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purplepenning 's review for:
The House in the Cerulean Sea
by TJ Klune
4.5 rounded up to 5 wholesomely hilarious stars
If Diana Wynne Jones and Douglas Adams had team written a sweet tale that was part Harry Potter, part Good Omens, and two parts Professor Xavier and the early X-Men, it would be something like this — contemporary fantasy that drops you into an Orwellian bureaucracy and then dismantles it with quirky charm and kindness.
Linus Baker is our everyman protagonist, a caseworker in the Department in Charge of Magical Youth. DICOMY is a miserable office to work in but he's very good at what he does. As a caseworker, Linus evaluates orphanages for magical youth to ensure they're safe and safely contained. Above all, caseworkers must remain impartial, uphold the RULES AND REGULATIONS, file very thorough reports, and not concern themselves with things that aren't in their purview.
He's so good at this that Linus is chosen by DICOMY's Extremely Upper Management to evaluate a highly classified orphanage with an unusual group of magical children who are under the care of the mysterious Arthur Parnassus. Linus's small, dreary life is suddenly bursting with color, but he can't decided whether to be more frightened, annoyed, or enchanted. There are a few things he's certain about, however — Extremely Upper Management provided extremely inadequate files and the inhabitants of the orphanage are not at all what he expected.
The House in the Cerulean Sea was, perhaps, a bit overlong and a bit sentimental and didactic, but I was honestly too enamoured to care. It is wholesome, inclusive, hilarious, diverse, and has themes of nature vs, nurture, found family, beauty in brokenness, magic in the ordinary, kindness as strength, the power of love, self-discovery, and so much more.
"Hate is loud, but I think you'll learn it's because it's only a few people shouting, desperate to be heard. You might not ever be able to change their minds, but so long as you remember you're not alone, you will overcome."
Content notes: body image issues that were addressed but perhaps not quite as overtly as necessary, off-screen child abuse and trauma, bigotry and oppression, mob mentality
ARC provided by #NetGalley
If Diana Wynne Jones and Douglas Adams had team written a sweet tale that was part Harry Potter, part Good Omens, and two parts Professor Xavier and the early X-Men, it would be something like this — contemporary fantasy that drops you into an Orwellian bureaucracy and then dismantles it with quirky charm and kindness.
Linus Baker is our everyman protagonist, a caseworker in the Department in Charge of Magical Youth. DICOMY is a miserable office to work in but he's very good at what he does. As a caseworker, Linus evaluates orphanages for magical youth to ensure they're safe and safely contained. Above all, caseworkers must remain impartial, uphold the RULES AND REGULATIONS, file very thorough reports, and not concern themselves with things that aren't in their purview.
He's so good at this that Linus is chosen by DICOMY's Extremely Upper Management to evaluate a highly classified orphanage with an unusual group of magical children who are under the care of the mysterious Arthur Parnassus. Linus's small, dreary life is suddenly bursting with color, but he can't decided whether to be more frightened, annoyed, or enchanted. There are a few things he's certain about, however — Extremely Upper Management provided extremely inadequate files and the inhabitants of the orphanage are not at all what he expected.
The House in the Cerulean Sea was, perhaps, a bit overlong and a bit sentimental and didactic, but I was honestly too enamoured to care. It is wholesome, inclusive, hilarious, diverse, and has themes of nature vs, nurture, found family, beauty in brokenness, magic in the ordinary, kindness as strength, the power of love, self-discovery, and so much more.
"Hate is loud, but I think you'll learn it's because it's only a few people shouting, desperate to be heard. You might not ever be able to change their minds, but so long as you remember you're not alone, you will overcome."
Content notes: body image issues that were addressed but perhaps not quite as overtly as necessary, off-screen child abuse and trauma, bigotry and oppression, mob mentality
ARC provided by #NetGalley