A Letter to the Luminous Deep Series: The Sunken Archive #1 Published by Orbit on April 23, 2024
Genres: Fiction / Epistolary, Fiction / Fantasy / General, Fiction / Fantasy / Historical
Pages: 400
Find the Author: Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Instagram
Goodreads
A charming fantasy set in an underwater world with magical academia and a heartwarming penpal romance, perfect for fans of Emily Wilde's Encylopaedia of Faeries and The House in the Cerulean Sea.
E. is content with a solitary life in her extraordinary underwater home, until the discovery of a strange, beautiful creature outside her window prompts her to begin a correspondence with renowned scholar Henerey Clel. The letters they share are filled with passion, at first for their mutual interests, and then, inevitably, for each other.
But when a mysterious seaquake destroys E.'s home, she and Henerey vanish.
A year later, E.'s sister Sophy and Henerey's brother, Vyerin, must piece together the letters, sketches and field notes left behind and learn what their siblings’ disappearances might mean for life as they know it.
Review:
A Letter to the Luminous Deep is a futuristic fantasy story told all in letterrs between various characters. I borrowed the audiobook to have a distinctive voice in my head as I read each letter and correspondence in the book. The story centers around E. And her love interest, which she writes to one day after spotting a mysterious creature from the port hole of her underwater home. What unfolds across these letters is a buddy friendship that soon reveals more about this family than we could ever know. The survival of one is left in doubt at the end of the book. A Letter to the Luminous Deep is a debut novel and is the first in the series, with the second book due out next year. I felt intrigued by the mystery behind the structure outside the underwater home, the depth to which a mother kept secrets hidden, and the relationship between the siblings quite fascinating. I enjoyed this story and will probably check out the next book, if only to find out what is next to be learned about this society and these mysterious entry and exit points.
About Sylvie Cathrall
Hello! I’m Sylvie. I wrote A Letter to the Luminous Deep and its (currently mysterious) sequel. I can tell you some other things about me, if you like. My hobbies are crochet and crosswords. I listen to atmospheric harp music while writing.
And I strive, every day, to find a way of coexisting with my OCD.
A Letter to the Luminous Deep features a protagonist living with severe obsessive-compulsive disorder (well, its fantasy equivalent, anyway), and I drew from my own experiences when writing this novel. I hope my book might help other people with OCD feel less alone.
My specific subtypes of OCD make it difficult for me to engage in author activities like posting regularly on social media or attending extremely large, in-person events. But I try to do both when I can, in a way that’s accessible to me. With the kind assistance of my one true love, I post some book updates on Instagram (the only platform I use). If you have a media or event request, please do get in touch with my publisher, Orbit!
Beautiful cover! And it sounds like a unique type of story. Hope you get the next one and enjoy it too!