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Flowers for the Sea
Flowers for the Sea
Flowers for the Sea
Ebook87 pages1 hour

Flowers for the Sea

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

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About this ebook

Winner of the Shirley Jackson Award
Winner of the Pulver Award
An Ignyte Award Finalist


A Library Journal Editor's Pick! A Den of Geeks Best Books of 2021!

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.

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateOct 19, 2021
ISBN9781250804044
Author

Zin E. Rocklyn

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.

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Reviews for Flowers for the Sea

Rating: 3.8472221666666666 out of 5 stars
4/5

36 ratings5 reviews

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  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I liked the premise, but I feel like the execution was done poorly.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Flowers for the Sea is not an easy read--the story itself, the prose, and the progression all make for a journey that a reader must embrace and travel through in a fashion that (at least for this reader) might well involve working for meaning as well as cringing away from some of those very same meanings. And yet, this is a gorgeous book worth appreciating in all its facets, and I'm glad to have read it, just as I'll be glad to pick up anything else Rocklyn writes.The power of this tale is so timely, the immediacy of the content is almost crushing if you allow yourself to think about it. In many ways, I felt "seen" by this book in a way that I've rarely, if ever, experienced when the topic of pregnancy comes up, and the pure focus Rocklyn brings to bear on the protagonist's situation here is as artful as it is terrifying from moment to moment. If this book had been a novel, I'm actually not sure I could have made it through the tale, but as a novella, the length and focus on topic are just enough to be painful without being too much. I will say that there's some backstory and drama which clutters up the story a bit more than I think might have been necessary, but then again, since it also gives some breadth to the story and gives the reader a break from the immediacy of the present moment we're focused on, I can see it was included. All told, this is a fantastic book, and a short, powerful read with gorgeous prose. It won't be for everyone--I'm still not sure whether I enjoyed it so much as appreciated it, myself--but at the same time, I can't wait to pick up Rocklyn's next book.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    There are books in the world that you know are not for you, but you like the author (I follow her on twitter, I don't know her personally), so you convince yourself to try it anyway.The story centers around an unwanted pregnancy that turns monstrous, and has cosmic horror vibes, and either one of those alone is usually a do-not-want for me, so both at once was quite a lot.That the story worked at all on any level for me is testimony to Rocklyn's skill as a storyteller, but friends, check the content warnings on this one.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    When the land got submerged under the waves of the seas, people moved to boats. This story starts on one of those boats, where Iraxi is heavily pregnant - and everyone hopes that this will be the first child to be born after years on the waves and all other newborns being lost. But for her the story started a lot earlier - she belongs to a family which was persecuted and killed off for being able to talk to the sea, she was once asked for by a prince and she saw the destruction of her world long before the world of everyone else ended. And she dreams - sometimes with open eyes, sometimes while sleeping - about the past and about sea monsters. Because in this world the seas and the air contains literal monsters - some being visible by everyone and some seemingly hiding. There is nothing beautiful in living on a boat for years - everyone is dirty and everyone's mind may not be exactly as sharp as it started. But the baby seems to give everyone hope. Iraxi, knowing more than others, being able to see more than others, is not sure. And birth in primitive conditions is never fun - even when the child is normal. It is unclear how much of what Iraxi sees is reality and how much is feverish dreams. It can be read either way in some places I think. The end is almost expected (although the fact that some people made it to the end surprised me a bit). There seems to be connection to some African myths, Iraxi is often described as being very dark skinned and there is something akin to magic happening towards the end of the novella. The very end is as decisive as it is completing a circle. Plus some of the dreams sounded almost Lovecraftian. I don't enjoy horror as much as I enjoy the rest of the speculative genres and this novella was getting a bit too close to where I usually draw my lines. But it worked out at the end. It won't make my list of best novellas of the year but it is readable and it may work even better for someone who enjoys that type of stories more than I usually do.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Wow, this was unlike anything I've ever read before. It's like a dream you want to go back to and try and understand better. The characters feel as though they are based on African lore from their names and their physical descriptions. The book starts off with a woman who is pregnant on a boat surrounded by monsters in the sea. She is the only one who has been able to carry a child to term as the occupants of the boat wait anxiously on the birth of the child. Then things get really weird, from the way the story goes you get a feeling that this woman may not be completely human and by the end of the story you get some answers but definitely not all the answers. Not sure if this is a stand alone book or not, it could definitely continue but it's truly dazzling enough on its own to keep you engrossed. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

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Flowers for the Sea - Zin E. Rocklyn

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