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chanlo1994's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
lighthearted
mysterious
relaxing
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
The format is refreshing, as nearly entry is written as a letter or some sort of hand written note by the characters. Everyone speaks very formally, so it makes the pace of the book go by slower.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Grief, Panic attacks/disorders, and Mental illness
Moderate: Death of parent
Minor: Suicidal thoughts
devynreadsnovels's review
adventurous
challenging
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
lighthearted
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Grief, Panic attacks/disorders, Injury/Injury detail, Death of parent, Confinement, Death, Medical trauma, and Mental illness
ninjamuse's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Mental illness
Minor: Medical content and Death of parent
kerrygetsliterary's review
adventurous
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
What a cool book! I don't read many books in epistolary format, and when I do, I always love the experience.
I took notes while reading at the start, then promptly forgot about them as I was too engrossed in the story to remember to jot down any thoughts for a review. Oops. I did manage to mention that I loved the writing. The prose is excellent and the diction is lovely; it all flows nicely.
After that, I was hooked! I very much enjoyed reading all of the letters between E. and Henery, and between Sophy and Vyerin. Their characters were well developed, which I Imagine is not an easy task solely through letters. E. and Henery's romance was so wholesome and it made my heart swell reading their nerdy and adorable correspondence.
The concept of the Deep House was so cool and unique. It would be fascinating to be able to visit such an underwater dwelling. I relished in imagining this one-of-a-kind home, picturing the incredible views of the captivating and enigmatic ocean and its creatures. Even Sophy's missions sounded interesting, even though I would probably never join them out of fear.
I also appreciated the anxiety and agoraphobia representation in E. As a recovered panic disorder sufferer and agoraphobic, I could empathize with E. and her struggles.
And I loved that many characters were queer and it was just known and accepted. <3
The pacing can feel a bit slow, as there is a lot of world building and set up and attempting to figure out what happened to E. and Henery, but it's worth it to continue on and read to the end. I'm very much looking forward to book two!
I took notes while reading at the start, then promptly forgot about them as I was too engrossed in the story to remember to jot down any thoughts for a review. Oops. I did manage to mention that I loved the writing. The prose is excellent and the diction is lovely; it all flows nicely.
After that, I was hooked! I very much enjoyed reading all of the letters between E. and Henery, and between Sophy and Vyerin. Their characters were well developed, which I Imagine is not an easy task solely through letters. E. and Henery's romance was so wholesome and it made my heart swell reading their nerdy and adorable correspondence.
The concept of the Deep House was so cool and unique. It would be fascinating to be able to visit such an underwater dwelling. I relished in imagining this one-of-a-kind home, picturing the incredible views of the captivating and enigmatic ocean and its creatures. Even Sophy's missions sounded interesting, even though I would probably never join them out of fear.
I also appreciated the anxiety and agoraphobia representation in E. As a recovered panic disorder sufferer and agoraphobic, I could empathize with E. and her struggles.
And I loved that many characters were queer and it was just known and accepted. <3
The pacing can feel a bit slow, as there is a lot of world building and set up and attempting to figure out what happened to E. and Henery, but it's worth it to continue on and read to the end. I'm very much looking forward to book two!
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death of parent, Panic attacks/disorders, Grief, and Mental illness
tonisecelecticlibrary's review
adventurous
emotional
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Mental illness
purplepenning's review
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
3.5
Science-fantasy academia with a little bit of hope punk? I understand the comparisons to Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Fairies, but don't be drawn in by the House in the Cerulean Sea comparison (or A Marvelous Light, really). This is a quiet, scholarly-toned epistolary that lets small measures of mystery and taut adventure seep in around the margins before finally being awash with other worldly mystique.
It's a little slow for my tastes (and I wish I would have realized that it wasn't a standalone before I started it) but I'm glad I stuck with it. The writing is excellent and the characters finally won me over (despite my annoyance at the excessive self-deprecation in the majority of the letters!).
It's a little slow for my tastes (and I wish I would have realized that it wasn't a standalone before I started it) but I'm glad I stuck with it. The writing is excellent and the characters finally won me over (despite my annoyance at the excessive self-deprecation in the majority of the letters!).
Content Warnings
Moderate: Mental illness, Injury/Injury detail, Panic attacks/disorders, Abandonment, and Grief
Minor: Death of parent
cassidy_rain's review against another edition
adventurous
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
2.5
A sweet story, but unfortunately not my cup of tea.
I was drawn to this book by the gorgeous cover and whimsy description. Thank you Orbit Books and Netgalley for the eArc for review consideration! All opinions are my own.
