Fathomfolk was one of those 2024 releases that I had been excited about before release and then proceeded to entirely forget about when it actually came out (even though I had an Illumicrate edition too!) Something about 2024 made me just, marinate these new releases on my shelves for a few months before finally diving into them, so I’m hoping to continue catching up on them all in 2025!

I ended up seeing a few reviews of Fathomfolk before I was able to get to it, though most of them were kind of middle-of-the-road reviews, where this book was neither good nor bad and just didn’t quite live up to the expectations that the synopsis brought. I think this tempering of my expectations before finally getting to it did help because I went in with almost a blank slate in terms of how good or bad I thought it might be. It did end up also being a mid book for me too, but mid in a way that’s difficult for me to fully explain. Many times a book will just be solidly mediocre on all levels, but Fathomfolk had components that were 4-5 stars for me, and other parts that were 2 stars. It’s made for an interesting reflection for me, so hopefully I can capture all these thoughts fully here in my review.

The main stand-out pieces of this book for me were the world-building and some of the characters (namely Mira). Tiankawi felt rich and developed in a way that not all fantasies can manage, and Chan managed to do this without overloading the readers with world-building at any point. We always knew what we needed to understand where we were in the story, and what we did know often felt carefully planned and thought out. I also enjoyed the diversity of beings that inhabited the city, and I felt like this added a lot to the atmosphere of the book. We of course had classic sea myths like sirens and sea witches, but there were also plenty of others that drew from a wide range of mythologies and made for an interesting landscape for the story to take place in. I especially enjoyed how this was further developed within Mira herself and how her view of this part of herself (being half-siren) was made a key part of the story and her own character arc. It made her much more interesting as a narrator and introduced this nuanced view of society and the issues it faced. 

Unfortunately, I can’t give the same praise to the other narrator, Nami. I found her extremely frustrating, but not in a way that ended up being endearing. I do know that part of her character was to be confident and arrogant, but I also found her extremely naive. While this can often lead to an interesting story, especially as we see that character’s arc over time, I didn’t feel like she’d grown enough by the end of the story. It felt like she kept having these eye-opening moments or reveals that seemed to impact her and how she viewed the world and people around her, only for her to seemingly revert a few scenes later and go back to how she was. This happened again at the end after I’d thought she’d finally grown up a bit and was starting to hope she could become a more interesting character for me. 

My opinion on the plot itself is also a bit mixed, mainly because I did really enjoy the ending and where it brought the story, but didn’t always enjoy the journey in getting there. Often a really solid ending will do wonders to hide the imperfections of most of the book, so it's hard for me to judge how much I thought the plot was actually good compared to just how much I enjoyed the actual ending. It has left me intrigued to see where the series ends up going next, though I’m not sure how soon I’ll get to it!