Now: Sea Here

A while back, I wrote about Wolfsong, a supernaturally-themed gay romance novel from author T.J. Klune. I didn't enjoy the book enough to continue with that series, but I did recently decide to give the writer another chance: a read his stand-alone book, The House in the Cerulean Sea.

The book centers on solitary Linus Baker, a paper-pusher at the Department in Charge of Magical Youth. He is dispatched to an island in the English countryside, there to evaluate the care of a half dozen magical children under one Arthur Parnassus, mysterious and charismatic head of an orphanage. The children are among the harder cases in the system, so this will be no common evaluation like the hundreds of his career. And the supervisors have hidden motives for this assignment.

At first blush, this story suggests a bit of a Harry Potter vibe, a tale of young magic-users being shepherded through a real world of non-magic users. As I progressed through more chapters, what it really began to remind me of was Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (the film, at least; I haven't read the book).

For a time, the odd kids of Marsyas Island take center stage, largely because they're not simply magic-wielding children. Characters include a were-Pomeranian, an amorphous blob, and the literal antichrist. All this oddness is typically played with the whimsy of a Tim Burton or Wes Anderson film. The bizarre is overlooked as commonplace, with protagonist Linus as the reader proxy. Juxtaposition is the writer's key tool in establishing tone. And indeed, it is all pretty fun.

Parallel to all of this is a gay romance on a very slow burn. Well... not so much parallel as secondary, and that actually makes for a (for the moment) distinct reading experience. There's something quite "adaptable for film" about this whole book -- save for the important fact that right now, there aren't any films that include an LGBT relationship like this. Movies either focus on the gay romance (and are generally small budget, indie dramas)... or the love lives of gay characters are so shunted to the side that they can be excised completely for certain international movie markets.

Here, the romance does feel almost wedged in, in exactly the way that superfluous heteronormative love interests are wedged into action blockbusters in an effort for "four quadrant appeal." It wouldn't have to be here -- but it's also too big a character element in the story as constituted to be cut out. It's a kind of fascinating kind of representation: "Hey, queer people! You too can be less compelling romantic element that is kind of unnecessary in a larger narrative!"

That surely makes it sound like I didn't enjoy the book. In fact, I rather did. The children in this book are, simply put, very entertaining. Their quirky personalities, their youthful innocence played off of their great powers, and the way the easily-flustered Linus warms to them as expected... it all works. I don't imagine this ever will get made into a movie, but I feel confident it would make a better one than Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. And it has some lovely sentiments along the way to underpin the whimsy.

I give The House in the Cerulean Sea a B+. It was pleasant, escapist fun.