I listened to this trilogy as audiobooks.
I loved the first book, Monstrous Heart. It is a touching, all-around enjoyable book. The language is rich and inspiring, and the world is intriguing. If there's a negative to this work, it is its inability to move me. Still, I was more than eager to listen to the second part, Deepwater King.
I went through almost the whole spectrum of emotions listening to the second book. Almost. Had it made me cry besides all else - the disgust, vicarious embarrassment, hatred... - it would be a five-star book for me. However, just like Monstrous Heart, Deepwater King failed to affect me deeply enough to make me shed tears. The story left me rather battered, nonetheless, and I consider that a good thing.
Deepwater King is as beautifully written as Monstrous Heart, and the world McKenna has created, grows even gloomier in it than it is in the first book. I had high hopes for the last book in the trilogy once I'd finished this one.
Perhaps because I was expecting so much, Firetide Coast turned out a disappointment. Language-wise it's amazing, but what her deepwater husband says to Arden "Everything feels like a duty with you." perfectly encapsulates how I felt about the story. This book felt to me as if it had been written largely because the trilogy had to be finished. The plot thunders forth like a steam engine, with the emotionality and relatability of a machine, dropping the reader/listener off at the terminus with nothing except hollow puzzlement: "Was that it?".
Regardless of the nose-dive at the end, I can recommend the trilogy to everyone who enjoys dark, romantic, steampunk fantasy stories. Also, I cannot emphasize enough the exceptional beauty of McKenna's language. That alone would be a fair reason to read the Deepwater Trilogy.
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