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queenterribletimy's review
4.0
Actual rating: 3.5, but decided to round it up.
The review with my song of choice is up on my blog.
Since I finished the book I’ve been thinking about how on earth I’m going to review this without spoilers. Or where to start to begin with. The blurb doesn’t give away much and aside my instincts, I had no idea what to expect. And still, it picked my interest when it got assigned to FBR in the SPFBO contest. Turns out my initial feelings were right, because since then it had become one of the semi-finalists. And not without reason. The Endless Ocean is an adventurous tale with a lot of mythological influence and interesting ideas. It definitely deserves some more attention and a bit of care from the author.
At the beginning, we get to know two orphans, Clare and Adrian who each has their magical skills which they learn to improve at an institute. Adrian is a top student and is way ahead of his classmates, while Clare struggles with her studies and has to work hard to meet the expectations of her teachers. From the sound of it they only have each other and Adrian’s familiar, Eko the gecko (who is actually my favorite character besides Silth). One day circumstances lead them to meet Bill the pirate who harbors his own secrets which he is reluctant to share and he is quite fond of his own voice – also he is the one who presents all the info dumping most of the time – and is a know-it-all character. I liked him at first, but then I just wanted to punch him in the face as the story advanced. He is part of the so-called Brotherhood which goal is to fight against Lilith (more of her later) and her followers who try to wreak havoc between the remaining kingdoms of the Inner Sea by separating Cartha from the others. They are also the only ones who still offer safety to the Brotherhood, consisting a lot of pirates.
The twins, Clare and Adrian are forced to part with each other and they both take a different kind of journey which leads them to their own adventure and learning process about the world. and their abilities. Clare becomes a Navigator under Bill’s tutelage and learns how to fight with a sword, while Adrian ends up on an island called Negra, home of Lilith, the villain of the story. Seeing how many mythological elements Bennett used in this book, I’m fairly sure this choice of name is intentional. According to some legends, Lilith was the first woman, wife of Adam who gave birth to a few monsters after leaving Adam and the Eden. She is also known as a demon. All in all, she is not being remembered as one of the good guys. And since I’m at myths and legends. I’ve already mentioned we’ve got quite a mix here: Atlantis, Minotaur and his labyrinth, a nod to Anubis, an egyptian god, to the Kraken/Leviathan, to the sirens and I’m pretty sure the prison and the island it stands on has some link to other stories. Of course Bennett added his own twist and in some cases he only gives a small nods to these beings and legends. Obviously, he has a wide knowledge in this area and he is not afraid to use it. He built up a really detailed world, with some cool additions like traveling between worlds through gates. All of these worlds are different and feels like we don’t only travel geographically, but in time too – some has modern feel to them, some are more ancient, having their own society and customs. We only get glimpses at some of these, but I’m hoping that we can explore more of these in later books. My favorite original idea in this book was the usage of figureheads. I’m not going to spoil things, let’s just say it was an element which really got me by surprise and had a significant part in the story. They totally come out of the blue and their appearance doesn’t really make sense in the beginning but that’s more a problem on the writing part.
Talking about writing. I quite liked Bennett’s style of writing, his narration is flowing and he is able to give life to his world. It needs a bit of work though on the editing part, but there is no question that the man is talented.
“One minute the only source of light was the prison in the distance, the next a vast metropolis was spread below him. Ziggurats lit in green and violet; strange lights played beneath him, shimmering and distorted in the hot air.”
Even so, he fails in characterisation. It’s hard to connect with any of them, despite their hardships. I just couldn’t make myself care much about them and they felt a bit flat. I guess it tells a lot that both my favorite characters are sidekicks. Most of the characters remain distant, which might be because of the omniscient POV. The story was also a bit predictable, which was supposed to be a big reveal wasn’t really surprising. Plus it uses a well-known trope without any twist and thus being a bit cliché. To his credit though, Clare is quite a badass heroine who can protect and stand up to herself.
This book is a rough diamond which needs some polishing, but man, you can see it shine anyway. The Endless Ocean is a tale of a great adventure to fantastical worlds, pirates, ancient creatures. Sinbad’s adventures meets legends of the ancient era, giving birth to an epic fantasy worth your time.
The review with my song of choice is up on my blog.
Since I finished the book I’ve been thinking about how on earth I’m going to review this without spoilers. Or where to start to begin with. The blurb doesn’t give away much and aside my instincts, I had no idea what to expect. And still, it picked my interest when it got assigned to FBR in the SPFBO contest. Turns out my initial feelings were right, because since then it had become one of the semi-finalists. And not without reason. The Endless Ocean is an adventurous tale with a lot of mythological influence and interesting ideas. It definitely deserves some more attention and a bit of care from the author.
