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! 

 

 

I would like to thank the publisher, Netgalley, and the author for the ARC of this book. I read an advanced copy of this book, so the final edition of the book might be slightly different. All thoughts and opinions are my own, as always. This review also contains some spoilers for the first book.

A Marvellous Light was one of my favorite reads of 2021, and I loved it just as much when I went back to reread it before finally continuing the series. A Restless Truth is the second book in The Last Binding trilogy and follows Maud (Robin’s sister) and Violet instead. Sometimes it can be difficult to lose narrators, especially when I loved them as much as I loved Robin and Edwin, but I do think the switching helped the series! I generally enjoyed getting to see a new romantic and character focus for each installment, but with a strong central plot connecting all three books together.

Maud and Violet were unfortunately not my favorites though. I found them interesting as characters individually, and I enjoyed seeing their backgrounds and relationships with their femininity and how it shaped them in this society. However, I wasn’t super convinced by their romance and didn’t care for that subplot as much, even though Robin and Edwin’s romance was what carried the first book for me. It’s hard to explain or pin down, but I just didn’t like them together. It made some parts of the book more frustrating for me, especially when it started getting in the way of plot progression.

In terms of plot, I  found it intriguing, but I felt like the reliance on Robin’s visions made everything seem too pre-planned. It felt like Maud was just following a blueprint and trying to make certain things happen, and I felt like the characters lost a lot of their agency in this one. I have since read book 3, A Power Unbound, and didn’t have this issue in that book though, so it was just an issue unique to this book, luckily. It might just have been the way Maud used and interacted with the visions that made it not work for me.

Overall, I still enjoyed this book and really liked the audiobook narrator’s performance for this one. I think I would’ve felt this book's weaknesses even more had I not had the narrator helping me connect with the characters more. I do still love this series, but this is unfortunately the weakest installment for me!