T he Forever Sea is a masterful tale in which familiar concepts are redefined to construct an entirely new and colourful world. One of them is even illustrated on the (gorgeous!) cover: The ships themselves do not float on water, but instead are floating through blades of grass. The story follows the young woman Kindred on her journey aboard a plant harvesting vessel. Together with her crewmates she must prove herself and navigate an increasingly hostile landscape of greedy politicians and bloodthirsty pirates. I thoroughly enjoyed the book with all its new ideas and concepts. It just keeps on surprising you until the end. Kindred and her crewmates are likeable and I felt myself rooting for them towards the end. Only the small interludes which might be used as connection point for future prequels felt a bit odd and I often times ended a reading session whenever one came up. But they are sparse and do not take anything away from this fabulous epic fantasy.

Ahoy there me mateys!  I received this fantasy eARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.  So here be me honest musings . . .

I really, really wanted to love this book.  Just look at the beautiful cover!  It features the sea!  Pirates!  Female Captains!  Magic!  Sadly, I had to abandon ship at 50% cause the story wasn't working.  I even spoiled the ending by reading other reviews to see if I should push through in case it got better.  I chose to stop.

The Pros:

- The Setting:  This features a sea that is not water but grass!  There is a world beneath the grass but humans don't know what exists there besides monsters.  Cool concept.  I particularly liked that instead of fishing, sailors sail around to harvest different types of grass and plants.

- The Magic:  I really enjoyed the idea of the hearth fires helping to run the ship.  I adored the bird-caller having feathered friends help with navigation.

- Lots of female characters:  There are all female sailing crews.  They do not pine for men but rather for adventure and loot.  Arrr!

- Water Subplot: I liked the idea of the water shortage on Arcadia and how it affected the social structure and rules of the city.

The Cons:

- The Main Character:  Kindred (horrible name) ended up making me upset with her actions.  She was selfish, impulsive, reckless, and irrational.

- The Framing Device: I hated this.  It takes place far in a dystopian future where a supernatural type being is telling the history of the world.  It was a boring beginning to the novel and interrupted story flow every time.

- The Magic:  While the magic ideas were fun, they really didn't make any sense in terms of how they functioned or what the rules were.  The author chose to make Kindred learn by instinct.  This made the magic seem like gibberish.

- Repetitive Themes: I got tired of the author making the same points over and over again.  Kindred's unorthodox and reckless use of hearth fire.  How her training was both truncated and haphazard.  Her unusual love for and connection to the sea.  How she is Special.  How Kindred's grandmother was a Larger than Life Figure.  Humans causing environmental devastation.  Seriously this book needed trimming.

- The Plot: The story did not make sense to me in the slightest.  Kindred chooses to lie to everyone and go on a hazardous crusade regardless of the consequences to those she cares about.  The reasons for this abrupt turn around of her beliefs were silly.  The evil villain had lame politics of "power at any cost" and felt completely flat.  Much of that subplot felt forced.  I didn't even get to the actual pirate town because I was so bored and the pacing was so slow.  When the giant wrym battle happened I was perplexed at how uninteresting it was.  I should have loved the life on the sea but the events in the story were all too coincidental or too simple.  Character motivations also seemed petty or nonsensical.

This book appealed in concepts but it didn’t work for me at all in the end.  To the grass wyrms it goes.  Arrrr!

So lastly . . .

Thank you DAW!

I think just about everyone knows the saying "Don't judge a book by its cover", but that's exactly what I did when I first saw the cover of this book and decided I was going to read it no matter what it was actually about. I mean, when it comes down to it, isn't that exactly what a cover is supposed to do? Draw you in and make you want to pick up and check out or read a book? Happily, I can say that The Forever Sea by Joshua Phillip Johnson was a fun and engaging book that was all but impossible to stop reading.

While I thought the plot and all the characters were just great, what really stood out to me about this book was its worldbuilding. With The Forever Sea, Joshua Phillip Johnson has managed to build a truly fantastic world that somehow managed to be both alien and familiar at the same time. There are a lot of books out there about airships and pirates and whatnot, but I can't remember any that feature said airships being powered by magical hearth fires or where the pirates are and sailors are fighting it out above an endless sea of grass. It seems like such a weird concept to me but somehow the author makes it work so well.

As good as this book was and as much as I enjoyed it, I do think Joshua Phillip Johnson spent a little too much time describing the various colors and types of grass that make up the Forever Sea and not enough time figuring out just where he wanted the book to go in the end. I really hate to comment on an ending of a book because I do worry about spoiling things for people but my biggest issue with The Forever Sea is how little resolution I felt like we got by the end of the book. There was a lot of tension built up over the course of the book and very little was done to relieve that tension by the time the last page comes.

All in all, though I would say that The Forever Sea is a great book set in a truly interesting world that I think just about anyone would enjoy reading. I'll definitely be eagerly awaiting the next book in the series!

I received a free copy of this book one exchange for an honest review.

Firstly, The Forever Sea has already secured itself a place on my hypothetical ‘top covers of 2021’ list…. and 2021 hasn’t even started yet. It drew me in right from the start with its bright colours and then got me intrigued… sailing ships are on the covers of nautical fantasy everywhere, except wait, that’s grass.

The creativity and boldness of the cover thankfully carried over into the world-building, which was by far my favourite thing about this book. It’s a little too grounded to be classified as ‘weird fiction’, but there’s that same sense of a completely alien world that’s impossible to imagine juxtaposed anywhere on earth. The descriptions of the dense, lucious grasses and the crackling, spluttering hearthfires in the centre of the ships were vivid, and I felt the wonder that Kindred experienced every time she contemplated the Forever Sea, but I could also sense the unknown dangers that kept others in Kindred’s crew on edge. This is truly an epic environmental fantasy: there is a clear message about adapting one’s way of life to the local habitat, and everything in this story – the foods the characters eat, the materials their homes are built from, even the way they regulate their exercise and movements due to lack of water – is influenced by the fact that they are literally floating on a giant sea of grass.

There’s also a hint of magic in this book – Kindred is responsible for tending to the hearthfires that power ships across the Forever Sea. These fires use bones to fuel them – a mystery I’m keen to learn more about in the sequels, since little is known about the process of harvesting these bones from their willing donors – and while anyone can learn to tend the fire, very few people can hear the fire singing to them, telling them what it needs, and Kindred is more adept than most. I get the sense there’s a lot more to play out on this front in the coming books.

And, of course, there is also a very clear message about environmental degradation. The Forever Sea is starting to die due to over-harvesting, forcing people to venture further and further from their homes in source of materials and creating a seemingly never-ending cycle of destruction, while water scarcity is leading people to more and more desperate acts. I would have liked to have seen more of the politics surrounding these issues: the war over water often took a back seat to the story about Kindred’s affinity for the hearthfire and the grassy seas, and it wasn’t always clear who the key players were or what tipping point had lead them down this path.

As for the rest of the book: the characters are well-rounded, particularly Kindred, her love interest Sarah, and the Captain of their crew. I did struggle to like Kindred as much as I wanted to, though I expect that will be a matter of personal preference: she’s incredibly instinct-driven, often to the point of recklessness, and her actions have consequences that can be devastating for the crew. Even when I understood her motivations, she was a little too headstrong for me. The romance between Kindred and Sarah is sweet, but felt a little rushed – we learn early on that Kindred has a giant crush – but we never really see the pair interact before they’re falling headfirst into romance. It was also great to see a story where all the key roles on a ship are taken by queer women, and this is clearly unremarkable.

My main criticism is that this book needed a judicious pruning (sorry, not sorry). The story at times feels bloated, as the same messages about Kindred knowing the sea better than anyone are hammered home repeatedly. At points, there’s a little too much waxing lyrically about the beauty of the sea, and not enough time spent getting on with the plot. That feels like a fairly minor complaint given how much I loved learning about this world, but I did have to drag myself through some of the middle of third of this book, and resented retreading old ground.

Overall, however, this book is incredibly unique and daring in its approach to world-building, and I’m looking forward to the sequel.

Kindred has been taught by her Grandmother how to make a fire with bones (size makes a difference) and how to talk to it to make it function the way she wants it to.

DAW and Net Galley let me read this book for review (thank you). It will publish on January 19th.

Adding plants to the fire effects the flame and can speed the boat up. The boats cross the grasses in the plains. They also cross water.

When Kindred gets good enough she finds her own job on another boat. Things are going good until she finds out her Grandmother has walked into the sea. She wanted to know what was under the sea.

