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Wow, this was interesting. It combines angsty youth and searching for a place to fit and mythology and aggression and San Francisco and adoption agencies and circuses and savagery and parkour and Fate in ways that I haven't seen before. There are places where the mix works, and places where it doesn't, and I still enjoyed the ride.The viewpoint character is Jackson, and his imperfect understanding of what is going on and the journey he goes on to improve that understanding is the main draw of th...
Weird and subversive.The style of this reminded me a bit of the things I've liked from Catherine Valente. Teenage Jackson lives at an orphanage. He's always known he's not quite like the other boys. He has to exert all his willpower, sometimes, not to... shift... or to do terrible things. Luckily, Sister Jerome Grace seems to have a warm spot in her heart for him, and although older orphans like Jackson don't often have good prospects, she helps find him a fosterage. It's not a family, though -
The Kraken Sea, set in E. Catherine Tobler's world of Jackson's Unreal Circus and Mobile Marmalade, takes readers back to the beginning to see where it all began. As an infant, Jackson was left in a daffodil box at the steps of an orphanage. As a young man, he boards a train, bound for Chicago and a new life, along with several other orphans. Jackson isn’t like the other children. There’s something terrible and powerful and wonderful inside him that he struggles to keep hidden. It's a gorgeous n...
The Kraken Sea is a novella about an orphan boy who is not quite human. He tries to find a place he belongs in the world while fighting to control the parts of him that others would find monstrous. this was an interesting story that had a unique feel despite familiar aspects of mythology and fantasy. I really liked the main character. I found him interesting and appreciated his desire to belong balanced with his desire to see the world, much like the conflict between control and letting his true...
Maybe fans of Jackson's Unreal Circus will get more out of it?(Full disclosure: I received a free electronic ARC for review through Library Thing's Early Reviewers program.)The woman laughed and it was the sound of falling down a rabbit hole and ending up someplace you never expected and didn't entirely understand.-- 2.5 stars --DNF at 66%.Abandoned at a foundling hospital in New York as a newborn, fifteen-year-old Jackson knows little of the world beyond his small slice of it. He's reasonably w...
facebook // twitter // bloglovin // youtubeI was immediately drawn to this book by its amazingly stunning cover. Pair that with an exciting synopsis about monsters and secrets, I was hooked. While The Kraken Sea by E Catherine Tobler certainly delivered on what the synopsis promised, I did feel like the entire story (which was more of a short novella being only 128 pages long) was extremely rushed. The characters, while seemed well developed, but we never really went in-depth with any and th
I’m sad to say that I didn’t get The Kraken Sea. The atmosphere of the story is stunning. Dark, gritty with just enough mystery to keep me reading, but I struggled so much with the plot.Here’s what I know. Jackson is coming of age and he’s got some kind of transformation power—think Grimm and Wesen. Some lady in San Francisco wants his power, but I don’t understand what the heck was going on under that bakery across the street from the Moulin Rouge-esque club where Jackson’s love interest (I thi...
In The Kraken Sea, E. Catherine Tobler tells the story of Jackson, an orphan with no last name, who has finally found a home with one of San Francisco’s elite — Cressida, also known as The Widow, who has an unnamed purpose for her new ward. Jackson has a secret of his own, though; when he becomes angry or uncontrolled, he breaks out in scales and tentacles, exhibiting enormous strength. The only person who knows his secret is his confidant and protector at the orphanage: Sister Jerome Grace, an
A quick and interesting read! The characters are wonderfully written. The story though is very confusing! If I let myself just get into the characters and dialog, this is a very entertaining book.I listened to the audiobook and the narrator did a fair job reading the book. There aren't pauses in the story transitions. Overall though I was still able to get immersed into the story.
Thanking Apex Book Company for providing a copy and giving me the opportunity to read and review The Kraken Sea. "It began with a dragon in the pouring rain, the beast barely held at bay, balanced upon two thin steel rails. Steam poured from its back mouth and guts, billowing through the damp gloom."With an opening like this, I had a feeling I was going to love this book. I really wanted to. And I did!The more I read, the more I felt like Jackson. Trying my hardest to keep my shape. I couldn't l...
It's not you, circus stories, it's me. Tobler paints beautifully grotesque scenes, but they all seem to be bundled together and leading nowhere; and while I could make out how the connection ran from one image to the other, it was rather tedious. I would probably love this book if there was more of it: more dialogue, more character growth, more agency given to everyone. Just... more backstage of this feverish, dangerous circus.
Tobler is able to wield a gorgeous kind of prose in her short stories, and also in this short novel which follows an orphan teenager with unusual characteristics (is he part squid?) into a world where nothing is what it seems. To say more would rob the book of its power, but rest assured it is a lovely tale about finding yourself.
