Book Review: Beyond the Sea of Endless Grass

The Endless Song (Tales of the Forever Sea: Book Two),by Joshua Phillip Johnson (DAW)

I adored Joshua Phillip Johnson’s The Forever Sea, setin a world where ships kept afloat by magical hearthfires sail an endless seaof grass, so much that I eagerly snatched up the sequel. And ended up wishingit had been a stand-alone.

This overly long book followed two storylines that are sodisconnected for the first three-quarters of the book, I wished it had been dividedinto two separate volumes or, better yet, that the “continuing” story be cut.By far my favorite part involves a mainland noble family, Borders, that has fallenon hard times, both financially and politically. The power struggles of theruthless Emperor and the vassal barons are convoluted, rich in culturalworld-building, and full of drama. I found the loving, boisterous relationshipbetween youngest Borders child, Flitch, and his siblings delightful andemotionally moving. The action gets even more gripping when, under immediaterisk of their barony being destroyed by the Emperor, Flitch’s father reveals asecret hidden deep beneath their castle: the entrance to a realm of immenselypowerful and deadly, nonhuman magic. Everything about the “Flitch” narrativegrabbed me, from the tense action to the sweet love story between one ofFlitch’s siblings, a gifted gender-neutral artist and a charismatic librarianfrom another barony, to their sister’s impulsive nature and the quiet, detailorientation of another brother. Eventually, the family seeks refuge with aneighbor baron, a youthful-seeming woman of extraordinary strength and madcaphumor. She may well give Flitch a run as the most enchanting character in thebook.

Meanwhile, Kindred, the heroine from the first volume,follows up setting the grass sea on fire with scuttling her ship, therebysending her crew—all two of them, one of whom is her lover--to the eerie bottomof the sea. Here, the landscape is filled with fantastical plants andperhaps-animals, not to mention roving bands of humans eking out theirlivelihood from detritus falling from the surface. Alas, until well past thehalfway point, there was so little dramatic tension in these chapters, I keptfalling asleep.

At last, most of the way through the book, the two storylines veer toward one another when Kindred’s long-lost grandmother unleashes anarmy of deep-sea monsters that threaten human life on the surface. Alas, atthis point I had lost all interest in the Kindred story, I skimmed over thoseparts to get back to the dramatic adventures of Flitch and his family. For me, pastmidway is far too late to introduce a reason to care about these characters andway, way too late for a hint that the two stories will at some nebulous pointin the future come together (and they don’t, except in a deus ex machinasort of way). I kept reading on the strength of the first volume, but I don’tsee how a reader new to this series would make any sense of it. Which is toobad because The Forever Sea is a really, really cool world. And Flitch's story is magnificent.