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Over the Dead Sea
In a world on the brink of a war between humans and magical creatures, it is not armies that make the gods tremble, but a nutshell and a holey hat. Theo Hackermann has known little of only barren fields and the brutality of Selke’s butcher shop. Yet, he harbors a to find the legendary Dead Sea, a place full of lost treasures, wishes to be granted, and secrets the world has chosen to forget. It was an old shepherd who had told him about gruff, certainly, but also the only caress the sky had ever granted him. At his death, Theo inherits almost nothing -just a handful of wool and a to leave the fields, reach the sea, and become free. And so he sets out. Without a ship, without maps, knowing of the sea only the rivers that flow into it and the puddles along the road, Theo faces a harsh, hostile, frightening world - and precisely for that, familiar. So he does not tremble when the waves cease to obey, when old currents deceive, or when magical creatures bend the routes to disorient humans. He cannot get lost if he does not know where he is going. And so, in the chaos of his journey, Theo, in search of a legend, will give life to a new that of his crew.
The Vultures.
The Vultures.
547 pages, Paperback
Published June 1, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
August 17, 2026
this book literally has everything i’ve ever wanted in a book. i’ve had a very specific standards, and it QUITE LITERALLY HAD ALL OF THEM. i need a second book. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE
August 30, 2026
I'm destroyed in the best way possible. 5/5. Dont recommend.
Did Not Finish
September 8, 2026DNFed at 45%.
I really wanted to like this book, as a fan of both pirates and ATEEZ, but at 45% of the way through, we still haven't really gotten anywhere with the two main plot points outlined in the blurb, and my patience wore too thin to justify reading any longer. We have three crew mates, the POVs of two others who have yet to join dotted in between, and we haven't met the other three (apart from a brief interaction that I believe was meant to represent one of them). We have little to no information about the dead sea or how to get there, and that's just the issues I had with the plot. I have more criticisms, unfortunately.
I read the acknowledgements despite DNFing this book. No editor is thanked, and trust me, I could tell there wasn't one. I found so many simple issues that required just basic line level editing to fix. Obviously misspelled words, a - frankly ridiculous - overuse of epithets, pronouns used without naming a character first leaving you wondering which 'he' in a scene of 5 he's we're talking about. The stylistic choice for the dialogue of the Laho guardians was a horrific decision, and after flicking through the book and realising they are in the final chapter, I am glad to be leaving them right the fuck behind. If I had to read one more undated logbook or weirdly cryptic letter from Theo to whoever, I was going to lose it. The writing is clunky in some places, making it hard to follow, and I genuinely couldn't tell you the throughline of what we were doing in this book because I was so confused. There were formatting errors galore, the most glaring of which was some lines having huge spaces between words like you'd hit CTRL+Enter, instead of just Enter in a Word doc set to the 'Justify' alignment setting.
Hell, the final chapter isn't even called Chapter 38 in my copy. It's called Capitolo 38. Which is Italian. And I'm aware an Italian version of this book exists, but guess what? That's not the copy I read! Why the fuck is it in Italian?!
But wait! There's more!
The worldbuilding exists only in terms of locations and a random war against magic users/creatures. There's no sense of time, or date. I have no idea how long passes between scenes, and this also affects the logbook, because why would each consecutive logbook section be entitled "logbook"? That makes no sense. They need dates and times to track the passage of time. That's what a logbook is.
And to make it all that much worse, we barely got any pirating adventures, either. I don't think this author understands pirates all that much. None of them were pirates, just three (at the time of DNFing) idiots with a boat. They weren't pirates. They were fools.
I really wanted to like this book, as a fan of both pirates and ATEEZ, but at 45% of the way through, we still haven't really gotten anywhere with the two main plot points outlined in the blurb, and my patience wore too thin to justify reading any longer. We have three crew mates, the POVs of two others who have yet to join dotted in between, and we haven't met the other three (apart from a brief interaction that I believe was meant to represent one of them). We have little to no information about the dead sea or how to get there, and that's just the issues I had with the plot. I have more criticisms, unfortunately.
I read the acknowledgements despite DNFing this book. No editor is thanked, and trust me, I could tell there wasn't one. I found so many simple issues that required just basic line level editing to fix. Obviously misspelled words, a - frankly ridiculous - overuse of epithets, pronouns used without naming a character first leaving you wondering which 'he' in a scene of 5 he's we're talking about. The stylistic choice for the dialogue of the Laho guardians was a horrific decision, and after flicking through the book and realising they are in the final chapter, I am glad to be leaving them right the fuck behind. If I had to read one more undated logbook or weirdly cryptic letter from Theo to whoever, I was going to lose it. The writing is clunky in some places, making it hard to follow, and I genuinely couldn't tell you the throughline of what we were doing in this book because I was so confused. There were formatting errors galore, the most glaring of which was some lines having huge spaces between words like you'd hit CTRL+Enter, instead of just Enter in a Word doc set to the 'Justify' alignment setting.
Hell, the final chapter isn't even called Chapter 38 in my copy. It's called Capitolo 38. Which is Italian. And I'm aware an Italian version of this book exists, but guess what? That's not the copy I read! Why the fuck is it in Italian?!
But wait! There's more!
The worldbuilding exists only in terms of locations and a random war against magic users/creatures. There's no sense of time, or date. I have no idea how long passes between scenes, and this also affects the logbook, because why would each consecutive logbook section be entitled "logbook"? That makes no sense. They need dates and times to track the passage of time. That's what a logbook is.
And to make it all that much worse, we barely got any pirating adventures, either. I don't think this author understands pirates all that much. None of them were pirates, just three (at the time of DNFing) idiots with a boat. They weren't pirates. They were fools.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews