside what I've learned from Harry Potter. Like I said, you are dropped in to this book without any background information and are expected to know what a sprite is or what a gnome is and their mythical lore. The author does include many, many, descriptive words so you'll figure it out - but there was a lot I felt like was glossed over.
As I searched for a synopsis for this blog, I stumbled upon some controversy for this book… which of course is not really controversy more so peoples major lack of historical knowledge and then utter shock when they realize the world has dark histories.
A quick summary of the drama. Throughout history governments, notably American and Canadian, would remove Native children from their homes and put them in "orphanages" that would re-culturize them. According to the internet chatter, the magical orphanages symbolized these Native camps, and some readers did not like the over-simplification of a serious and hurtful subject drilled down to a fantastical magical world.
This is my take on that… sometimes you have to oversimplify a complicated topic in order for anyone to understand and take note. It is a lot easier for someone, especially a younger person, (who I feel this book is aimed at) to comprehend the injustices of the characters they are reading about than to understand how real-life historical events have modern day issues.
Sometimes you have to explain things in fantastical terms to make a person think. For all those that are protesting this book because it's oversimplifying a tough subject. Use this book as a tool. Don't cancel the book because you think it's making light of a serious subject. It could actually be doing more than you think. Like I mentioned at the top, there's a lot of correlations between the topics in this book and what is going on in the real world. If you feel so passionately about injustices use this as a conversation starter. It's a lot more digestible to have someone read a science fiction book and turn the conversation from fantasy to reality than talking about real life. Real life is where real biases are and sometimes people have a hard time removing their biases from real life events, as frustrating as that can be.
Also, let’s be real. At no point was this orphanage system glorified. Yes, the house in the cerulean sea was a warm home for these kids, but it was an anomaly. That's why Linus was there to begin with. The government wanted to shut it down because it was operating differently than the other houses. So, for those readers that felt this was an oversimplified, rose-colored view of real-life tragic events clearly didn't remember how sad and dark the opening orphanages were. Also, child abuse was talked about many, many times in this book so yea, dark topics were mentioned.
In my opinion it would have been nice to have less real-life social commentary, but if there is a vocal minority out there that feels this is an oversimplification of serious topics it is your responsibility as a concerned citizen to act, not just talk into the ether.
Wow look at me becoming an activist for actual activism and not armchair activists.
Overall, I'd give this a 3.5 out of 5 stars mainly because it started to drag. It's almost a 400 page book - not a light read, it's easy… but not light. I will read the sequel because the characters were endearing. The commentary on life and the endless descriptive details were a drag, but I want to learn more about Linus and Lucy and Phee and Sal - the whole bunch.
Honorary mention to Calliope - the cat who really steals the show. I actually thought she was going to turn out to be a magical creature but alas she was just a cat. Maybe cats are just inherently magical creatures.