Things go from bad to worse. Their ship is being targeted in their world, so they sail to another. This city has lots of pirates so it's not too safe either. They were supposed to work for a number of days and then they'd give them a ship and let them go. It doesn't take long until they find out that's a lie.

Kindred is trying to find a way of escape. Even her own shipmates can't be trusted.

This is a fantasy that is well done. There may be more in this series because the story didn't really end. You could always make up your own ending...

Miles deep prairie grass with magically floating ships above it. That’s what the cover shows, and that’s the core of this Rich world with pirates, a lost city, wilderness, the deeps, sea monsters, and many mysteries.

On board of one ship is young woman Kindred, hired as a hearth keeper, who operates the magical fire keeping the ship afloat and propelling it forward.
The story follows Kindred and the crew as a bildungsroman between adventures hunt by and hunting pirates, discovering the wild sea, dripping a little bit of romance, fighting fierce ship battles, and stopping for marveling at the beautiful prairie sea.
It slowly develops the magic of this world and the driving forces behind it, never stopping with opening new doors to the next miracle, innovation, and reckless dive to rescue the crew of the next breathless catastrophe. While giving room for exploration and quite moments, another betrayal and change of directions waits around the corner. I cannot stop admiring this perfect tension arc which doesn’t end in a cliffhanger but doesn’t go slack and leaves the reader wanting more of this.

Kindred is clearly the main protagonist and gets enough sympathy and background so that one only can love this reckless woman and wonder where her next move will lead her. Also, the rest of the crew shows color and with all the epic turns are relatable and figures of their own right.

This is the start of a new fantasy series by a new author. Alas, now I have to wait until the next volume.

Highly recommended for readers of fantasy who like character- and plot-driven, action rich stories with a vast new world to be explored.

The first thing you need to know about The Forever Sea is that the setting is pretty incredible: in Kindred’s world, land is surrounded by the Forever Sea – an endless ocean of giant-sized grass, flowers with magical properties, and wild creatures that can tear ships apart. Because yes, despite the sea being made of grass, ships do sail it – using magical fires which are controlled with bones.

Are you wowed yet? Because you really should be. The worldbuilding is a wonder – simultaneously out-of-this-world, but with a culture familiar enough to not feel alien. It’s a delicate line to walk, but Johnson manages it deftly. And so much thought has gone into this! The hearthfires that power ships are an excellent example – they’re fueled with bones, but not just any bones. They must be the bones of a dead captain – presumably something to do with the mysterious, secret ritual that makes a sailor into a captain: it’s not as simple as someone just buying their own ship and putting on a captain’s hat. And it gets even more intricate, because it’s not as simple as putting bones on the fire – a Hearthkeeper builds, well, ‘builds’ out of the bones, and the different builds make a ship go up or down, left or right, faster or slower. Ships on the Forever Sea do have sails, but no steering wheel or rudder (as far as I could tell): it’s all down to the mysterious flames.

Flames which sing, if you’re able to hear them.

The problem is that the story doesn’t really live up to the world Johnson’s created. At first, it looks promising; we’re introduced to Kindred, Hearthkeeper of The Errant, as the ship flees from pirates, racing to reach Arcadia before the pirates can take them down. We quickly learn that Kindred has a relationship to the hearthfire that other Hearthkeepers don’t, and that they don’t understand or believe in, but that gives her a deeper understanding of the flames and how to work with them. And Arcadia, when they reach it, is a beautifully fleshed-out island where the people live by night and walk slow to conserve all the water they can. The initial conflict, in fact, is fueled by the scarcity of water – or rather, the man who’s taken advantage of that scarcity to somehow build up a monopoly, which in turn has given him control of the city-island’s politics and laws.

Honestly, the book is really strong throughout this part; it’s a very good beginning, with detailed worldbuilding and believable conflict, sketching out the characters and the culture they come from. The scene where Kindred learns of her grandmother’s ‘death’, and mourns with her grandmother’s crew, is beautiful and poignant; and the subsequent battle where Kindred and her fellow crew are driven out over a mistake/conspiracy about water supplies is powerful and cinematic in the best way.

