In Great Waters [Hardcover]

Much as Guy Gavriel Kay has famously riffed on places and periods from the annals of human history, embellishing the past as we know it with such tropes of fantasy as to create rich and rewarding near-as-damnit realities to let loose his characters in, for her second trick after Bareback, award-nominated author Kit Whitfield takes 16th century Europe as the backdrop for a narrative that is, in its sombre, seditious way, as powerful as the very best of Kay's backlist. In Great Waters is a glorious triumph of imagination; an involving and emotional chronicle of a world not so very different from our own.

What sets Whitfield's Europe apart from that we might learn of in textbooks and on the History Channel is the existence of deepsmen, which is to say mermaids, mermen, a race of aquatic beings who have made their home in the ocean. In Great Waters has it that after an insurgence in Venice, "the deepsmen of the sea were... no longer sailors' yarns, but an engaged force with loyalties of their own." Aghast, the people - landsmen, if we are to succumb to Whitfield's terminology - entered into a partnership with their underwater equivalents whereby the blood of the deepsmen now courses through the veins of Europe's royal houses. But hundreds of years have passed since Angelica rose from the canals to turn landlocked humanity on its head; she is but a legend, now, set against the harsh reality of Kings and Queens inbred to preserve her bloodline.

Edward rules in England, but he grows weak, and when his thoroughbred heir perishes, the country looks set to inherit an horrendously deformed second son as their monarch. Seeking to preserve their grasp on the great nation, the royal family have taken to burning those half-caste children born of unions between deepmen and landsmen. But secreted away in an estate on the outskirts of London, one has survived, and horrfied by the treatment of such unfortunate offspring as Henry, the timid granddaughter of King Edward seeks to alter the itinerary of history again.

Anne and Henry; Henry and Anne. Whitfield treats us to a book in the company of each, heavyset with dense information dumps and gradual character-building, before the worlds of each - the broken court of the ailing King Edward and the training ground Henry's landsman saviour has set for him - come together with a defeaning crash and their narratives intertwine. They are a fascinating, engaging pair: different sides of the selfsame coin in their ways. Anne has been born and raised on land but is of deepsmen breeding; Henry, meanwhile, is utterly of the sea, but removed from it struggles to find his land-legs. Anne is God-fearing, obtuse and fiercely intelligent; Henry, however, is blunt, brutish, illiterate and adamant in his Godlessness. Anne grapples with huge issues such as war, politics, monarchy and loyalty while the outcast deepsman faces down only clothes, and latterly, a painting.

In Great Waters, for all its grandiose manouvering and dodgy politicking, is a remarkably personal narrative, and though some will wish Whitfield had painted her wonderful world with more depth and texture, its greatest function is as a backdrop for the lives of these two characters - but they are such lives, fraught so soon with hardship and tragedy, sin and decision. It can be hard, in fact, to reconcile the awful things Henry and Anne must face down with their youth; even at the end of In Great Waters, Anne - whored, married, murderer - is only 14 years young. Such insight it difficult to bear, at times, but bear it you must, for the journey, across land and sea alike, is often spectacular.

As Bareback before it, In Great Waters showcases the effortless elegance of Whitfield as a wordsmith, and while her world would have perhaps resonated more with the addition of a third, less isolated perspective, that is not the focus of her nonetheless superlative second novel. Tight and restrained, imtimate and unadorned, In Great Waters succeeds in spades as a powerful and personal tale of the inhuman told with touching humanity.

I was enthralled by this book (as I was by Bareback)- except this is even better.
I found the concepts fascinating and although 'getting into it' takes a while, once there one is hooked and cannot put the book down as one starts living in the world Kit has created. The idea of 'imperfect' people being revered and the point-of-view taken by the main character about The Church makes an interesting debate.
The descriptions of things are wonderful and images are readily brought to mind. Anyone who swims and spends time in pools, lakes or the sea will easily relate to the way the author describes views and feelings when in the water (i.e. looking up, the feeling of being unencumbered and the vastness, etc). There were many paras which I read over a few times just to retain the impact of beautiful and invocative words.
I can highly recommend this book to anyone interested in something very different with a 'science-fiction' element and a touch of Margaret Attwood.

So I was going to the gym and I had a dilemma. I had an audiobook on my iPod but I was also halfway through "In Great Waters." So I decided to take the book, slog it out for twenty minutes on the cross trainer then finish my work-out with the audiobook on the treadmill. I plugged myself in, set out on the cross trainer, checked my time after five minutes and discovered thirty minutes had passed.

Like "Bareback," "In Great Waters" is a novel that sucks you in and refuses to let you go. Although not immediately likable, the characters' situation is so convoluted you find yourself rooting for them regardless. The "mermaids" are approached from a fairly scientific "what would they actually be like" point of view.

There are no singing crabs, no tentacled witches and no-one combs their hair with a fork.

I can't wait to see what Kit Whitfield's third book is like.