Oshenerth

by Alan Dean Foster

An epic fantasy that takes place entirely underwater.
Best friends Chachel and Glint, a merson and a cuttlefish, are returning from a shark hunt when they stumble upon an unconscious female demon. Taking her back to their reef community to recover, while they decide what to do with her, they wind up stumbling into a unique friendship, one which will change their lives and community for better as the reef dwellers and the demon together fight to preserve themselves and their way of life in the face of enemies and their blue magic.

In this adventure under the sea, Oshenerth: Blue Magic , New York Times Bestselling author Alan Dean Foster (Alien, Star Wars: Force Awakens) uses his extensive knowledge and experience from diving and traveling to bring to life the mysterious world of reef dwellers under the sea in an imaginative, fascinating new epic fantasy that takes place entirely underwater.

Genres: Fantasy, Ebooks, Science Fiction, Fiction, Adventure

356 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 9, 2015

About the author

Bestselling science fiction writer Alan Dean Foster was born in New York City in 1946, but raised mainly in California. He received a B.A. in Political Science from UCLA in 1968, and a M.F.A. in 1969. Foster lives in Arizona with his wife, but he enjoys traveling because it gives him opportunities to meet new people and explore new places and cultures. This interest is carried over to his writing, but with a twist: the new places encountered in his books are likely to be on another planet, and the people may belong to an alien race.

Foster began his career as an author when a letter he sent to Arkham Collection was purchased by the editor and published in the magazine in 1968. His first novel, The Tar-Aiym Krang, introduced the Humanx Commonwealth, a galactic alliance between humans and an insectlike race called Thranx. Several other novels, including the Icerigger trilogy, are also set in the world of the Commonwealth. The Tar-Aiym Krang also marked the first appearance of Flinx, a young man with paranormal abilities, who reappears in other books, including Orphan Star, For Love of Mother-Not, and Flinx in Flux.

Foster has also written The Damned series and the Spellsinger series, which includes The Hour of the Gate, The Moment of the Magician, The Paths of the Perambulator, and Son of Spellsinger, among others. Other books include novelizations of science fiction movies and television shows such as Star Trek, The Black Hole, Starman, Star Wars, and the Alien movies. Splinter of the Mind's Eye, a bestselling novel based on the Star Wars movies, received the Galaxy Award in 1979. The book Cyber Way won the Southwest Book Award for Fiction in 1990. His novel Our Lady of the Machine won him the UPC Award (Spain) in 1993. He also won the Ignotus Award (Spain) in 1994 and the Stannik Award (Russia) in 2000.

Reviews

[Alyssia Cooke · Rating 2 out of 5]

Whilst the setting of this book is quite interesting, the entire thing is far too bloated for the amount of plot that actually exists. There is a huge amount of padding here, and it made wading through this hard work in the extreme. The characters aren't bad, although many features about individuals are repeated too many times and several of the characters seemed almost to be caricatures in many ways - the lone and sullen hunter, the crazy female who lusts after him, the relatively useless female protagonist who keeps needing to be saved and the powerful mage. The only thing that marks these characters as different is that they are underwater creatures... and that's just not enough to carry it.

The narrative is certainly on the weak side and also finishes leaving you hanging, which is somewhat annoying considering how many words the author took to get to that point to begin with. What this really needed was a devastating editor to take huge swathes of words out and get the author to replace them with narrative, interesting or important world building and non stereotypical characterisations. As it is, useless female protagonist needs rescuing so sullen, rude hunter and friend do the honours, mage then saves her from dying and that's probably the only interesting thing that happens in the next hundred and fifty pages. There are then some battles and a long journey and lots of talk about the 'cold' that is coming and some more battles and mersons you don't know die and crustaceans get their just desserts handed to them on a plate some more and then there's another journey and oh, the end, please wait for the next instalment... except I found this too tedius to even think of picking up the next instalment.

A pity really as I was willing to become invested in this underwater universe...

[Caprice Hokstad · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked the premise. I loved the setting. I liked most of the characters. But I was under a false impression that this was a standalone story and finding out at the end that the main story conflict wasn't resolved really put a damper on my overall enjoyment. What's worse, I don't see the sequel mentioned anywhere so I can find the resolution. Is the sequel even coming? Had I known up front that it was a trilogy or series, I would have waited until it was all done to start reading.

