FATHOMFOLK by Eliza Chan

FATHOMFOLK

Eliza Chan (elizachan.co.uk)

Orbit (www.orbitbooks.net)

£18.99

Buy a copy from your favourite independent bookshop

The city of Tiankawi is a city of many facets. Partially-flooded, the parts above water are a testament to human ingenuity, with the humans living in shining towers far above the surface of the polluted water. Closer to the surface, and beneath the waves, the fathomfolk – creatures who have evolved from the denizens of the ocean, many of whom can assume human form on dry land – scrape for a living, forced by draconian human-made laws to live a subservient life, only tolerated within the city because they represent an exploitable workforce. Mira, half-siren, half-human and member of the border guard has just been promoted to captain, the highest-ranking fathomfolk in any branch of the military. Her partner, fathomfolk ambassador Kai, a water dragon, is pushing for changes to the laws, for more freedoms for the people he represents, a first step towards equality. But when his younger sister, Nami, gets in trouble at home and is sent to Tiankawi, she falls in with the wrong crowd, the Drawbacks, a terrorist organisation bent on disrupting the normal workings of the city. Mira and Kai are dragged into her orbit, while the humans see a threat and look for the easiest way to shut it down. Caught between outright slavery and the destruction of the city that they call home, Mira and Kai must work together to ensure the continued survival of Tiankawi, and of the people – human and fathomfolk – who call it home.

I’ll start with an admission: I looked at the cover of Eliza Chan’s debut novel and made an assumption about what kind of book it was. The term “romantasy” seems to have appeared out of nowhere in recent months to describe the type of book I thought I was going to be reading, but I’d agreed to take part in the blog tour, so I was going to read and review it. Or, at the very least, give it a damn good try. Someone much wiser than me once advised that you should never judge a book by its cover. That axiom has never been more true than for Fathomfolk. What you’ll find behind the (admittedly gorgeous) cover is political allegory and heart-pounding thriller wrapped up in Eastern mythology, tales of the sea (and, unless I’m very much mistaken, the odd hat-tip to Hans Christian Anderson’s (or possibly Disney’s) The Little Mermaid).

At its heart, Fathomfolk is a story about immigrants, and about how they are invariably treated by their hosts. In Tiankawi, humans have all the power and all the resources. They live in relative luxury in the city’s highest towers, as far from the stinking water as it’s possible to get. Meanwhile, the fathomfolk struggle in the city’s lower reaches, living in the polluted water (not, it probably doesn’t need to be said, polluted by the fathomfolk themselves), or in shanty towns by the water’s edge, or on great flotillas of small boats tied together to make floating communities. There are no fathomfolk on the Council that rules Tiankawi, apart from the water dragon Kai, whose position is largely symbolic. The folk are exploited at every turn – working on the mysterious Onseon Engine or forced to carry out menial tasks – and are forced to wear bracelets – pakalots – that control their behaviour: even thinking about trying to harm a human will see them incapacitated by the magic contained therein. Chan’s worldbuilding is second to none, and Tiankawi comes alive in her hands: we can smell the polluted water, breathe in the air of this two-faced city, and wander the wooden walkways that allow people to travel from one place to another without getting wet.

In the midst of this immersive world, we meet the central characters: the practical and methodical Mira, who has worked hard to move through the ranks of the chinthe, the border guard, and finally make captain; the regal Kai, who spends most of his time amongst the humans, even as he professes to speak for the fathomfolk; Nami, exiled from her home and looking to find trouble, but maybe not the type of trouble she ends up finding; and Cordelia, a seawitch who plays the political game, striking bargains with everyone to get what she wants, in order to help her human husband and children reach their greatest potential. These are characters we feel at home with, and as the story progresses, so too do their personalities, and how they interact with the world around them. Interestingly, it is Cordelia, who sits like a spider at the centre of her web, and pulls the strings that affect everything and everyone in Tiankawi, who has the greatest impact on the story, and the most interesting tale. There are no black hat-wearing bad guys here; everything is in shades of grey and we come to realise that one man’s evil is another man’s good, and that the people on the sharp end of the stick are normally those at the bottom of the pile. And when it comes to Tiankawi, that is the literal bottom.

The moral of Chan’s debut novel is readily apparent, but one of the most interesting things about Fathomfolk is how the author weaves the stories we see every day on the news with the gorgeous and evocative Eastern and marine mythologies to create something completely unique. The all-out racism (speciesism?) that pervades this novel feels no less real and infuriating than the racism we see everyday in the world around us and we reach the end of the story wishing that it was as easy to solve our real-world problems as Chan solves those same problems in Tiankawi. It’s not all dark and depressing: there are moments of real beauty as the story progresses, even some that warmed this grumpy old reader’s heart. It’s far from “romantasy”, but there are moments of real tenderness, and not a few moments where we want to shake some sense into these characters. We become completely invested in the story – a side effect of how immersive the city of Tiankawi is – and feel the ups and downs of these characters as they move towards resolution.

Fantasy novels don’t always click with me, but Fathomfolk is one that definitely does. It’s a beautifully-written examination of man’s inhumanity to man (or, in this case, man’s inhumanity to fish) that grips us when we first step onto the wooden walkways of Tiankawi and keeps us engaged throughout. Eliza Chan definitely impresses with her debut novel, and leaves this reader wanting more. I’d be happy with a return trip to Tiankawi, but would also like to see Chan spread her wings and explore other worlds, or other areas of the mythologies that went into the creation of Fathomfolk. This is my kind of fantasy fiction, and I can only recommend that you give it a shot.