Nonbinary world? Magic twins? Sign me up! Except wait, no, this did not work for me. I just could not get past the first few pages, much to my chagrin:

Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for giving me access to the free advanced digital copy of this book.

Beneath the Burning Wave is a Queer YA fantasy novel by debut British author Jennifer Hayashi Danns and is apparently the start of a trilogy. The story advertises itself as exploring the "origin of gender and desire in an epic queer fusion of Japanese folklore and Egyptian mythology" and well, that piqued my interest. And just as promised there is a very queer world here, with the setting being an island whose people don't use gendered pronouns and who practice queernorm relationships and polyamory, (whether they differentiate based upon sex in other ways is another question).

That said, the prose used to describe this world often fails to make clear exactly what is happening, and the characters and plotting in this world are very weak, shallow, and sometime just plain irritating, such that I didn't think the book worked at all. There's an attempt to do things here with origins of gender and pronouns that just seems abrupt and poorly done, a lot of things happen just well "because", and there's no satisfying resolution or message here to take home, even if you consider this just the first book of a longer story. This is not a book that makes me want to read further into the trilogy, which makes it one I also cannot recommend.


----------------------------Plot Summary----------------------------------
On the Island of Mu, the Maymuan people live in peace under the strict guidance of the Experienced Ones, who lay down the guidance for the community. There is no gender on Mu, as all are referred to with the pronouns Mu/Mem/Mir, and the people live in peace within the roles they are given as set by the Experienced. Nor is there any concept of marriage - people have sexual relations with whomever they want, although everyone is assigned to a pairing (Carrier and non-Carrier) to mate and produce a new maymu...who is then taken from their biological parents to be raised by the Experienced in a group. And there are no twins on the Island....until now.

Kaori and Kairi are those first twins ever to grow up on the Island for some reason, and it is clear that the two of them are different from ordinary Maymuans, as if they are each half of a greater whole. Kaori is calm and wishes to work within Maymuan society, even if Mu does not want to procreate as a carrier with Mir assigned partner, and possesses a connection and power over water. By contrast Kairi is quick to anger and excitable and resists all rules that would bound Mem, and has a connection to and powers over fire. The two twins feel a connection to one another, even as they're pushed by the Experienced in different directions...directions that according to a prophecy, will result in a drastic shift in the society and island of Mu, one which will have devastating effects....
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It seems from trying to read Beneath the Burning Wave that a major theme of this book is meant to be how even a seemingly queernorm society, with no explicit concept of gender and one set of pronouns, can turn into a gendered problematic society. To that end, you have a world which might seem on the surface to be queernorm and positive, but which is itself basically gendered even without using gender terms - you have people being paired together based upon their ability to be a carrier - to bear a pregnancy - with others so as to create children, with special treatment/roles for possible carriers...who are pressured to produce. You have one character, Kairi, feel like mu hates carriers for this special treatment and what mu sees as uselessness, leading mu to create seemingly out of nowhere the gendered pronouns he and she that we use today (no seriously, they're just something one of Mu's followers comes up with out of nowhere). And the result of everything is in the end two societies to some extent, one of which is gendered in full and one of which tries to cling to some of their original ideas.

The problem is that the book is pretty bad at both describing how things happen and showing character development - or creating interesting characters - so as to make this theme interesting or at least something to think about. The book's world uses names for things that are often made up pursuant to a language which there's a glossary for in the back, but even taking into account my problem imagining things in my head, the book is really bad at explaining why things are happening or really what is happening at any given time...to often I had to take a step back and wonder "huh, what just happened?" It's just really bad unclear prose, and that makes its attempts to convey the story very ineffective.

The same is true of the book developing its characteres. Kaori is clearly the good twin, and is very easy to understand and empathize with, as the twin who is torn between Mir wish to keep to the island's societal rules, to protect their twin mu has a connection to, and Mir dislike of procreating with mir body with someone they didn't choose, even if mu likes mem (and Kaori has sexual relations with two other characteres fine without worrying about it, so it's not due to asexuality). But Kairi is just basically an arrogant brat who, with some assistance from an antagonist character who deliberately pushes mu in this direction, just basically seems like a growing Men's Rights Activist who insists on absolute freedom for mu, subservience from everyone else, and that carriers are inferior. There's just nothing sympathetic about Kairi whatsoever and it only gets worse over time, which is a problem when half the book is from Kairi's perspective.

