Zin E. RocklynRecensioni

I speak of this as if it were instantaneous. Gods-like in its swift retribution for our foul existence. But it wasn’t. It was achingly slow, deliberate. Hubris could not shield us from the sun’s heat, from the boldness of below-surface creatures caressing the innocent flesh of our curious young ones. We were the finest coastal traders of the continent. Sea-battling vessels, fish, fruit, and labour were our currency. We were hardbacked and hardworking. We were proud. And now we are dying.

Flowers for the Sea was a story of grief, anger, and how those two emotions not only change us but carry on to our children. Set in a fantasy, horror, scifi world in which climate change has forced them to take to the sea, Iraxi has been surviving on this ship for 1,743 days. Told all from Iraxi's point-of-view, readers are brought in as she's pregnant, surviving through the pregnancy longer than anyone else has. She doesn't seem happy about it and as we view this world through her lens, it's cloaked in her disdain for the people she's surviving with, the filthiness of not being able to properly wash, and the ever present fear.

My sister and I shared quarters the size of my room on the ship. Back then, I’d complained of suffocation. Now, I choke on the emptiness.

While in the present we're seeing Iraxi's life on the ship, she does think back, with some flashbacks, to how life has lead her to this moment. We learn that they are from a coastal village and that Iraxi was propositioned by a prince but she refused him because she was in love with someone else. This lead to her family being murdered in a house fire and the people of the ship having resentment for her not joining with the prince and therefore their villages combining, thinking that could have saved them somehow from having to abandon to the ship to escape the encroaching water. The anger and grief Iraxi feels from her family's murder is palpable, I mean the line “Now, I choke on the emptiness.” is a gut punch.

The child giggles. And I scream.

At a little over a hundred pages, the story moves fairly quickly and while we get some background, Iraxi starts giving birth pretty quickly in. The author doesn't shy away from bringing us in and describing the pain of birth and with an added scifi element, it's gritty. Iraxi passes on her anger to her child and through that child, Iraxi gets some of her revenge. Look, on a good day, I'm mildly disturbed by children, so this baby was capital H-orror to me.

Fire refused me. And so, I surrender to the sea.

I was impressed with how in such a short page count, we got all the dynamics of the important relationships, the background to understand the world and Iraxi, and all the fantasy, scifi, and horror elements. There was so much to explore here, Iraxi's phoenix emerging, climate change ramifications, fear, survival, and generational trauma, all told through a grief and anger coloring that was sharp toothed and guttural. I haven't even mentioned the appearance of mermaid like creatures, so yeah, there's that, too.
Recommended if you can handle gut churning poetry.

There are books in the world that you know are not for you, but you like the author (I follow her on twitter, I don't know her personally), so you convince yourself to try it anyway.

The story centers around an unwanted pregnancy that turns monstrous, and has cosmic horror vibes, and either one of those alone is usually a do-not-want for me, so both at once was quite a lot.

That the story worked at all on any level for me is testimony to Rocklyn's skill as a storyteller, but friends, check the content warnings on this one.

Dark. Beautifully written.

Hrm. Well-written, but a bit opaque for me. YMMV.½

Flowers for the Sea is not an easy read--the story itself, the prose, and the progression all make for a journey that a reader must embrace and travel through in a fashion that (at least for this reader) might well involve working for meaning as well as cringing away from some of those very same meanings. And yet, this is a gorgeous book worth appreciating in all its facets, and I'm glad to have read it, just as I'll be glad to pick up anything else Rocklyn writes.

The power of this tale is so timely, the immediacy of the content is almost crushing if you allow yourself to think about it. In many ways, I felt "seen" by this book in a way that I've rarely, if ever, experienced when the topic of pregnancy comes up, and the pure focus Rocklyn brings to bear on the protagonist's situation here is as artful as it is terrifying from moment to moment. If this book had been a novel, I'm actually not sure I could have made it through the tale, but as a novella, the length and focus on topic are just enough to be painful without being too much. I will say that there's some backstory and drama which clutters up the story a bit more than I think might have been necessary, but then again, since it also gives some breadth to the story and gives the reader a break from the immediacy of the present moment we're focused on, I can see it was included.

All told, this is a fantastic book, and a short, powerful read with gorgeous prose. It won't be for everyone--I'm still not sure whether I enjoyed it so much as appreciated it, myself--but at the same time, I can't wait to pick up Rocklyn's next book.½

A delicious little macabre story perfect for bedtime reading!

When the land got submerged under the waves of the seas, people moved to boats. This story starts on one of those boats, where Iraxi is heavily pregnant - and everyone hopes that this will be the first child to be born after years on the waves and all other newborns being lost. But for her the story started a lot earlier - she belongs to a family which was persecuted and killed off for being able to talk to the sea, she was once asked for by a prince and she saw the destruction of her world long before the world of everyone else ended.

And she dreams - sometimes with open eyes, sometimes while sleeping - about the past and about sea monsters. Because in this world the seas and the air contains literal monsters - some being visible by everyone and some seemingly hiding.

There is nothing beautiful in living on a boat for years - everyone is dirty and everyone's mind may not be exactly as sharp as it started. But the baby seems to give everyone hope. Iraxi, knowing more than others, being able to see more than others, is not sure. And birth in primitive conditions is never fun - even when the child is normal.

It is unclear how much of what Iraxi sees is reality and how much is feverish dreams. It can be read either way in some places I think. The end is almost expected (although the fact that some people made it to the end surprised me a bit). There seems to be connection to some African myths, Iraxi is often described as being very dark skinned and there is something akin to magic happening towards the end of the novella. The very end is as decisive as it is completing a circle. Plus some of the dreams sounded almost Lovecraftian.

I don't enjoy horror as much as I enjoy the rest of the speculative genres and this novella was getting a bit too close to where I usually draw my lines. But it worked out at the end. It won't make my list of best novellas of the year but it is readable and it may work even better for someone who enjoys that type of stories more than I usually do.½

(Full disclosure: I received a free e-ARc for review through Netgalley.)

“‘Naiem,’ Iraxi,” he says, voice even smaller. “I meant no harm nor insult.”
“What does it mean?” My words collide into one another. I am drunk on affection and I feel foolish. Yet I cannot move. My desire to wanes as the bath continues to warm. My eyelids droop, but I find the strength to keep them mostly open.
“It means ‘mother to all,’ Iraxi.”
But it isn’t Borim who answers. It is the being he is holding.

***

Then why am I here? I think angrily. Why did you save me? Why are you keeping me alive?
At this, the being does something like a smirk, and I shudder.
“It is not you, naiem, but your anger that is destined for so much more.”

***

It's been four moons since Iraxi and her fellow villagers boarded an ark, their lands overtaken by the rising floodwaters - and the mysterious, tentacled creatures who dwell therein.

Among the refugees, Iraxi is an outcast; her father and grandmother "communed with the unpredictable tides," a talent that bred both fear and jealousy amongst her neighbors. When Iraxi refused to marry a spoiled prince, thus uniting two neighboring kingdoms, her parents and siblings paid the ultimate price. Now she is alone, shunned, destined for a burial at sea herself - if not for the life that grows inside her. In a world where children are few and far between, Iraxi may hold the key to saving (or perhaps destroying) humanity.

FLOWERS FOR THE SEA is a deliciously horrifying tale: one of climate change and evolution, pregnancy and childbirth (holy body horror, Batman!), and monsters that creep along the ocean floor and swoop, open-mouthed, from the clouds (with a generous sprinkle of the "Humans Are the Real Monsters" trope for good measure).

Rocklyn's unveiling happens at a leisurely pace - tantalizingly so - and I spent so much time trying to figure out what was going on that I think a second read-through might be in order, just to scavenge for any morsels that I might have missed. It's a weird tale, to be sure, but also disquieting given the way it's anchored in our current reality (i.e., the world is burning and instead of taxing the eff out of billionaires we're letting them go to "space").

I'm 100% on board with the comparisons to Octavia E. Butler, but the first comp that pops into my head is THE DEEP by Rivers Solomon. Come to think of it, I don't see any reason why the two stories can't exist in the same 'verse...

Wow, this was unlike anything I've ever read before. It's like a dream you want to go back to and try and understand better. The characters feel as though they are based on African lore from their names and their physical descriptions.
The book starts off with a woman who is pregnant on a boat surrounded by monsters in the sea. She is the only one who has been able to carry a child to term as the occupants of the boat wait anxiously on the birth of the child. Then things get really weird, from the way the story goes you get a feeling that this woman may not be completely human and by the end of the story you get some answers but definitely not all the answers. Not sure if this is a stand alone book or not, it could definitely continue but it's truly dazzling enough on its own to keep you engrossed. I thoroughly enjoyed it.