But after that, it really starts to fall apart. Although the worldbuilding remains incredible, the characters wash out to 2-dimensional figures, and the various subplots are resolved mostly by incredible coincidence or too-simple solutions. Kindred becomes obsessed with following her grandmother down under the Forever Sea, but Johnson doesn’t really make this believable at all; never once did I understand why Kindred wanted this, and wanted it so badly, when her entire world insists that it’s death. I was shocked when she, in a move that seemed uncharacteristic of her, lied and manipulated her fellow crew into taking a more dangerous route when the captain is out of commission; something that is apparently motivated by her desire to go to the Deeps, except…that’s not where they’re going. Kindred directs them to the Once-City, a mythical giant tree/pirate city/titanic ship, because…? It’s not really clear. She associates the Once-City with her desire for the Deeps, but why isn’t really explained, nor why she thinks it’s okay to lie and manipulate her friends in the way that she does.

The Once-City feels like a conglomeration of too many ideas that Johnson couldn’t sort out, and at the same time, weirdly simplistic. On the one hand, one of the levels of the city is taken up by a magical (mini-?)forest full of ghosts that will rip people apart for no apparent reason; on the other hand, nobody comments on the fact that the Once-City houses Kindred + pals in a place literally called ‘Cruel House’, which is coincidentally run by a complete jerk. One of the city’s Council members is one mind in two bodies which speaks in utterly bizarre riddle-type things; this is never explained. The Once-City is also stuck in place because its hundreds of hearthfires have turned inexplicably grey; Kindred eventually discovers (in a move that, again, feels like Because Plot rather than anything organic) that some of the fires have a wrong kind of bone in them, but what that is or how they got there is also not explained. Kindred and co are warned that the magical healing of the Once-City’s physicians is dangerous and ‘will change you’, but that doesn’t make sense either; both Kindred and the captain receive this healing, and it doesn’t warp them the way the warnings implied that it would.

The book builds into a conflict between Arcadia and the Once-City, and in hindsight Kindred calls this a water-war, but…it makes no sense. For the Once-City to attack Arcadia; yes, okay, it’s revealed that they’re running out of water and they’re clearly trying to save themselves. But they’re not the aggressors, and it’s never clear to my why the hell Arcadia expends the resources they do in trying to annihilate the Once-City when they find it. This is a culture where people don’t raise their voices or let themselves get worked up, because it means losing sweat and saliva in a world where water is priceless. It’s not believable to me that a people who are careful to walk slowly would initiate a war.

While I was delighted that Kindred was queer – bisexual or pansexual isn’t clear – the romance also kind of comes out of nowhere. I actually didn’t mind that so much – quieter romance plotlines are my jam, generally – but it is mind-boggling how quickly her paramour agrees that sure, going into the Deeps would be great, let’s do it. What??? Just. No. Why don’t more people think Kindred is nuts? Why aren’t they scared for her? Why don’t they try to talk her out of it? I love my husband more than anything, but if he announced he wanted to rent a car and go driving under the sea I’d take him to the hospital, not the rent-a-car place! Just because you love someone doesn’t mean you go along with their (you think) suicidal ideas without batting an eye.

Really, all the characters lose more and more of their…their definition as the story goes on. By the end, several, especially the ‘villains’, have just become caricatures. It’s ridiculous and such a let-down.

With all that said? If you can sort of…let it go, that the characters are Like That, and that some of the problems are resolved a little too neatly…it’s a very readable book. It’s a very beautiful world. The theme of living in harmony with nature is a bit heavy-handed, but it’s still poignant. Once I put blinkers on to blind me to its flaws, The Forever Sea was a book I enjoyed reading. Johnson has no problems with prose: the scene where Ragged Sarah, crow-called of The Errant, summons the birds of the Forever Sea to tell her of the state of the sea? Is breathtaking, and will stay with me for a long, long time.

And I’ll probably pick up the sequel, because the ending sinks its hooks in deep, and a lot of the things that aren’t explained? I really want answers!

This book was received as an ARC from DAW in exchange for an honest review. Opinions and thoughts expressed in this review are completely my own.

I absolutely loved this book. I especially love books where every chapter there is a new exciting event taking place. The ambition Kindred had for finding her grandma and continuing her task as the hearthfire keeper in swimming along the majestic seas to find her grandma and save their kingdom. Little does Kindred know that beyond the waters are two cultures at war and Kindred's grandma is the bait of this war and it's up to Kindred to not only save her grandma but bring peace to the cultures before they destroy not only each other but the rest of the kingdoms of the waters. This book got my heart pumping throughout most of the book and I almost screamed in excitement at many parts too.

We will consider adding this title to our Sci-Fi collection at our library. That is why we give this book 5 stars.