At the beginning, we get to know two orphans, Clare and Adrian who each has their magical skills which they learn to improve at an institute. Adrian is a top student and is way ahead of his classmates, while Clare struggles with her studies and has to work hard to meet the expectations of her teachers. From the sound of it they only have each other and Adrian’s familiar, Eko the gecko (who is actually my favorite character besides Silth). One day circumstances lead them to meet Bill the pirate who harbors his own secrets which he is reluctant to share and he is quite fond of his own voice – also he is the one who presents all the info dumping most of the time – and is a know-it-all character. I liked him at first, but then I just wanted to punch him in the face as the story advanced. He is part of the so-called Brotherhood which goal is to fight against Lilith (more of her later) and her followers who try to wreak havoc between the remaining kingdoms of the Inner Sea by separating Cartha from the others. They are also the only ones who still offer safety to the Brotherhood, consisting a lot of pirates.
The twins, Clare and Adrian are forced to part with each other and they both take a different kind of journey which leads them to their own adventure and learning process about the world. and their abilities. Clare becomes a Navigator under Bill’s tutelage and learns how to fight with a sword, while Adrian ends up on an island called Negra, home of Lilith, the villain of the story. Seeing how many mythological elements Bennett used in this book, I’m fairly sure this choice of name is intentional. According to some legends, Lilith was the first woman, wife of Adam who gave birth to a few monsters after leaving Adam and the Eden. She is also known as a demon. All in all, she is not being remembered as one of the good guys. And since I’m at myths and legends. I’ve already mentioned we’ve got quite a mix here: Atlantis, Minotaur and his labyrinth, a nod to Anubis, an egyptian god, to the Kraken/Leviathan, to the sirens and I’m pretty sure the prison and the island it stands on has some link to other stories. Of course Bennett added his own twist and in some cases he only gives a small nods to these beings and legends. Obviously, he has a wide knowledge in this area and he is not afraid to use it. He built up a really detailed world, with some cool additions like traveling between worlds through gates. All of these worlds are different and feels like we don’t only travel geographically, but in time too – some has modern feel to them, some are more ancient, having their own society and customs. We only get glimpses at some of these, but I’m hoping that we can explore more of these in later books. My favorite original idea in this book was the usage of figureheads. I’m not going to spoil things, let’s just say it was an element which really got me by surprise and had a significant part in the story. They totally come out of the blue and their appearance doesn’t really make sense in the beginning but that’s more a problem on the writing part.
Talking about writing. I quite liked Bennett’s style of writing, his narration is flowing and he is able to give life to his world. It needs a bit of work though on the editing part, but there is no question that the man is talented.
“One minute the only source of light was the prison in the distance, the next a vast metropolis was spread below him. Ziggurats lit in green and violet; strange lights played beneath him, shimmering and distorted in the hot air.”
Even so, he fails in characterisation. It’s hard to connect with any of them, despite their hardships. I just couldn’t make myself care much about them and they felt a bit flat. I guess it tells a lot that both my favorite characters are sidekicks. Most of the characters remain distant, which might be because of the omniscient POV. The story was also a bit predictable, which was supposed to be a big reveal wasn’t really surprising. Plus it uses a well-known trope without any twist and thus being a bit cliché. To his credit though, Clare is quite a badass heroine who can protect and stand up to herself.
This book is a rough diamond which needs some polishing, but man, you can see it shine anyway. The Endless Ocean is a tale of a great adventure to fantastical worlds, pirates, ancient creatures. Sinbad’s adventures meets legends of the ancient era, giving birth to an epic fantasy worth your time.
barb4ry1's review against another edition
3.0
The Endless Ocean tells the story of orphans Clare and Adrian Watts who find themselves caught up in the currents of the larger world. They are swept into a world of ritual and myth where only their unique heritage can save them.
You shouldn’t know too much about the plot as most of the fun comes from discovering it along the way.
Orphans, I must confess, aren’t the most relatable heroes I’ve ever met. They’re a bit bland. Life just happens to them and they have no real agenda. Captain Billy makes a great entrance, but later on, he devolves into Mr. Know-it-all who explains everything and throws info-dumps here and there. Adrian’s familiar - lizard Ecko is the highlight of the story. He adds a lot of fun and his interactions with orphans and the outside world add humour to the plot.
While the story develops in unexpected directions and keeps on surprising the reader, I didn’t feel fully immersed. I can’t explain why but I guess it’s the result of my lack of connection with characters.
Anyway, if one of the objectives of good fiction is to throw you into a land created by an author’s vivid imaginings, Bennett succeeds in grand fashion. It won’t be to everyone’s tastes, but I don’t see why you shouldn’t try for yourself.
You shouldn’t know too much about the plot as most of the fun comes from discovering it along the way.
