The weirdest kind of magical realist piffle, basically, as a ship of old sails the ocean, and encounters no end of mysteries – a phoenix-like bird lands on the deck, copious little critters get discovered that change colour at the blink of an eye before dying, a ray the size of several football fields surfaces and gives off a stench that gives everyone existential angst… They catch and eventually dismember a mahoosive shark whose heart keeps beating independently for a whole day afterwards.

Yes, there is a kind of sensuousness sought by the author here, with smells, the sounds of the wind hitting distant islands, and colours that had remained undiscovered by human eye up to that point all featured. But the whole thing is just vacuous magic, empty extravaganza, and even with the great name of the author on board there was no conviction I was going to get anything enjoyable. Even the promise that this was 1940 (which hadn't been stated by anyone when I gave up on it) and that this was actually a pacifist rail-against-the-world kind of drama couldn't hold my interest. Seriously not my kind of read.