TJ Klune’s whimsical fantasy novel “The House in the Cerulean Sea” transported readers to a cozy island full of magical orphans and a found family. The novel was released during the pandemic, March 17, 2020, and provided a much-needed escape for many readers. What was originally written as a one-off is slowly expanding into a universe that allows readers to revisit Marsyas Island and the characters that inhabit it as they take on new adventures and struggles. The newest edition of the Cerulean Chronicles, “Somewhere Beyond the Sea,” hit the shelves on Sept. 10.

“The House in the Cerulean Sea” followed Linus Baker, a government worker who was assigned to check on the wellbeing of the six magical orphans. Arthur Parnassus, a formerly abused magic orphan, watched over the children and ran the orphanage. As Linus spent time on the island, he became emotionally invested in each of the children’s lives, including a gnome, sprite, wyvern, were-Pomeranian, green blob, and finally, the Antichrist reincarnated into a 7-year old’s body. 

Watching Linus fall in love with the children as well as Arthur while tacking issues such as harmful government systems and societal stigmatization is exactly what readers needed at the time “The House in the Cerulean Sea” came out. However, it was the children in this novel that made me fall in love with The Cerulean Chronicles in the first place.

The characters in the Cerulean Chronicles are some of the most lovable and extraordinary characters I have come across. Each shine in a different way, ranging from comedic relief to showing how resilient children can be in the face of trauma and discrimination. 

The shining star that combines both is the character, Lucy. Short for Lucifer and known as the antichrist, Lucy discovers doing kind things for the people he loves makes the “spiders” in his head sleepy, while still holding onto an incredibly dry, borderline dark sense of humor. 

Klune uses the juxtaposition of reincarnating the son of Satan into a child’s body to discuss how we have the freedom of choice to choose who we are, instead of falling into what people expect us to be. While a chance to revisit these characters is what made me pick up the second book, I quickly realized that even the most lovable characters cannot save a novel with a next to non-existent plot. 

I went into the sequel, “Somewhere Beyond the Sea,” with the knowledge that it would most likely not be as good as the original, but I still did not set my expectations low enough. While “The House on the Cerulean Sea” focuses more on the whimsy of the magical children and life on the island, “Somewhere Beyond the Sea” comes in hot and heavy with the sole focus of solidifying a government system and lore for this world. 

Much of the beginning was pure review of the first as well as world building for the sake of world building. This caused the pace of the plot to become incredibly start and stop throughout the novel, giving the reader the feeling of driving a stick shift for the first time and continuously stalling out.

When reading fantasy, I often find myself nearing the end of the book and wondering “How is there not more of the book left? So much has to be resolved still.” While reading “Somewhere Beyond the Sea,” I experienced the opposite and often found myself wondering how there could still be 100 pages left. 

It felt as if Klune was adding scenes for the sake of hitting 400 pages. The plot is minimal and all over the place, jumping from court cases to random adventures on the island, to unexpected info-dumps of character trauma and background. The themes were the same as the first, and often allowed characters to go off on political and moral rants. While it was comforting and fresh to see current issues being written and discussed in an open way in the first novel, it feels forced, repeated, and at times downright preachy. 

Even though already low expectations were not met with “Somewhere Beyond the Sea,” I have hopes for the third novel in the Cerulean Chronicles, if one does come. “Somewhere Beyond the Sea” read as a transitional piece and is seemingly used as a world-building novel. It leaves space and sets up the opportunity for a third book. 

Now that the groundwork is laid and the world is built, it seems as if Klune’s characters can go on another adventure that is as heart-warming and impactful as the they did in “The House on the Cerulean Sea.” While I was disappointed by the plot, execution, and length of this novel, it presents readers an opportunity to revisit unique and comforting characters once more. For fans of the characters in the first novel, “Somewhere Beyond the Sea” is worth a casual skim, but for those who are not already fans, it is nothing worth rushing through the first novel.

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