Published by Feiwel & Friends
Age Group: Young Adult
Format: Fiction
Genres and Categories: Asian Authors, Asian Characters, OwnVoices Representation, Asian Mythology, Deity Characters, Magic Users, Dragon Fantasy, Fairytales, Sea Fantasy, Dragons, Mythological Creatures, Sea Creatures, Spirits, Underwater Setting, Various Magic
My Rating:
Published on: 22nd February 2022
Pages: 336
Buy this Book! Amazon UK / Amazon US / Barnes & Noble / Blackwells / Bookshop.org US / Bookshop.org UK / Waterstones
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Deadly storms have ravaged Mina’s homeland for generations. Floods sweep away entire villages, while bloody wars are waged over the few remaining resources. Her people believe the Sea God, once their protector, now curses them with death and despair. In an attempt to appease him, each year a beautiful maiden is thrown into the sea to serve as the Sea God’s bride, in the hopes that one day the “true bride” will be chosen and end the suffering.
Many believe that Shim Cheong, the most beautiful girl in the village—and the beloved of Mina’s older brother Joon—may be the legendary true bride. But on the night Cheong is to be sacrificed, Joon follows Cheong out to sea, even knowing that to interfere is a death sentence. To save her brother, Mina throws herself into the water in Cheong’s stead.
Swept away to the Spirit Realm, a magical city of lesser gods and mythical beasts, Mina seeks out the Sea God, only to find him caught in an enchanted sleep. With the help of a mysterious young man named Shin—as well as a motley crew of demons, gods and spirits—Mina sets out to wake the Sea God and bring an end to the killer storms once and for all.
But she doesn’t have much time: A human cannot live long in the land of the spirits. And there are those who would do anything to keep the Sea God from waking...
This book was provided for free by NetGalley and the publishers in exchange for an honest review. Many thanks to the publisher and the author for the opportunity to read this book!
Content Warnings:
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The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea Review
A story of sacrifice and heroism filled with gods and mythical creatures, The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea is an incredible story that is as beautiful as its cover. Should you follow fate or forge your own path… or is it possible to do both?
The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea is a breathtakingly beautiful and haunting tale that is brought to life by Oh’s descriptive prose. As Mina falls beneath the waves and then walks through an abandoned village, everything is brought to life in her mind with every word. The visualisation was so strong that I didn’t feel as though I was reading a book most of the time; I was right there alongside Mina, experiencing what she experienced.
Another of the things I liked about Oh’s writing was the way she chose to imagine indescribable and unseeable things, such as fate and a soul. In The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea, fate is seen as a red string, connecting two people and providing the reader with a clear visual. Likewise, the souls of the Sea God’s brides are represented by birds.
Fate and souls are two concepts that can mean something completely different depending on where you’re from, your culture or your beliefs, and by unifying them with a specific visual, Oh unites the visualisation. The reader is “seeing” the same thing, and it also makes it less confusing by having a solid construct; souls have a tendency to be explained as some glowy intangible thing. In The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea, they are real, they are tangible, and things can happen to them. The same goes for fate.
The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea is a retelling of the Korean folktale “The Tale of Shim Cheong”, and the original folktale is retold by Mina during the novel. By moving the tale away from Shim to Mina, to a girl who was not intended as the Sea God’s bride, Oh provides us with an instantly likeable protagonist. She’s not the most beautiful girl in the village; she’s just an ordinary person who wants to help.
However, it isn’t just that she’s a good person – after all, she jumped into the sea instead of someone else – it’s because she did it with just the vaguest of ideas of a plan. Find the Sea God, save the village, check. That is as far as Mina had gotten, and when she gets beneath the sea, she finds that she is way over her head. How many of us have been there? *raises hand*.
She is not the only likeable character, and in all honesty, I can only think of one I disliked, and you’re supposed to dislike her. Everyone else was genuine and, more importantly, flawed. Not one of them was perfect. They either worried because they didn’t have something vital, because they had too much of something and didn’t want to become something bad, or because they were lonely and didn’t know how to express their emotions. Even in the Spirit Realm, people have their insecurities. When I say people, I’m referring to a diverse range of creatures from Korean mythology that Oh has brought to life in wonderful detail. From the spirits of deceased humans, to mythical sea creatures, gods and goddesses, and demons.
I often find that in most mythological tales, the gods and goddesses are one-dimensional, not just seen as aloof but completely unable to change in any way. It was remarkable to come across a book where, for once, they weren’t set in stone, where they were seen to actively change based on events that happened in their lives (on and off the pages), affected by new people entering their lives.
While it is the spirit realm, it is not a realm full of doom and gloom. Mina finds a world that is worried about the Sea God’s sleep and raids by a mysterious goddess, yet still imbued with life and love. The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea is a book of opposites. It’s beautiful and joyful, yet it’s hauntingly emotional, and there is one scene especially that will have you reaching for your tissues – I’m not sure if they were unhappy or happy tears (or a mixture of both!) for me!
This is a tale about family and found family, of forging your own path while also following fate. Of doing the wrong thing, yet also doing the right thing. In death, many characters have found rebirth, and I was strongly reminded of yin and yang, the concept of opposing forces actually being complementary and interconnected rather than total opposites. That is certainly the case in The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea, where everything is connected.
I had a lot of theories, and while I had a few things worked out, I never quite connected everything. This is a book that is an emotional rollercoaster filled with twists and turns, and Oh keeps you on the edge of your seat. She feeds the reader just enough to get their imagination going, to keep the story moving, but without giving the whole game away.
The one downside to The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea is that it is a standalone novel. It works as one, I have to admit, but as with all books that I love, I always want the author to return to that universe and continue the characters’ story. This fact should not dissuade you from reading The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea at all. It is a magical book and one that will whisk you off to a world under the sea, and yes, you may have that song in your head for a few days after reading it 😉
About Axie Oh
Axie Oh is a first-generation Korean American, born in New York City and raised in New Jersey. She studied Korean history and creative writing as an undergrad at the University of California San Diego and holds an MFA in Writing for Young People from Lesley University. Her passions include K-pop, anime, stationery supplies, and milk tea, and she currently resides in Las Vegas, Nevada, with her dog, Toro (named after Totoro)
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Thank you for reading my review for The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea. I hope you enjoyed it!
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