This story takes place in a sort of whimsical, magical underwater reality. It’s a mix of magical realism, academia, mystery, and a dash of romance. It follows E. and Henerey who are scholars/adventurers. Both are a bit shy and feel like outsiders amongst their peers; they strike up a quick friendship as penpals. When they disappear unexpectedly, E’s sister and Henery’s brother work together to piece together the mystery.
This novel is put together entirely of letters back and forth between characters (and the occasional diary entry). I was worried about this and losing out on descriptions and understanding, but I do think it was done really well. It was easy to follow, despite keeping track of different timelines and characters between each correspondence. The letters were extremely detailed so I didn’t have trouble grasping what was going on. That said, I wish there was more world building because I am left a bit confused about this underwater world (how it came to be, what exactly the magical elements are, etc). I don’t dislike the characters, but don’t feel myself particularly invested either.
I found myself quite bored and thought the pace was really slow. It started to pick up for me only at about 75% of the way, when we finally started to get a few answers. That said, I’m excited about the direction of the story. I may or may not pick up Book 2 to see where it leads, since it was finally beginning to get interesting.
If you enjoyed Divine Rivals you may want to give this one a try!
I was drawn to this book by the gorgeous cover and whimsy description. Thank you Orbit Books and Netgalley for the eArc for review consideration! All opinions are my own.
This story takes place in a sort of whimsical, magical underwater reality. It’s a mix of magical realism, academia, mystery, and a dash of romance. It follows E. and Henerey who are scholars/adventurers. Both are a bit shy and feel like outsiders amongst their peers; they strike up a quick friendship as penpals. When they disappear unexpectedly, E’s sister and Henery’s brother work together to piece together the mystery.
This novel is put together entirely of letters back and forth between characters (and the occasional diary entry). I was worried about this and losing out on descriptions and understanding, but I do think it was done really well. It was easy to follow, despite keeping track of different timelines and characters between each correspondence. The letters were extremely detailed so I didn’t have trouble grasping what was going on. That said, I wish there was more world building because I am left a bit confused about this underwater world (how it came to be, what exactly the magical elements are, etc). I don’t dislike the characters, but don’t feel myself particularly invested either.
I found myself quite bored and thought the pace was really slow. It started to pick up for me only at about 75% of the way, when we finally started to get a few answers. That said, I’m excited about the direction of the story. I may or may not pick up Book 2 to see where it leads, since it was finally beginning to get interesting.
If you enjoyed Divine Rivals you may want to give this one a try!
Content Warnings
Moderate: Mental illness and Death of parent
meganpbell's review
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
lighthearted
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
If you’d dare to immerse yourself in a light academia fantasy under the sea, you won’t discover one more enchanting and earnest in equal measure than this epistolary debut! A Letter to the Luminous Deep is lush, romantic, and mysterious, unique, queer, and neurodivergent, and bubbling over with the magic of discovery—whether scientific, world-changing, or tenderly personal. Highly recommended for fans of Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries!
Content Warnings
Moderate: Grief and Mental illness
Minor: Death of parent and Medical content
bloggingwithdragons's review
lighthearted
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
I received this book for free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
I really wanted to like A Letter to the Luminous Deep—the cover is lovely, the concept is unique, the characters are likable, and the epistolary style is immersive. This was one of my most anticipated books of the year, but unfortunately, it was very difficult for me to even reach 34% of the way through the novel, let alone push through the rest of it. And it’s not because A Letter to the Luminous Deep is poorly written or anything like that, it just moved incredibly slowly.
The story is told exclusively through letters and occasionally, through other pieces of writing, like diary entries and field journals. Readers learn that two characters, E. and Scholar Henerey Clel, who struggle to make friends due to their introverted and anxious natures, start a timid correspondence over a mysterious fish. We have access to their letters and are able to witness their mutual growing importance to each other due to their siblings, Sophy and Vyerin. The siblings are going through the correspondence of E. And Henerey in attempts to piece together what became of them, as the two disappeared from E.’s now destroyed underwater home without a trace.
I was incredibly intrigued by the mystery of their disappearance and by another puzzle A Letter to the Luminous Deep presents. Admittedly, I felt like I was following breadcrumbs of information through the woods—there were hints at the larger world, with remarks to a global, devastating event, known as The Dive, that rendered humanity forever changed. Tiny bits of information are only alluded to once every ten exchanged letters or so and the focus is truly on the humdrum of everyday life for these characters. It’s even pretty easy to forget much of the novel is taking place underwater, when one is more frequently reading about things like the broken legs of a beloved chair and whatnot. It’s not until about halfway through this 432 page book that the pace starts to pick up a little bit. I would have loved to learn more about the world of this novel, as a huge fan of BioShock, a videogame taking place in a dystopian, crumbling city built entirely under the sea, I am quite enamored with the concept of underwater life. I was excited to see what a different, healthier civilization under the waves would look like.
