DARK WATER DAUGHER by H. M. Long (BOOK REVIEW)
“I was a Stormsinger, after my mother. I might have been silenced for sixteen long years, but I had my voice and the power to calm this storm, somewhere inside me. I simply had to do it…”
Was there ever any doubt that I wouldn’t utterly devour a Jacobean period flintlock fantasy with pirates, weather witches, mages and monsters? No, no there wasn’t! Dark Water Daughter by H.M. Long delves readers into the depths of an original fantastical world filled with morally ambiguous characters and a twisty seafaring adventure.
It all starts with a noose. Mary Firth is to be hanged for crimes she—mostly—never committed but on the day of her execution Mary ignores her mother’s warning and uses her long dormant powers to escape. For Mary is a Stormsinger, her voice can command the wind, rain and clouds, her melody can call down a treacherous storm or can calm tempestuous waters. The life of a Stormsinger comes with the burden of never having freedom as the Queen’s Navy and pirates alike all desire Stormsingers upon their vessels to aid their journeys across the Winter Sea. When Mary is caught between facing servitude to both parties she decides to make an alliance with the pirate, Captain Demery, who claims that Mary’s mother is a prisoner of the notoriously dangerous pirate lord, Silvanus Lirr. Demery and Mary both share reasons for chasing after Lirr yet they are not alone in their pursuit. Disgraced naval officer Samuel Rosser is aboard Hart and his Captain’s mission is to capture Lirr and bring him to the Queen’s justice. This mission will clear Samuel’s name and earn him back the respect that was wrongly taken many years before. Upon the Winter Sea Mary and Samuel’s paths will collide and both must choose where their loyalties lie, as well as battling some powerful foes.
The narrative is written with dual first-person perspectives. We alternate between Mary and Samuel and upon first meeting them it becomes apparent they are both meandering their way through dark unfamiliar waters. Mary begins as quite a passive character, she’s taken prisoner a fair few times and is jostled between sets of pirates who seek to use her powers. It is understandable why Mary is so out of her depth—having never left her home, the inn where she grew up surrounded her within relative safety. Yet as the novel progresses Long shows how her character grows. Mary develops a strong will to learn more about her abilities, to learn how to fight and defend herself and to survive by any means necessary. That’s not to say Mary becomes ruthless or unkind, it just means that she’ll do all she can to protect and save those she loves, even if that calls for morally questionable deeds. Whereas Samuel is more our idealistic hero with grand notions of honour and justice. These are principles he holds in high regard and having been disgraced Samuel is always in turmoil, he’s always seeking redemption, always holding himself accountable for every action he takes. Long creates two main protagonists who are easily likable and easy to root for.
There is also a wonderful array of side characters who are less heroic and more on the morally grey side. Dark Water Daughter is filled with pirates but not all of them are shown to be cruel or villainous. Captain Demery has a wonderful bantery relationship with his crew and some of the scenes where Mary is aboard his ship tickled me. However, my two favourite darker characters became Benedict Rosser, Samuel’s twin brother and Silvanus Lirr. Long never creates superficial villains in this book, they are more complex and have reasons beyond their control for their motives. So I was always questioning, are they really to blame here? For instance Benedict had a very troubled childhood, a father dead, a mother lost in her own grief and turned mad, and a world who wanted to use him and his brother’s powers for their own gains. Long plays with the ‘evil’ twin trope here and I really did enjoy watching Benedict and Samuel interact together. I just know Benedict will cause further mayhem along the way but I’m also hoping he’ll do some good by the end. Whereas Lirr is more our straight up villain, our feared pirate who too went through an event which irrevocably changed him and fed his malevolence. He’s a fantastic villain to hate, but also one who holds some monstrous secrets.
Despite there being some mildly dark scenes within these pages, I would ultimately say that Dark Water Daughter has a lovely cosy quality to it. I believe this is due to Long’s narrative style which I found to be rather nostalgic, it easily carries readers away on such an engrossing adventure. One of the aspects about Long’s narrative which immediately stood out to me was the clever way she uses epigraphs just before each chapter as a glossary of terms for her worldbuilding. Each word and its accompanying explanation is taken from the fictional, The Worldbook Alphabetica: a new wordbook of the Aeadines, and although the terminology may not make complete sense immediately it becomes clear as we read the following chapter. I’ll confess I’m a bit of a worldbuilding geek and I love when books include glossaries, so I took pleasure in how these entries help to deepen our knowledge of the magic system, the world and its politics. I found this to be a much more effective way rather than having a large glossary at the back of the book which can often be awkward to reference back and forth whilst reading. Long also uses short passages between chapters to give readers a glimpse into Mary’s backstory growing up within the ancient Ghistwold forest; these sections were titled, The Girl from the Wold, and they enriched the story with a mythical, fairytale-esque atmosphere. How they click into place by the end of the book was something that utterly impressed me.
The magic system was perhaps my favourite aspect of the book. Mary is one of many weather-witches but unlike the others she is untrained. She hones her abilities along the way and the more she takes command of her Stormsinger powers the more fascinating those powers become. Our Samuel is a Sooth and so is able to enter the Other plane of existence and see premonitions. The ability to enter the Other comes with its peril as within that plane monsters reside, or a Sooth may become lost and grounded within the Other unable to return to their body. The only protection lies in a rare talisman. Then there are those who are Magni’s with the power to manipulate people’s thoughts and feelings—this ability was particularly twisted to see in action!
“Sleet hit with hurricane force, battering my face and turning to snow. Darkness came with it, thick and eerie, but I grinned a wild grin. This was power. This was what I’d been denied all these years, rushing across my skin and turning my thoughts clean and sharp.
All too soon the wind stole my breath and my song died, but it didn’t matter now. The storm was here, and it raged.”
There was also the concept of the Ghistwold and Ghistings and I loved the innovative way these were incorporated throughout the novel. Ghistings were spirits residing in Ghistwold trees and were harvested to create figureheads on ships with the Ghisting trapped inside making each figurehead sentient. The spirits would then essentially become prisoners and be forced to protect the ship to ensure its own survival. Some of my favourite scenes were when Mary interacted with the Ghistings, something others feared to do. Long builds a world where the fantastical can be found in every corner and I entirely loved this.
Nautical fantasy is fast becoming one of my favourite sub-genres and Long certainly delivers a delightful high-seas adventure here. Dark Water Daughter is the kind of book that just sweeps you away.
ARC provided by Kabriya at Titan Books in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for the copy! All quotes used are taken from an ARC and are subject to change upon publication.
Dark Water Daughter will be released 11th July.
You can pre-order your copy from Bookshop.org
Could you post a content warning, please?
Hi Dee, there’s some violence, kidnapping, one very mild sexual threat towards the main character and other mild threats. Overall it has a cosy feel rather than overly dark.