Look at me, reading an Illumicrate book only a month after I’ve received it (as opposed to the ones I received last year, or the year before that, and still haven’t read), aren’t I the good girl? And because I so diligently stuck to my resolution, I was rewarded with a surprisingly funny book that contains some seriously cool mysteries.
VOYAGE OF THE DAMNED
by Frances White
Published: Michael Joseph, 2024
Hardback: 496 pages
Standalone
My rating: 6.5/10
Opening line: My father always says: ‘You can’t run from your responsibilities,’ but he lacks imagination.
For a thousand years, Concordia has maintained peace between its provinces. To mark this incredible feat, the emperor’s ship embarks upon a twelve-day voyage to the sacred Goddess’s Mountain.
Aboard are the heirs of the twelve provinces of Concordia, each graced with a unique and secret magical ability known as a Blessing.
Except one: Ganymedes Piscero – class clown, slacker, and all-round disappointment.
When a beloved heir is murdered, everyone is a suspect. Stuck at sea and surrounded by powerful people without a Blessing to protect him, odds of survival are slim.
But as the bodies pile higher, Ganymedes must become the hero he was not born to be. Can he unmask the killer and their blessing before this bloody crusade reaches the shores of Concordia?
Or will the empire as he knows it fall?
I love these unexpected surprises when picking up a book. I thought I knew what was coming, what kind of book this was, and I was looking forward to it. A murder myster on a ship with only a handful of passengers who possess god-like abilities, and maybe a bit of romance, right? Well… yes, but also not. Because I learned from page one – as will you, if you embark on this fun journey – that sometimes story doesn’t matter all that much. Sometimes, voice is everthing!
This story is narrated by Ganymedes “Dee” Piscero, heir to the Fish Province on the very bottom part of Concordia. I immediately fell in love with this guy, not only because he is seriously funny, but also because in the opening chapter we witness him trying to eat his way through every delicacy the country has to offer. I mean, relatable, right? But Dee also has a secret. A pretty big, pretty life-changing, nobody-must-ever-know kind of secret. And Dee is doing his best to keep it that way, even if that means purposefully antagonizing every other person he could potentially get close to.
This book’s world building is… whacky, to put it simply. Concordia is an arrowhead-shaped collection of provinces, each of which not only belongs to an aspect of the goddess (represented by an animal), but also comes with its very own, and slightly impossible, climate, flora, and fauna. You’ll have Fish Province on the coast, with lots of little islets, ocean, sandy beaches and so on, but its direct neighbor is the icy tundra of Ermine Province where mammoths roam. Right next to which is, in turn, desert country. So this story is firmly in the nonsense realm of fantasy and that’s fine. Just know going into it that this is no Tolkien or Sanderson and the magic doesn’t have to make sense. It is, after all, magic!
A really fun aspect of these provinces and their qualities are the magical abilities that their respective heirs have. Some of them we learn early on, such as Grasshopper’s ability to turn invisible, or Dee’s father controlling the weather. Other provinces, however, are much more shrouded in mystery. There’s Spider, which is exactly as sly and full of spies who span intricate lies as you’d expect. There’s the Dragon on top, with the Tiger right underneath serving as the royal bodyguard, and then some. Finding out what everyone’s ability is (and that takes the whole book) is a lot of fun. But let’s get to the less fun part. There’s a LOT of murder.
The plot kicks off when the future ruler of Concordia, the Dragon Heir, is found hanging by the neck and very much dead. The author follows this up with a series of more murders, where noone is safe. In fact, it was in one of those early chapters – the second person to die, to be exact – that made me go “oh wow, she really did that”. After that, Dee takes it upon himself to play investigator, with the help of six-year-old Grasshopper, who is mostly there for cuddles and emotional support, and the heir of Bear Province, for purely strategic reasons. Together, they navigate a ship full of people that might want to kill them and each other. Only at the very end will they find out who the culprit is and what all the murder is even about…
The book’s strenghts are definitely its main character and his narration. It is funny most of the time, but betrays his depths and sorrows more and more often as the story goes along. I must also mention that Dee is described as rather chubby, with a big soft belly, and fond of eating (again, who isn’t?) and at the same time, the romantic interest sees him as the most beautiful creature in the world. I’ve heard there’s a lot of fat-positive romance out there, but usually the fat character is a woman, right? So it’s nice to see a male protagonist who isn’t either scrawny or beefy. But I mostly ended up caring about Dee brcause all his loud bravado, his jokes and insults, hide a vulnerable and most of all lonely person that I wanted to hug, more than anything.
The tension of the mystery kept up until the very end, which is no small feat, and the ending as such was well done and satisfying. Also, I appreciate so very much that this is a standalone. It was a lot of fun to read, sometimes silly, sometimes with surprising depths, and I look forward to whatever the author gives us next.
MY RATING: 6.5/10
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