I didn't take to this. I know the description talks of 'millennial otters', I still thought it would be targeted at younger readers, with that verging-on-the-gaudy cover and the promise of it being in rhyme. Instead what I found was something that felt quite a muddle, for it had a vocab there and then on the page as if it was needed, and still seemed to be talking of/to people in their mid-teens at the youngest. I know the rule tends to be that characters are slightly older than the kids reading about them, but whatever the case is I found little interest in an otter being purloined into business by a shark. And even at the ten per cent mark, I found the densely-sustained eight-syllable rhyming couplets to be a little on the heavy side. I normally love rhyming narratives, but this seemed a bit too much even for me.

Don't get me wrong, there was work clearly put into this – the way the story can flow in its rhymes, even when it breaks out into dialogue (presented visually almost as a kind of nested text conversation) should be most impressive. This is only the first chunk of a trilogy, as well. But while the whole thing seemed completely unsure of its audience (at least, to repeat, I certainly was) and while it seemed very dry, I did not gain the impetus needed to see me to the end. One and a half stars.