Flowers for the Sea: review

Flowers for the Sea is a dark, dazzling debut novella that reads like Rosemary's Baby by way of Octavia E. Butler.

We are a people who do not forget.

Survivors from a flooded kingdom struggle alone on an ark. Resources are scant, and ravenous beasts circle. Their fangs are sharp.

Among the refugees is Iraxi: ostracized, despised, and a commoner who refused a prince, she’s pregnant with a child that might be more than human. Her fate may be darker and more powerful than she can imagine.

Zin E. Rocklyn’s extraordinary debut is a lush, gothic fantasy about the prices we pay and the vengeance we seek.

Zin E. Rocklyn is a contributor to Bram Stoker-nominated and This is Horror Award-winning Nox Pareidolia, Kaiju Rising II: Reign of Monsters, Brigands: A Blackguards Anthology, and Forever Vacancy anthologies and Weird Luck Tales No. 7 zine. Their story "Summer Skin" in the Bram Stoker-nominated anthology Sycorax's Daughters received an honorable mention for Ellen Datlow's Best Horror of the Year, Volume Ten. Zin contributed the nonfiction essay “My Genre Makes a Monster of Me” to Uncanny Magazine’s Hugo Award-winning Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction. Their short story "The Night Sun" and flash fiction "teatime" were published on Tor.com. Flowers for the Sea is their debut novella. Zin is a 2017 VONA and 2018 Viable Paradise graduate as well as a 2022 Clarion West candidate.

I have always admired authors who can fit entire stories in less than 100 words. This may be a huge flaw on my part (I have this phobia about finishing things, so my novels usually like to top the 100k scale) but I do enjoy and sitting in awe as writers continue to amaze me with their novellas.

This isn't my first novella from a Tor author and will not be my last. Thank you to Tordotcom for the review copy and for being so amazing at replying to my review requests.

In short, this story had me so enthralled that I could smell the ark that pregnant Iraxi has been confined to after fleeing her kingdom. She is the only one of her kind to carry a baby to full term in a very long time, so she is treated with both reverence and possessiveness. The atmosphere on this ship is not pretty, to say it in simple terms. The author has such a visceral writing skill that you can almost smell her words. The almost eldritch horrors surrounding the ark set me on edge, but Iraxi's labor had me cringing and gripping this tiny book with nervous hands. I've had a baby (with drugs of course because I'm not crazy brave) but this was a whole other thing.

Listen, readers, in 100 pages you will use all of your senses in one of the best novellas I have ever had the honor of reading. The images within this book will stay with you for a long time. It is beautiful, dark, and gloriously vicious and I loved every second.

Buy it AMAZON /GOODREADS/ B&N /BD /INDIGO /INDIEBOUND