Meanwhile, other characters have little development or make no sense. For example, there's the antagonist Takanori, who shapes Kairi's attitude, but is such an obviously evil asshole that it doesn't make any sense why anyone listens to Mu whatsoever. There's a prophecy that twins will destroy the island, so Takanori tries to fulfill that prophecy for reasons that are never explained (similarly, the prologue hints that twins are killed generally to prevent that, but gives no reason why that was not done for Kairi/Kaori). Takanori at one point behead a child to punish Kairi/Kaori for a crime against Mir religion...except there's no logical reason why that needed to be done other than just to be a jerk? And after that point....people continue to trust and listen to Takanori, and Kairi continues to give mu lip service, because....reasons? The same is true of other minor characters as well, who just basically act in ways that don't make sense because that's what Danns wants them to do for the plot.

The result is a confusing awful mess, and it's hard to really understand what even happens in the end, which well, make this a book I have to recommend against trying. There's some ideas and themes here that a better author might be able to pull off, but this one fails at that, due to bad prose, bad characters, and a plot that never really manages to make any of it believable.

The author has challenged the traditional use of pronouns of his, her, they for the use of neo-pronouns in an experimental YA story that blends Egyptian and Japanese mythology while challenging the "normal" roles of gender. The author has created an interesting world and society ripe with politics, envy, struggle and beauty.

I wanted to love this but only liked it. Unfortunately, for all the efforts to present gender in a different way, the society fell very much in traditional roles where carriers (a/k/a people who carry children to birth, i.e. people who get pregnant) don't have much power in this society. Also, I got confused with the writer's liberal use of the neo-pronouns as to who was actually being referred to in a sentence or paragraph. I had to go back to read areas several times to understand who is actually being referred to. It didn't help that the two main characters had similar names and a neo-pronoun is the same world for the island they live on and sometimes used for their culture.

I applaud the author's goals and in creating an interesting world and story.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC in return for an honest opinion.

This was definitely unique and I applaud the author for using neopronouns. It took a bit of adjusting to for me. I think the old was enticing but the story dragged a little.

The cover really drew me in with this book. However, unfortunately as I waded through water reading this is became the story was less about exploring fluid identifies and more like stick to the binary. The writing wasn't in itself bad. I just feel I was led to believe I reading about something else. I received this book as an ARC through NetGalley in exchange for an honest and unbiased review. All of these opinions are my own. #BeneaththeBurningWave #NetGalley

The author, Jennifer Hayashi Danns did what I wish more authors would do, a warning about possible triggers. As well as the understanding that some people/readers may not be able to complete the book.
Overall, the blurb about the book was enticing. The inhabitants way of life was also interesting, not like anything I've read before. Not gonna lie, sometimes I did get characters confused because of the nonbinary pronouns. I do not fault the author for me not being well versed in the pronouns.
I gave Beneath the Burning Waves 3 stars. It wasn't my typical book pick, but I think the story was well written. Trigger wise I did have to stop for days at a time which might factor into why I rated it 3 stars.

Keep an open mind, read for yourself.

Beneath the buring wave
the Mu Chronicles #1
By Jennifer Hayashi danns
Two siblings struggling in a world of questionable aspects that pit them against each other. Odd beginning for Hayashi, I hope he gets more into the story.

i was pleasantly surprised by this book, though it still did fall rather flat of my expectations for it.

the world is incredibly rich and distinct, and i like seeing the author's incorporation of neopronouns into one of the protagonists, since that's something that you don't see in fantasy often. i admire the author's choice to incorporate not just different gender identities but japanese and egyptian cultures, since it can be very difficult to push for diverse characters in the publishing industry.

my criticisms lie mainly in the writing and the dialogue, which can be a bit clunky and doesn't flow well at times, though that didn't affect my ability to read the book too much. i also found it a bit hard to get into the characters and their individual motivations, and more often than not, i found myself frustrated by them, though i'm sure that their relationship will develop more as the series goes on. i also agree with other reviewers in that, while the novel is advertised as being more fluid in terms of gender, the gender-related themes still fall into a certain "binary".

this is definitely one of the most unique and memorable fantasies i've read. it definitely falls short of its ambitions, but it's still quite good and i hope that it only gets better!