Review Day: The Sea Watch by Adrian Tchaikovsky

There are no explicit plot spoilers in these reviews.

The Sea Watch is the sixth book in the Shadows of the Apt series (with 4 more to go). It's full of imaginative world-building explorations but suffers a bit from pacing issues in the middle act.

Rumours of piracy and lost ships reach the ears of Stenwold Maker as he continues to build alliances with the Ant-kinden and prepare Collegium for the inevitable return of the Wasp Empire. Stenwold's mission to unearth a possible Spiderlands conspiracy is thrown off-course by the discovery of the Sea-Kinden, a multitude of people living under the Ocean who may be a bigger threat than any known land-based enemy.

Book 6 follows Stenwold, Teornis of the Spider-kinden, and Laszlo, a new Fly-kinden in the role of snarky sidekick. The main characters and plots from Book 5 are barely given lip service before a new tale is told, so readers interested in learning more about what's become of Cheerwell Maker and her new traveling companion will be disappointed.

The pacing of this book didn't quite work for me. I felt like Act I was a bit too timid in pulling on the threads that mattered, and just when it started to get interesting, the rug is pulled out from under the main plot in Act II with the introduction of the Sea-kinden. What follows is a very creative road trip through the Ocean, full of new Kinden, complex politics, and different locales but of questionable import to the main plot. Act III picks back up again, but might even be too fast -- a lot seems to happen off the page and a key confrontation with a tyrant feels cartoonishly trope-y.

I hope that the depth of world-building in the middle section ends up meaning more in subsequent books, but in isolation I felt like it was too much flavor and not enough forward motion. I had the same feeling about the sections of a previous book that described the politics around (and under) the Exalsee.

Even so, I've heard that the best is yet to come in this series and Book 6 has not dissuaded me from planning to finish the series. Adrian Tchaikovsky approaches everything he writes with such a unique perspective and I can appreciate what he's written here even if I still like Books 4 and 5 more.

Final Grade: B-