Review: Sea of Souls by N. C. Scrimgeour

Blurb:

Dark be the water, and darker still the creatures that lurk within…

Free-spirited Isla Blackwood has never accepted the shackles of her family’s nobility. Instead, she sails the open waters, searching for belonging on the waves.

But when tragedy forces Isla home, she realises she can no longer escape the duty she’s been running from. Selkie raiders plague the island’s coasts, and when they strike at Blackwood Estate, Isla has no choice but to flee with her hot-headed brother and their brooding swordmaster.

To reclaim her home, Isla will have to set aside her grief and join forces with an exiled selkie searching for a lost pelt. The heirloom might be the key to stopping the raids—but only if they can steal it from the island’s most notorious selkie hunter, the Grand Admiral himself.

Caught between a promise to the brother she abandoned and a friendship with the selkie who should have been her enemy, Isla soon realises the open seas aren’t the only treacherous waters she’ll need to navigate.

As enemies close in, she must decide where her loyalties lie if she wants to save what’s left of her family—and find the belonging she’s been searching for.

Sea of Souls is a Scottish-inspired dark fantasy filled with folklore and monsters, ancient magic and high-seas adventure. Perfect for fans of Adrienne Young, Katherine Arden and Naomi Novik.

Review:

Fantasy books that incorporate regional folklore are something that always find a way to pull me in, and when that folklore is from a place I consider my second home, then just hook it to my goddamn veins. With Sea of Souls, N. C. Scrimgeour has created a beautiful dark fantasy world steeped in Scottish folklore and brimming with heart and thrills. The stage has been set for the beginning of this new saga, and if the first entry is anything to go off of, this series will rise just as high as the folk tales that inspired it.

It has been seven years since Isla Blackwood has been home, preferring to eschew the confines of her family’s noble roots for a life on the open waters. But, after receiving a letter of her mother’s failing health, she returns home, only for the Blackwood Estate to be set upon by vengeful selkie raiders, leaving her to escape with her brother who she long since abandoned and a swordmaster toward whom she draws ire. But reclaiming her home will not be so simple. After encountering an exiled selkie in search of her lost pelt, Isla realizes that this pelt may just be the key to stopping the raids and saving her home—even if it means choosing between her flesh and blood and a selkie who is meant to be her sworn enemy.

Right from the beginning, Sea of Souls triumphs with its atmosphere. It’s dark and dreary, the storms as evocative as the characters themselves. If I closed my eyes, I could picture every scene as though they were part of the islands off the coast of Scotland. The dreich feeling permeates through the book and fits the story perfectly, leaving me in a constant sense of wariness that something is soon to pop out from the corner.

This is further lifted by the eclectic cast of characters. Isla is a fascinating and strong lead, perfectly developed and with a character arc that left me engaged throughout. I love what Scrimgeour did with the twist on a common trope, of a character rejecting their nobility in favor of a life of adventure instead, and the clash of cultures when they inevitably are forced to return. It’s a simple setup, but the execution from that point in seeing where it diverges from the well-trodden path is a treat.

It helps that the supporting cast is just as well-developed, and Isla’s conflicting relationships with her brother Lachlan, swordmaster Darce, and selkie companion Eimhir is the emotional core of the story and helps carry the plot along. Themes of familial duty versus a sense of belonging take center stage here, and Isla’s navigation of these conflicting threads made for an enriching and powerful narrative. Her interactions with Eimhir in particular are done extremely well, as it not only gives the reader a grand view into the foreign world of the selkies—and the wraithlike gun-anam to whom they’re related—and the source of their conflict with humans, but it is also an opportunity for Isla to overcome the prejudices she holds from a lifetime of conflict with the selkies. And yet, the more she uncovers about the world of the selkies, the more it pulls her away from the life she once had with Lachlan and Darce, and all that remains of her family. There’s no lack of character-driven moments in this one, and it all helps maintain a constant state of tension that urges you to say, “Okay, just one more chapter” for hours on end.

Any flaws that Sea of Souls has are quite negligible. There is a bit of mystery carried throughout the book stemming from Isla’s summons home, when her mother has something to share with her in person but passes away before Isla is able to make it home. One other character is aware of what this may be, but it’s deliberately kept away from the reader to maintain that sense of mystery, brushed off as “I’ll tell you when you’re ready.” The payoff is well-worth it, though it may present a minor plot hole with another character in order to keep that mystery going. Overall, though, it did little to diminish my enjoyment of the book, and it was more a minor annoyance than anything structurally wrong with the book.

If you’ve been looking for something rich in Scottish folklore, then Sea of Souls is the perfect book for you. N. C. Scrimgeour has created a beautifully dark world, and I’m eager to see where the next tale will take us.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna go book a flight to the Isle of Skye and shout at the sea until a selkie tells me to shut up.