A Letter from the Lonesome Shore by Sylvie Cathrall

TL;DR: I am very disappointed, wow.
Source: NetGalley – thank you so much to the publisher!

Plot: We finally see E. and Henerey and where they’ve ended up and then how their family reaches them.
Characters: The characters I loved in book one were dialed up to 11 and were so much worse.
Setting: This was intriguing but sadly we spent much more time on needless handholding to learn anything.
Fantasy: Again, much like the setting we didn’t get nearly enough of this.

Summary:

Former correspondents E. and Henerey, accustomed to loving each other from afar, did not anticipate continuing their courtship in an enigmatic underwater city. When their journey through the Structure in E.’s garden strands them in a peculiar society preoccupied with the pleasures and perils of knowledge, E. and Henerey come to accept – and, more surprisingly still, embrace – the fact that they may never return home.

A year and a half later, Sophy and Vyerin finally discover one of the elusive Entries that will help them seek their siblings. As the group’s efforts bring them closer to E. and Henerey, an ancient, cosmic threat also draws near. . .

Thoughts:

A Letter to the Luminous Deep was one of my absolute favorite books of last year. I loved the back and forth between the family members and the puzzle of what happened to the Deep House. Unfortunately this did not fulfill on the promise that Luminous Deep created.

The back and forth in this one was quite a bit more complicated, which added a layer of complexity to the story that we didn’t quite have in the first one. On top of this our letter writers suddenly became far more verbose and the stream of consciousness writing desperately needed an editor. An unnecessarily large chunk of this novel is spent waxing and moaning about holding hands and sleeping on a bed beside one another. For characters trapped in an underwater, hidden city they spent remarkably little time investigating, and were quickly appeased by the scholars there to keep to themselves.

The climax and the ‘big bad’ were incredibly anticlimactic making the feeling of wasted time and frustration so profound. I finished the book and went to bed annoyed and cranky. Do I recommend the first book still? Sure, but I do think you can happily leave the ending where it was with the knowledge that everyone is happy in the end and avoid this one.