Winter Tide (The Innsmouth Legacy, #1) in SpecFic Buddy Reads

Nov 24, 2016 Bradley rated it it was amazing

Shelves: fantasy, horror, 2016-shelf, fanboy-goes-squee, cthulhu-goes-ph-nglui-mglw-nafh-ct, metaphysics, reality-bending

It's impossible to think that most of you will have to wait until April to read this, and I say that for one reason: It's amazing! Take the Cthulhu mythos, take it seriously, have your sympathetic main character be a Deep One, and make us care for her family's plight.

What's more, add a more than liberal dose of book-loving research that include Enochian and all the best beloved titles from HPL, perhaps turn it into a quest to build or re-build your family's lost collection, and of course, buttin ...more

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Apr 14, 2017 Lindsay rated it it was amazing

This is not what I expected. From the description I was thinking a cold war spy romp with a native of Innsmouth using her skills as a US agent. It's nothing like that.

Aphra Marsh and her brother Caleb are the only survivors of the US government's raid on Innsmouth in 1928 due to the report of the main character of The Shadow Over Innsmouth. The government had interned the Innsmouth people in a desert camp; a particularly horrible fate for amphibious humans. But then in 1942 the government had mo This is not what I expected. From the description I was thinking a cold war spy romp with a native of Innsmouth using her skills as a US agent. It's nothing like that.

Aphra Marsh and her brother Caleb are the only survivors of the US government's raid on Innsmouth in 1928 due to the report of the main character of The Shadow Over Innsmouth. The government had interned the Innsmouth people in a desert camp; a particularly horrible fate for amphibious humans. But then in 1942 the government had more internees, over 100,000 American Japanese. When they were released in 1945 Aphra and Caleb left with them, now almost adopted by a Japanese family, the Kotos.

Aphra had been approached by a US government agent to help deal with a cult of people who based their beliefs on those of the Innsmouth residents in the novelette The Litany of Earth, but this book is set after those events. The same agent, Ron Spektor, approaches Aphra again in San Francisco where she has formed a friendship with a bookseller that she is teaching magic to, Charlie Day. This time it's to investigate rumors that the Russians have acquired the forbidden body-swapping magic of the ancient Yith race. A spy with the ability to swap bodies would be impossible to stop.

So Aphra, Charlie, Ron and Aphra's adopted sister Nancy Koto ("Neko") go to Miskatonic University which is near ruined Innsmouth and has all the books the government raided from the town. From there Aphra encounters allies, enemies and family.

You should be familiar with some elements of Lovecraft's stories before reading this book, and particularly the Shadows over Innsmouth, which this book is an almost direct sequel to. Of lesser importance (as all the events in them are explained) are "The Shadow Out of Time" and "The Thing on the Doorstep".

What this book actually turns out to be is further healing for Aphra Marsh. She's already had two families, the one she was born into and tragically lost, and the one that she was invited into, the Kotos. In the situation she finds herself in here, she finds herself building a whole new family, one of her choosing, but no less devoted for that. Aphra will do anything for the people she considers family, no matter how strange they might be.

And that's a wonderful message for any book, and a beautiful reversal of the sourness and misanthropy of Lovecraft himself. ...more

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Jun 08, 2017 Justine rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2017-read

4.5 stars

A very impressive and impeccably written debut novel.

The story is rooted in Lovecraftian mythos, but goes in new and unexpected places. The so-called monsters of Innsmouth are given the chance to show that they are people, with families and friends, who frighten primarily by being different. They possess power and magic, but no more inherent desire to harm than any of the other people of the Earth, even as they are subjected to continued persecution and surveillance.

The writing is wonde ...more

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Mar 14, 2016 Lata rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: auth-f, sf-f-h, x2017-read

Beautifully written story, picking up from Lovecraft's The Shadow of Innsmouth, but with a much more relatable and sympathetic protagonist, Aphra Marsh. Aphra's roped into helping Ron Spector (both characters are introduced, along with Charlie Day, in Emrys' The Litany of Earth) with another investigation into Innsmouth-infused weirdness. They all end up in New England, posing as Spector's research assistants so they can gain access to the Innsmouth families' books, which are stored at Miskatoni ...more

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Sep 03, 2016 John rated it it was amazing

4.5 stars
When it comes to the existential dread of man's insignificance in an irrational universe, nobody beats H.P. Lovecraft. Like Wolverine, he's the best there is at what he does.

That said, there are definitely some things he does NOT do. Pathos, characterization -- these are not so much his forté. No one, I sincerely hope, has ever said "You know, I really relate to Yog-Sothoth on a personal level," or "I feel like the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred is a cherished friend."

In Winter Tide, Ruthanna ...more

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Jul 25, 2024 Philip added it

Shelves: author-woman, 2017-releases, fantasy, historical-fiction, dnf-or-skimmed

DNF at about 50%.

I tried reading it a few different times, but while I appreciate everything the author is doing—taking Lovecraft and turning it on its head in a way that feels reverential to the mythos, while also innovative—I ultimately found it plodding and dry. I was never motivated to continue reading or to find out would happen next. I wish I found it more compelling because aspects of it are really quite fascinating.

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Feb 03, 2017 Cobwebs-Iced-Across-SpaceTime rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: february_2017_reads, extinction_marathon, a1-i-own-books, apocalyptic-dystopian-futuristic, a1-netgalley, armchair-new-england, 2017_new-weird, 2017_horror, 2017_indie, 2017_lovecraft_mythos

Review of WINTER TIDE by Ruthanna Emrys

WINTER TIDE will clearly be one of my favorites of 2017, and one of my all-time top novels in the Lovecraftian Mythos category. Appropriately in Women in Horror Month (February), I want to acknowledge the influence of two women horror writers, both of whom excel at play in the fields of The Lovecraft Mythos: Ruthanna Emrys, and Caitlin R. Kiernan. The writings of both are truly exceptional.

In WINTER TIDES, I am gifted with all that I seek in fantasy, all th ...more

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