A Letter to the Luminous Deep

A Letter to the Luminous Deep by Sylvie Cathrall, 391 pages

E. has lived most of her life in the Deep House, an architectural marvel built in a reef 14 fathoms deep, and as her Maladies of the Mind keep her from leaving or socializing much, she knows the place and its surrounding creatures pretty well. So when she observes a large aquatic eel-type creature, E. writes a letter to the author of her favorite sea creature classification novel, Scholar Henery Clel. When he writes back, they begin a correspondence that leads to a burgeoning relationship that forms mostly through the written word. But when both of them vanish in a mysterious seaquake, E.'s sister and Henery's brother come together to share their siblings' letters and see if they can figure out what happened to them.

This epistolary novel is set in a strange world that is mostly ocean, and between that and the formal ways of addressing one another, it feels somewhat Victorian, almost like a gentler and easier to read cousin of Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. The book says on the spine that it's fantasy, and I'm not sure I quite agree with that, but I will say that it was a lovely book that's worth putting a bit of time into reading.

The Outlaw Ocean: Journeys Across the Last Untamed Frontier

 The Outlaw Ocean by Ian Urbina, 560 pages.

This book, an expansion of Urbina's articles for the New York Times, explores the full range of criminal (and technically not criminal) actions that take place in the vast expanse of the ocean. It is also an exceptional piece of investigative journalism. The Outlaw Ocean reads in plenty of parts like an adventure, yet that never detracts from how deathly serious the issues he is investigating are. This book is absolutely stuffed with research, facts, and statistics, but they are integrated so smoothly into the narrative of the investigation itself that this remains an extremely engaging read. 

Which is a real benefit, given how many terrible things it will likely introduce you to that you had no idea of before, because they happen to far away and to people who don't have the means to make their situations known. For example, did you know that up to 25% of seafood is caught illegally? That it is common (and not even illegal!) for sailors to be stranded on their boats by the companies who own them for indefinite amounts of time with no supplies? How about the fact that sea slavery is not only very common, but very rarely prosecuted? I certainly didn't, and I was often shocked and appalled at the conditions he described. Which is not to say that all of the stories are bad. He also writes about a boat that takes advantage of a loophole in maritime law to offer abortions to women in countries where they are illegal. Or a man who sounds more like something out of an adventure novel, who runs a company that specializes in stealing boats on behalf of a ships owners, insurers, or creditors and spiriting it away from the jurisdiction of whatever harbor is detaining it (generally these boats are either stolen or being illegally detained by corrupt government/harbor officials).

This book is important, interesting, and informative and I would definitely recommend it. It also includes nearly 100 pages of appendix, notes, and further reading, which gives me a lot of confidence in the academic legitimacy of the work.

(Note: despite containing what I think might literally be every other form of transportation on the planet, there are no train rides in this book, therefore no bonus points)