Saltswept by Katalina Watt Review

A ragtag crew. A perilous quest. First, they need a boat. Next, they need to learn how to sail it.
 

A pirate faces the gallows drop. A farmer is given a terrible ultimatum to save her daughter. An acolyte ascends to priestesshood . . . only to find that a blessing really can be a curse. These unlikely bedfellows band together with an inscrutable pickpocket and a talking ottercat in pursuit of the most hopeless of to sail into the Maelstrom - a raging whirlpool from which no one has ever escaped - and the mysterious treasure hidden within it.
 

The quest will test their fragile allegiance to its limits, but there is more at stake here than getting the magic of the world is in peril, and the barrier between life and death has never been so thin. And in the Bastion, the seat of power in Paranish, the queen has an unquenchable thirst that threatens the world and everyone in it.

 

Can there be honour amongst thieves? Without it, they might never see another sunrise.

Following an unlikely group of islanders finding their way under an authoritarian and oppressive magical monarchy, Katalina Watt’s Saltswept is a maritime focused fantasy novel featuring interesting narrative elements with folklore and flavor inspired by Southeast Asian culture. Fast-paced, straightforward, and as queer and colorful as the fruit section at a port of call market vendor stall, this book has all the right ingredients and promises a high seas heist and exciting adventure. While there is a heist and an adventure out at sea, the end result may not quite live up to that lofty pitch for most readers with the book feeling more like a collection of loosely connected ideas, lacking the development and details to solidify the tale it wants to tell.

Described in the author’s acknowledgement, Watt set out to write a book that honors their Southeast Asian, Pacific Islander culture meshed with queer representation, and those ambitions clearly show as easily the book’s best features. While the chain of islands that make up Paranish are fictional, their real-world inspirations have clear SEA influences. While each island is varied in terms of climate, they all have wonderful visuals and atmosphere. The title of the book serves dual meaning, both as namesake of smuggler Finlyn’s beloved ship as well as a reference to the story’s oceanic connection. My favorite aspect of the book is the quiet depictions of the sea, wind, a mystical Tree of Life, and other natural entities. For anyone that has stood at a quiet harbor, deserted beach, or cliffside view, Saltswept captures that feeling beautifully. Likewise, the island ports have a lively and rogue ambiance to them that nicely contrasts the cold and desolate nature of Temple of Aistra, the home of Paranish’s temple maidens in training or the formal Bastian, home of the royalty.

In addition to its nautical feel, the other major selling point is its queernormative presentation. Just about every single character across both major and minor in Saltswept is queer apart from the Queen (at least what is portrayed in this book), on top of its SEA representation. Of its three main characters, Finlyr is a flirty and free-spirited bi/pan smuggler, Ris is a single mother and struggling wool farmer, Hanan is a priestess in-training with night trysts with her fellow temple maiden roommate, and Isagani is a non-binary orphan that rescues Finlyr public execution. In addition to its characterizations and relationships, the story has a prominent themes of found family and home, many of its characters having previously lost beloved family members and finding solace in each other or having little material value. Though described as a ragtag crew, the characters of Saltswept are more like an unorthodox chosen family by happenstance. The story also has a relatively cozy feel to it where all its characters pleasantly get along and warmly trust each other which balances out Hanan’s more serious chapters and their dark undertones relating to the royal family and heir (check your triggers for sensitive readers).

While Saltswept is a well-intentioned novel that has great diversity and queer representation, unfortunately its story and presentation is not quite as successful. The book features multiple POV’s that alternate between Finlyr, Ris, and Hanan who are both geographically separated as well as having very different character narratives. This setup isn’t an issue in and of itself, but the problem is the book’s very short chapters and rapid POV shifts. Each chapter often consists of only 5-6 pages with one key scene before quickly jumping to another character. These brief chapters are so short that the book has a hard time building its momentum and interest as the POV’s don’t often align in terms of intensity or context. Additionally, the short chapters break the immersion both visually as well as with the reader’s connection with each character, the book never quite able to find its footing and constantly feeling a little off kilter.

