Somewhere Beyond the Sea
by TJ KluneSeries: Cerulean Chronicles #2
Genres: Fiction / Fantasy / Humorous
Published on September 10, 2024
Pages: 400
Format: eBook Source: Library
Somewhere Beyond the Sea is the hugely-anticipated sequel to TJ Klune's The House in the Cerulean Sea, one of the best-loved and best-selling fantasy novels of the past decade.
A magical house. A secret past. A summons that could change everything.
Arthur Parnassus lives a good life built on the ashes of a bad one.
He’s the headmaster of a strange orphanage on a distant and peculiar island, and he hopes to soon be the adoptive father to the six dangerous and magical children who live there.
Arthur works hard and loves with his whole heart so none of the children ever feel the neglect and pain that he once felt as an orphan on that very same island so long ago. He is not alone: joining him is the love of his life, Linus Baker, a former caseworker in the Department In Charge of Magical Youth. And there's the island's sprite, Zoe Chapelwhite, and her girlfriend, Mayor Helen Webb. Together, they will do anything to protect the children.
But when Arthur is summoned to make a public statement about his dark past, he finds himself at the helm of a fight for the future that his family, and all magical people, deserve.
And when a new magical child hopes to join them on their island home—one who finds power in calling himself monster, a name that Arthur worked so hard to protect his children from—Arthur knows they’re at a breaking point: their family will either grow stronger than ever or fall apart.
Welcome back to Marsyas Island. This is Arthur’s story.
Somewhere Beyond the Sea is a story of resistance, lovingly told, about the daunting experience of fighting for the life you want to live and doing the work to keep it.
I liked The House in the Cerulean Sea, the first book in this series but I didn’t love it. Part of the reason was because of the were-Pomeranian. As a Pomeranian mom I only read it because of the Pom rep. But the person in the book only changed into a Pom when they were scared and then cowered in Pom form. Nope. Nope. Nope. Changed when scared and then charge headlong into danger in Pom form? Absolutely on brand for the breed. It bothered me for the whole book to have that wrong.
Anyway, I didn’t read the sequel right off because of that. I’m glad I got to it though. First of all, even though the were character is a big part of the story he never Pomeranian shifts. Secondly, forget what the story is. The plot doesn’t even matter. This book is a rant and it is beautiful.
I’ve seen reviews that complain about this but I don’t care about those people. T. J. Klune looked around the state of world – specifically the state of the LGBTQ+ world – and went off in novel form. If you are of a liberal mindset this book is a warm hug of what could be if humans weren’t horrible. He discusses this in the afterward.
I highlighted so many quotes in this book so I decided to do this review as just quotes because they were the best part. If you don’t know the story, it involves a foster home full of the most dangerous magical children in the world. They are learning to control their violent natures but it is hard.
Vet humor! (It reminds me of a fair that I worked near that had in its rules that every animal that came needed to be tested for rabies before they could compete. Since you can only do that by taking their brains out, it makes it hard to show them afterwards. But no one would take the language out of the rules year after year even though obviously everyone ignored it.)
