🪵🪷A Dark and Drowning Tide🪷🪵

• Alison Saft

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Allison Saft’s books are always solid reads and A Dark and Drowning Tide was no different. Folklorist Lorelei Kaskel is about to set out on a mission to find the fabled source of all magic – the Ursprung. If she completes the mission successfully, she will be bestowed with titles and land. Not only that, but she will prove that she is worthy of them. All her life, Lorelei has been underestimated and deprived, as a result of her heritage. Everything is riding on this expedition, but when her beloved mentor is murdered on the first day of the voyage, Lorelei must find the killer before the end of the trip… or become the King’s convenient scapegoat. Lorelei must team up with her longtime academic rival, Sylvia von Wolff. Sylvia is everything Lorelei both envies and despises; rich, powerful, privileged.

This is everything I wanted Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Fairies to be! It delivered on the expedition aspect, with the descriptions of the fieldwork and folktales and botany, with some added intrigue of the murder mystery aspect. I liked the wider cast of characters – the others on the expedition each had complicated backstories and relationships with each other. Saft’s writing is the perfect mix of straightforward and easy to absorb and flowery and lyrical. Lorelei can be pretty unlikeable and obtuse at times.

I loved all of the time we spent in nature – sentient forests that rearrange themselves when you’re not looking, fairy doorways in toadstools and lots of fantastical creatures that vaguely resembles ones from our real world but infinitely more terrifying. I didn’t totally love the ending – it felt like settling, rather than a satisfying conclusion – which is why I’ve deducted a star. Also, I don’t think this book will be one that particularly sticks with me, although I enjoyed the time I spent reading it. Additionally, I think selling this as an adult novel was possibly a mistake – it reads far more YA to me, purely from the style. I would still recommend to younger readers, perhaps looking to branch out into some adult books.

Have you read any of Allison Saft’s books?