Orphans, I must confess, aren’t the most relatable heroes I’ve ever met. They’re a bit bland. Life just happens to them and they have no real agenda. Captain Billy makes a great entrance, but later on, he devolves into Mr. Know-it-all who explains everything and throws info-dumps here and there. Adrian’s familiar - lizard Ecko is the highlight of the story. He adds a lot of fun and his interactions with orphans and the outside world add humour to the plot.
While the story develops in unexpected directions and keeps on surprising the reader, I didn’t feel fully immersed. I can’t explain why but I guess it’s the result of my lack of connection with characters.
Anyway, if one of the objectives of good fiction is to throw you into a land created by an author’s vivid imaginings, Bennett succeeds in grand fashion. It won’t be to everyone’s tastes, but I don’t see why you shouldn’t try for yourself.
swiff's review
5.0
Simply put, Toby Bennett’s The Endless Ocean is one of the most welcome surprises I’ve read in quite some time. I first heard about it when it was assigned to me as part of the fourth annual self-published fantasy blog-off (#SPFBO4) contest. Looking at the book’s Amazon page, there was only one review, three sentences long, from 2011. Its Goodreads page offered the same skimpy feedback: one review, very short and non-descriptive, several years old. Suffice to say, I wasn’t expecting much from this story. After all, how good could a book be with such little fanfare after being on the market for more than seven years? It turns out, it can be very, very good. The Endless Ocean is a rare treat: an unconventional, imaginative, and unpredictable tale, each chapter brimming with fresh ideas and exciting concepts. Bennett’s prose is strong and concise, the dialogue is swift and direct, and ideas crackle with originality and wonder. Although this book falls short in a few minor areas, this is a standout novel that deserves a much larger audience.
I’m hesitant to share details about the plot. The Amazon blurb seems intentionally vague, offering a scant synopsis of two orphans that are somehow linked to an event that threatens “every shore.” The book starts equally vague, with a dreamlike sequence that drops the reader amidst a shipwreck in a storm. Or is it? We are introduced to Clare as her spirit is pulled into the fray. The ship, the storm, a blind man calling her name from the crow’s nest – none of it makes sense, yet it all seems somehow familiar to her. A flash of violence, a flourish of magic, and a distant song… and Clare is shocked back into reality: she is in a classroom, failing her Navigation exam, with her scrying bowl shattered upon the floor. And so, we are launched into the first of many mysteries that propels Clare and her twin brother Adrian through a gauntlet of events that culminates into a fight for reality itself.
It may initially feel like formulaic territory: orphans with mysterious pasts in some type of magic school, destined for greater things. But the similarities stop there. What sets this book apart are the inventive characters, settings, and situations that leap off the page, and do so consistently throughout the story. There is a certain “wow” factor that seemed to top itself nearly every chapter: there is Eko, a telepathic, wise-cracking, gliding gecko familiar who might have the most interesting character arc of the entire book. There are land, sea, and air battles with terrifying fish creatures and silver-eyed hive-mind witches. There are references to the lost continent of Atlantis, ancient mythological rituals, and modern-day hubcaps. Yes, hubcaps. There is a menacing, blood-sucking mannequin figurehead who devours souls. There is a multiverse of realities, with an all-powerful goddess who is frozen outside of time. There is a divided soul at war with itself. There’s even a naval battle upon the roofs of a cluster of submerged city skyscrapers. And this is all before the halfway point of the story.
At its core, this is a pirate fantasy saga that ties together millennia-old legends of various races and creatures throughout an endless ocean, connected by gateways that span a multiverse of realities. The dreamlike haze in the story’s early pages are present throughout the book, and not everything is explained as neatly as one might expect. But Bennett does try and address the larger questions at hand, including the origin of supernatural species, the reasoning behind a cult-like cabal of witches and mages, and the politics that have either supported or suppressed the different world factions over time. With so many aspects to the story, it sometimes felt like the book had bitten off more than it could chew. But we don’t spend too much time lingering on one area or event before another plot revelation launches the story into new, uncharted waters. I appreciated the pace of the novel and felt like the story could have easily been bogged down by extraneous details and overzealous worldbuilding. Thankfully, Bennett stayed focused on telling Clare and Adrian’s story, which I found to be a shrewd decision.
Although the plot was thrilling and rife with excitement, there was distinct lack of characterization for some of our main protagonists. For example, the pirate captain Bill seemed like an all-knowing source of information that provided heavy exposition dumps at times. Later, I discovered there was a reason for this, but it still seemed convenient for one person to have all the answers our heroes might inquire about. However, many other supporting characters were well-developed through clever dialogue that quickly displayed their character traits. There was more showing than telling, and some characters’ developments felt natural and unforced. For others, though – especially Clare and Adrian – everything happened to them; they did not have much agency on their own. Major events encircled the twins at every turn, and at no point did I feel that they had any leeway to make their own decisions. They had no choice but to follow where the story would take them, so it was difficult to connect or empathize with them without seeing their morality or character tested.