While the constant shifts help keep the book from feeling wordy, it also causes the story to feel very fragmented and slow moving. For a book selling itself as a nautical adventure on the high seas, the ship doesn’t actually set sail until nearly halfway into the book and it feels like it takes forever to get there. To Saltswept‘s credit, it devotes much of its first half to important world-building and familiarizes the reader with its large cast of characters, but it’s unfortunately quite underwhelming and lacks strong narrative hooks. Finlyr’s early chapters start off promising with the expected swashbuckling, rogue and free vibe, but their surrounded by the other two POV’s, both his character and the book’s fun factor quickly getting smothered. Contrasting that, Hanan’s is the most mysterious and fantasy-heavy of the three POV’s, but the much darker tone and isolation from the other two POV’s makes it almost feel like excerpts from a different book. As the story progresses, the initially distinctive personalities and narrations start to blend together to the point where the temple maiden Hanan is the only one distinguishable given her very different character arc while Ris and Finlyr start to feel redundant once they meet up. As the story nears its end, even Ris and Hanan’s character motivations are almost the same, both being maternal and protective in the face of adversity.

To make matters worse, once the ship’s crew is assembled and the journey to the infamous and dangerous Maelstrom finally starts, the story somehow drags even more. Despite having short chapters, very quick descriptions and limited details, it feels like nothing notable is really happening. Though described as a ragtag crew, the “crew” only consists of three main characters plus a talking ottercat with accessory sailors whose being and fantasy mechanics are never really explained fully. The adventure arc and subsequent Maelstrom sequence feels derived from other adventure stories, slow, and somehow loses the wonderful sea-swept feeling present earlier on the islands, which is ironic and off-brand. Once the crew encounters the hallmark Maelstrom, the last quarter of the book’s pacing goes wild. The once strong visuals are tossed out the window, the plot gets increasingly messy, and the ending is utterly chaotic and confusing. It almost felt like the book hit a page count limit or drafting deadline and abruptly had to wrap up the story with a quarter of the time it likely required. This is even more baffling considering this book is only part 1 of a planned duology, the book still ending on an awkward to-be-continued note despite the rushing.

The book’s short chapters and overall fast-pacing also extends to the story’s presentation and writing. Outside of some wonderfully visualized scenes and moments of ambiance, Saltswept has a very quick and casual style of storytelling. Watt’s prose is simplistic and to the point, which is very accessible and easy to read, but there’s a consistent surface-level and underdeveloped feel to the book. I found the main characters to be quite shallow, each only having one notable trait: Finlyr free-spirited, Ris protective, Isagani scrappy, and Hanan driven/caring. The large cast of side characters also tend to blend together due to the book’s fast approach of simply not giving them enough time and development to be memorable as well as having only the most basic characterizations included. A cynic could even critique that they were purposely placed in the story specifically to hit a set queer checklist for representation rather than having real narrative purpose.

Likewise, the narrative ideas included in the story are interesting in theory but feel fragmented due to a lack of transitions or details. There’s temple maidens training around a tree of life, a powerful queen seeking power, persecution of those blessed with magical powers, mythical folklore beings, and of course the adventure on the high seas. There’s a lot going on and while they are revealed to be connected near the end of the book, in the moment, they feel more like a rough collection of concepts rather than a cohesive story. At every new turn of development, I found the execution and level of storytelling to be lackluster and too simplistic to fully capitalize on its good ideas. Especially when it comes to the high fantasy elements, there’s essentially no magic system to explain what’s going on and the mythology details feel like they’re being explained and made up on the fly. For me personally, the book feels like it’s handled akin to a YA book due to the lack of depth and short chapters, but its adult material and graphics scenes are out of place. The pacing is very fast and casual, yet the overall story feels like it progresses slowly. There’s a constant promise of an exciting adventure, but it feels more like a novel side outing rather than the grand event of the story. I felt like I kept waiting for the story to take off or come full circle, but instead it kept growing progressively messier and rushed.

As a fond homage to SEA culture and a fantasy adventure with queer representation, Saltswept is a success! But as a story about thieves, a grand quest, and swashbuckling adventure, this book feels like it severely missed the mark or lost its original goal along the way. There’s a lot of different fantasy and adventure elements but they’re not very well integrated or foreshadowed. Most damning though is that despite all these interesting ideas, this book is still lackluster and dry to read. Almost across the board there’s a sense of underdevelopment and the rapid shifts in POV creates a unique issue of having fast pacing while simultaneously slow overall progression. I had a lot of hopes for this book but unfortunately when it comes to seafaring adventures, there’s much better options than Saltswept out there.