What little I gleaned about life in this water-based civilization was captivating. I did enjoy reading about the technology used—automaton porpoises to help researchers make it to the depths, portable habitats known as bubbles, research complexes under the sea known as the Spheres, and mail boats. Though all of these technologies were fascinating to me, they take a back seat to the daily life of E. and to that of other characters, and all descriptions of them are disappointingly vague. I felt I wasn’t given enough details to even form a clear picture of what these technologies looked like. And I never learned how they were developed or how exactly they worked. I couldn’t help but to be bummed to not know more of the nitty gritty details of this world and how it functioned and felt frustrated that the novel only scratched the surface of this information time and time again.
It was my persistent interest in these breadcrumbs involving the world and also those regarding the mystery of the characters which kept me pushing until I finished the novel. I considered DNF-ing multiple times because I was concerned that the hints weren’t ever going anywhere, and nothing eventful was ever going to happen, but I prevailed. Unfortunately, my reward was a cliffhanger, but more on that later.
Though the prose of A Letter to the Luminous Deep is lovely and the letters shared create an intimate atmosphere, it was very difficult for me to focus on their content, which were written in the same tone and voice for all of the different characters, who were sometimes from quite different walks of life or of very different ages. All characters wrote in rather formal, somewhat antiquated colloquialisms, which consists of saying things along the lines of:
“Perhaps your mood has lifted even more since you responded to Scholar Clel’s letter, as I assume you have now? I can hardly count the number of times I have tried to convince you that occasional conversation with a kindred spirit can cure most ills.”
“Though I dare not say that I wish I were not a Scholar, I have felt of late a desire to escape to—to—well, somewhere else, and at present, I can think of no better elsewhere than the world you inhabit.”
This lack of variation between the letters and the writers made it difficult to discern who was writing to whom and the labels before each letter became indispensable to making this distinction. At one point, the novel offhandedly tells us that this is the speech everyone in the academic world uses, but I can’t fathom there being no other distinguishing features between the written word of such different characters, some of whom aren’t even scholars. There are no catch phrases, grammar quirks, technical jargon from different careers, or anything else distinguishing them from each other. Different fonts would have at least helped differentiate the writers, but there aren’t any used. The biggest difference we see in the letters is that one character doesn’t like to use the automated post system, which I gathered is something vaguely resembling underwater email.
Despite the notable lack of difference in the characters’ written word, something that seems quite pivotal in an epistolary novel, I did come to care for main character E.. I struggled to feel invested in other characters, as they just weren’t as compelling or sympathetic to me. E.’s younger sister, Sophy, is much more outgoing and details her own queer, slow-burn romance through her letters to her sister. This romance worked a bit better for me than the deepening bond between Henerey and E.—I think because it felt like Sophy and her love interest were on more equal footing. E., who is for all intents and purposes a shut-in due to her mental health struggles, has plenty to offer as a pen pal, but I worried for her ability to be a partner for someone actively taking part in the world.
On top of making E. such a sympathetic character, A Letter to the Luminous Deep makes life under the ocean or Sophy’s free deep dives as part of a research team feel cozy and unthreatening. It makes the ocean feel like a wondrous place just waiting to be discovered rather than a dark, deep unfathomable abyss filled with monstrous looking creatures. However unlike other cozy fantasies, like Bookshops & Bonedust, I felt that there just wasn’t a whole of substance and that not much was actually happening. At the point of the novel that I almost stopped reading for good, the biggest thing that had happened was that E.’s brother and his fiancée had come to live with her and she found the sudden invasion and forced cohabitation deeply unpleasant. Meanwhile, Sophy and Vyerin, commented to each other on the correspondence of E. and Henerey and took note of the deepening bond between their two kindred spirit siblings, something that readers have already noticed for themselves.
Unfortunately, every time I picked up A Letter to the Luminous Deep, it felt like a losing battle against myself, as my consciousness slipped away. It was a struggle to reign myself in enough to focus on the novel. Though I kept hoping that the mysteries or more information on the world would take center stage, they didn’t until almost the very end of the novel. To make matters worse, A Letter to the Luminous Deep then ends on a cliffhanger, leaving readers practically none the wiser about what E. and Henerey’s disappearance means for humanity. I am not 100 percent certain if I will read the next novel in the series, as I’m not sure I want to deal with the wretchedly slow pace again, but my interest in the world-building and the pervasive mystery is probably enough for me to give the series one more try.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Mental illness
idesofmarch's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.5
Content Warnings
Moderate: Grief
Minor: Death of parent and Mental illness
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