Book Review: "Sister of Starlit Seas"

Terry Brooks gives readers another rousing story in the newest installment of his Veridian Deep series.

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Spoiler Alert: Full details for the novel follow.

Terry Brooks has been one of my favorite fantasy authors for several decades now, and his Shannara series will always occupy pride of place in my own personal canon. Though I was very sad when he announced that he would be moving away from his beloved Shannara universe, I’ve continued to be pleased with his further literary output, particularly the Veridian Deep series. The first two novels, Child of Light and Daughter of Darkness, largely focused on the young woman Auris and her attempts to come to terms with her past, her present, and her complicated genetic legacy. 

In this year’s Sister of Starlit Seas he turns his attention to the headstrong and independent Char, Auris’ younger sister. In this fast-paced novel, we follow Char as, like her sister, she discovers things about herself that she never realized, even as she also has her fair share of adventures, particularly when a pair of her friends are kidnapped by a group of nefarious slavers. As one would expect from Brooks, there’s quite a lot of action, and he keeps the plot moving at a remarkably swift pace, moving us from set piece to set piece with remarkable efficiency. 

This isn’t to say that there isn’t always a lot of emotional depth to this book, because there is. Very early on it’s revealed that Char isn’t quite what she seems; in fact, she is half Fae and half Merrow, one of the mermaid-like creatures that inhabit the waters near her homeland. This is a truly shocking revelation for the young woman, who has had no reason to believe that she is of such mixed ancestry. Like her sister, Auris, she thus stands in a liminal space between one people and another and, just as importantly, she also has to contend with the complicated legacy of her late adopted mother who, as we already know from the other books in the series, was more than willing to use people as pawns in their own enigmatic games. Brooks excels at giving us insight into Char’s mental state, and we come to feel for and with her as she reckons with her past and what it means for her future. 

Indeed, one of the things I’ve liked the most about this series is its willingness to engage with some heavy and rather dark material. In this book alone we have mentions of slavery and child loss and abuse, and the sections in which Char has to face some of her unpleasant memories in the orphanage are evocatively written, showing us how lonely and sad and isolating it can be when one is the abandoned child of a troubled parent. For Char, her biological mother is something of an enigma, and though she sets out on a journey to try to rescue her from the slavers who have taken her captive, she ultimately learns that she died in captivity, thus denying her the sense of closure that she (and the reader) so desperately seek. 

While some might fault Brooks for not giving Char a happy ending, to me this is precisely what makes this novel so emotionally rich and rewarding. Char’s journey, like real life, doesn’t have a happy ending that is all tied up neatly with a bow. Instead, she has to confront the ugly reality that the world doesn’t always reshape itself to accord with our wishes, that sometimes our stories don’t have uncomplicatedly happy endings, as much as we might wish it were otherwise. Moreover, it also shows the extent to which the world that Char inhabits is one that is both beautiful and dangerous, filled with those who will gladly sell others so that they can make money off of their labor. 

Brooks has always excelled at giving us characters that we can care about and, long before George R.R. Martin was killing main characters in bloody weddings, he was showing us that sometimes the hardest thing is saying goodbye to characters that we’ve come to love and care about. This is also true in Sister of Starlit Seas, and even though Char has endured quite a lot of loss in her life by the time the story starts, there’s more heartache in store for her. At the same time, Brooks isn’t a sadist when it comes to his characters, and he also gives Char some moments of rich, warm pathos, particularly when it comes to some much-needed family reunions. 

Sister of Starlit Seas is, like the other books in this series, very much in the YA vein, but it still has all of the hallmarks that Brooks fans have come to expect from his outings over the years. Char might be a bit foolish at times, but she is also quite likable and her actions make sense when one considers just how troubled her upbringing has been. Denied the stability that all young people deserve, she has had to make do with her own wits and skills, which helps to explain why she often leaps before she looks. She does grow and develop through the course of the story, and it’s really quite extraordinary to watch her seize her fortune and make of it what she wants. By the end of the book she has come to realize that there are some questions that can never be satisfactorily answered, but this doesn’t mean that she can’t still be in control of her own destiny. 

Overall, I really enjoyed this latest novel from Brooks. When you pick up one of his books, you’re always guaranteed to have a good time and to feel rather breathless by the end, and Sister of Starlit Seas is no exception. There’s also much more to this sprawling world than we have so far seen, so there’s plenty of room for further stories, whether focusing on Char or on someone else. I don’t know whether Brooks has more stories planned for this marvelous universe but, if he does, I know that I’ll be one of the first in line to read them!