by TJ Klune ★★★☆☆
Like with previous reviews of books in a series, I will start with a warning and a disclaimer:
If you have not yet read The House in the Cerulean Sea, STOP READING THIS NOW!
My review below is of its sequel, Somewhere Beyond the Sea, which will contain some spoilers for the first book in the series, but not this one. And if you've yet to read either book, my review of The House in the Cerulean Sea (#7 of 2020) is here.
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I somehow came upon The House in the Cerulean Sea back in 2020, and that heartwarming story managed to find its way to the #7 spot on my Best Books of 2020 list. It was unique and vastly different from most of what I typically read, but I found myself sucked into the sweet innocence of the majority of the characters, which was buoyed by an authentic growth arc for primary character Linus Baker.
Somewhere Beyond the Sea picks up where the first book concluded. With "Extremely Upper Management" dissolved after Linus's whistleblowing, there is a temporary void in government oversight, but that void is swiftly filled by a new antagonist, who has grand ambitions of keeping all magical creatures in their place in an even more forceful (and permanent) way than the preceding government organization. Arthur and Linus travel to the city so that Arthur can testify before the revamped DICOMY / DICOMA board before returning to Marsyas where the story unfolds in a similar way to The House in the Cerulean Sea: Arthur (and now Linus) want to protect the rights of the magical orphans living with them (including a new orphan, David the yeti), while the government is intent on intervening and shutting down the orphanage.
Where The House in the Cerulean Sea was Linus's journey, Somewhere Beyond the Sea is Arthur's. Through his testimony, we get additional detail about his abusive upbringing, and the book focuses most centrally on him. But where Linus had a significant arc of growth and change, Arthur spends the book primarily at war with himself, coming to grips with internal challenges but ultimately landing close to the place he started. Where Linus's journey was one that started in darkness and moved towards love, Arthur's is a bit of the opposite: he's always been loving and accepting, tamping down the anger inside of himself. Somewhere sees him struggle to maintain that positivity. With the safety of his children at stake, he is pushed to less civil ways of dealing with his antagonists, and his ability to keep the fire of his inner phoenix at bay begins to wane.
It seemed as though there was a more pronounced dose of anti-religious sentiment in this second book as well. I suppose it's obvious that religion isn't your thing when one of the characters you create is the Antichrist ("Lucy", short for Lucifer, embodied in a 7-year-old boy), but the disdain was more front-and-center this time. When one character says, "I won't be intimidated by you. I have God on my side," the response is, "Oh, you're one of those. Ugh." Lucy later goes on to mock the prophesied fight between Jesus and (ostensibly) himself in the following passage:
"I know karate, so it won't be a fair fight. What's he going to do? Make more fish and bread?" He pressed his hands against his cheeks, eyes wide. "Oh, Jesus, no, anything but that. Gasp! Are you turning water into wine? Curse you, street magician!"
"Back ten minutes and we're already blaspheming," Linus said, as Helen and Zoe laughed, trying to keep each other upright. "It's good to be home."
It seems as though author TJ Klune has gotten angrier over the years as well, and like Arthur, he starts to let that anger creep in where in the past it was kept under wraps. Somewhere, while still filled with plenty of Klune's trademark humor, has an overall darker feel than Cerulean. The full focus of Klune's wrath isn't felt until the Acknowledgements, however, where he unleashes on J.K. Rowling in the wake of her well-publicized positions on gender. Rowling tweeted back in 2020, "...I know and love trans people, but erasing the concept of sex removes the ability of many to meaningfully discuss their lives. It isn’t hate to speak the truth." (full tweet thread here).
Well, Klune is not a fan. In the book's Acknowledgements, he says:
I do want to be remembered as something, and it's very specific: not the Antichrist, but the Anti-J.K. Rowling. I want to be her antithesis, her opposite. I want my stories to fly in the face of everything she believes in...People like her—people who believe trans people are somehow lesser—deserve to be shunned until they disappear into the ether.
...
Between their trans classmates being attacked to books being banned from their libraries, the children know what is being done to them. And when they get old enough, they are going to make this world into what it should have been from the beginning: a place where everyone gets to be free without fear of repercussions because of who they are.
Everyone gets to be free without fear of repercussions...as long as they agree with TJ, and as long as they aren't J.K. Rowling (or Christian, for that matter). I appreciate Klune's passion for his position and his community, but it's weakened by his hypocrisy. He has done so much to bring queer stories forward and garner acceptance for that community; it would be amazing if he led more with love rather than hate.
Setting that aside—or perhaps because of that—we're left with a sequel that is more direct, more staunch in its stances, and a darker, more inflamed version of the first book. Somewhere also suffers from the absence of novelty that was present in Cerulean. While fans of the first book will certainly delight in once again spending time with Arthur's magical brood, one also comes to realize that the uniqueness of the first book was part of what made it special. To put it less delicately, the schtick gets old after a while.
I missed the sweetness of the first book, and I missed the optimism and the joy that were central to it. When you combine those absences with a limited storyline that felt too much like a retread of the first book's plot, this one ended up missing the mark a bit for me. My recommendation would be to skip it and preserve the magic of The House in the Cerulean Sea.
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