I hope there will be more. And I hope the rest isn't quite as military as this one. I don't mind a little military to the plot, but this one was about 2/3 - 3/4 war and I'd rather cut back to 1/3 or less. Get us to the Deep Oracle. Get some answers about the Cold and why Irina is there and will she ever get back. And PLEASE Mr. Foster, do not end up pairing off Irina with that grumpy jerk Chachel. Irina does NOT need a love interest. At all. But if you must, she's better suited to Glint than Chachel. I know you're itching to. I see the dropped hints. Just resist. Please.

[Paul Hancock · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you take away the underwater aspect of this story then you are left with a rather short and uninteresting read. Essentially the underwater/merpeople angle is about all that brings this story together, and for me it was only just enough. There is a LOT of descriptive text that doesn't move the story forward, it just explains what it's like to be under water. Whilst this is interesting at times, it's not detailed enough to make you feel like you are in an undersea wonderland, and it can get very repetitive.

The story ends on a note clearly inviting sequels and some sort of epic/saga but i'm happy to stop at just one.

[Keturah Barchers · Rating 2 out of 5]

I usually love Allen Dean Foster’s work, so it surprised me when this book flopped for me. The plot moved too slow and the story was filled with more description than illumination. I won’t continue with this series.

[Charl · Rating 2 out of 5]

Great. Not only was this barely worth wading through, it's just the first book in a series! Foster's writing varies greatly in quality, and this one's at the low end of his range. The characters are acceptable, as usual for him, but his underwater world has glaring inconsistencies.

For example, more than once a character yells, sighs, or laughs, and bubbles rise from their mouth. Bubbles of WHAT? The characters are breathing water, with gills, so where do the bubbles come from. Even one of the crabs does it at one point.

The worst one, though, is that the bad guys have semi-magical spears that are enchanted not to attack any creature with a shell (the villains are all crustaceans with shells or exoskeletons while the heroes are all humanoid or cephalopods, with no external shell (other than the occasional nautilus)). These magical spears thus attack only the defenders, and none of the attackers. Until they get to the chamber of the "old wise ones", whom they attack with no hesitation. Even though the wise ones are all ammonites. Who have shells. And should thus be safe from the spears' attacks.

The book is riddled with inconsistencies like that, and they made it impossible to maintain my suspension of disbelief.

And it's not necessarily Foster's fault, but it's also riddled with minor grammar and typographical errors that seem to indicate it hasn't been professionally edited. Which also break my immersion.

These problems prevented me from enjoying the book. Without them, I probably would have given it at least another star.

[T.S.S. Fulk · Rating 2 out of 5]

If Alan Dean Foster wasn't a competent writer, this probably would have entered the utter dren club. The world building consisted mostly of naming and describing lots of fauna that I couldn't really care less about. He tried to make the underwater world seem wonderful and breathtaking, but it came out tedious and boring. The plot was rather predictable, the characters were 2-dimensional, and there were illogical mistakes galore. If Foster had made us really sympathize with the main character and given her something exciting to do except watch I would have put it down as a typical cinematic nutrition-less snack. But since he failed to do that it, the book failed to engage me in any way.

1.5 stars — Avoid unless you really, really, like scuba diving and sea fauna, and are very good at suspending your disbelief.

[Norm017 · Rating 3 out of 5]

While I enjoy the story, it's clearly the first part of a longer series that has yet to materialize. I can only hope that the author sees fit to write the next part soon.

[Lyle Blosser · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent descriptive prose and interesting characters highlight this fantasy tale. It's very apparent that the author appreciates and cares for the world's oceans and the many many denizens that live there -- even in this fantastical extrapolation of our own world. The tale moves along briskly yet does not give short shrift to the characterizations. And, with the story needing to be extended into a (hopefully soon-forthcoming) second book (or series), I think you can truly call this an epic.

[Angus Cormack · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ive loved Alan Dean Foster since being introduced to Pip and Flinx in the third grade. I still think Nor Crystal Tears is one of the best first contact books I have ever read (in the adventure style at least, there are better "hard scifi" ones.)

But Oshenerth.... Really let me down, I was determined to get through it, but have zero intention to read any sequels.

[Matthew Poehler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Richly imagined!

The characters here are engaging and relatable while staying true to their species in attitude and thoughts.

Massive world building, with motives that go from immediate and personal to all-threatening.

The Cliffhanger of All Time at the end.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pros: excellent world-building, intriguing premise.
Cons: clunky, stilted writing. Characters without a lot of depth. Magic has no source, no consequences to the user - it's just there to "magick" the plot forward. The climax .... pure deus ex machina.

And yet .... I still want to see where the story goes from here (it's not billed as the start of a series, but it ends exactly where the first in a trilogy would end).