In summary, I found The Endless Ocean to be a breath of fresh air. It ignored tropes and celebrated big ideas. It was a thrilling, page-turning read in which I was genuinely interested in seeing if its level of ingenuity was sustainable throughout, and it often was. It isn’t a perfect book; there were a few times that the characterizations felt a bit flat, and not every explanation or plot twist felt earned, yet its creativity and earnestness helped elevate it into something wondrous and quite original. I was happy to discover that there is a sequel to this story that exists, currently with zero ratings on Amazon and Goodreads. This will soon be rectified.
8.3 / 10 5 stars
I’m hesitant to share details about the plot. The Amazon blurb seems intentionally vague, offering a scant synopsis of two orphans that are somehow linked to an event that threatens “every shore.” The book starts equally vague, with a dreamlike sequence that drops the reader amidst a shipwreck in a storm. Or is it? We are introduced to Clare as her spirit is pulled into the fray. The ship, the storm, a blind man calling her name from the crow’s nest – none of it makes sense, yet it all seems somehow familiar to her. A flash of violence, a flourish of magic, and a distant song… and Clare is shocked back into reality: she is in a classroom, failing her Navigation exam, with her scrying bowl shattered upon the floor. And so, we are launched into the first of many mysteries that propels Clare and her twin brother Adrian through a gauntlet of events that culminates into a fight for reality itself.
It may initially feel like formulaic territory: orphans with mysterious pasts in some type of magic school, destined for greater things. But the similarities stop there. What sets this book apart are the inventive characters, settings, and situations that leap off the page, and do so consistently throughout the story. There is a certain “wow” factor that seemed to top itself nearly every chapter: there is Eko, a telepathic, wise-cracking, gliding gecko familiar who might have the most interesting character arc of the entire book. There are land, sea, and air battles with terrifying fish creatures and silver-eyed hive-mind witches. There are references to the lost continent of Atlantis, ancient mythological rituals, and modern-day hubcaps. Yes, hubcaps. There is a menacing, blood-sucking mannequin figurehead who devours souls. There is a multiverse of realities, with an all-powerful goddess who is frozen outside of time. There is a divided soul at war with itself. There’s even a naval battle upon the roofs of a cluster of submerged city skyscrapers. And this is all before the halfway point of the story.
At its core, this is a pirate fantasy saga that ties together millennia-old legends of various races and creatures throughout an endless ocean, connected by gateways that span a multiverse of realities. The dreamlike haze in the story’s early pages are present throughout the book, and not everything is explained as neatly as one might expect. But Bennett does try and address the larger questions at hand, including the origin of supernatural species, the reasoning behind a cult-like cabal of witches and mages, and the politics that have either supported or suppressed the different world factions over time. With so many aspects to the story, it sometimes felt like the book had bitten off more than it could chew. But we don’t spend too much time lingering on one area or event before another plot revelation launches the story into new, uncharted waters. I appreciated the pace of the novel and felt like the story could have easily been bogged down by extraneous details and overzealous worldbuilding. Thankfully, Bennett stayed focused on telling Clare and Adrian’s story, which I found to be a shrewd decision.
Although the plot was thrilling and rife with excitement, there was distinct lack of characterization for some of our main protagonists. For example, the pirate captain Bill seemed like an all-knowing source of information that provided heavy exposition dumps at times. Later, I discovered there was a reason for this, but it still seemed convenient for one person to have all the answers our heroes might inquire about. However, many other supporting characters were well-developed through clever dialogue that quickly displayed their character traits. There was more showing than telling, and some characters’ developments felt natural and unforced. For others, though – especially Clare and Adrian – everything happened to them; they did not have much agency on their own. Major events encircled the twins at every turn, and at no point did I feel that they had any leeway to make their own decisions. They had no choice but to follow where the story would take them, so it was difficult to connect or empathize with them without seeing their morality or character tested.
In summary, I found The Endless Ocean to be a breath of fresh air. It ignored tropes and celebrated big ideas. It was a thrilling, page-turning read in which I was genuinely interested in seeing if its level of ingenuity was sustainable throughout, and it often was. It isn’t a perfect book; there were a few times that the characterizations felt a bit flat, and not every explanation or plot twist felt earned, yet its creativity and earnestness helped elevate it into something wondrous and quite original. I was happy to discover that there is a sequel to this story that exists, currently with zero ratings on Amazon and Goodreads. This will soon be rectified.
8.3 / 10 5 stars
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