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A review by mafiabadgers
The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune
1.0
First read 01/2025 for Farnham book club
I'm wavering back and forth between one star and two (with two stars being a positive review on my scale). On the one hand, it was kind of sweet, and generally fun, and if I imagined it all done up in Ghibli-esque animation it was quite lovely. On the other hand, the sprucing up was quite necessary, because Klune seems to have settled on the word "cerulean" and promptly decided that that was enough fine prose for one book. And yet, despite lacking the details that might have brought it to life, the writing tends to be unnecessarily bloated:
I'm wavering back and forth between one star and two (with two stars being a positive review on my scale). On the one hand, it was kind of sweet, and generally fun, and if I imagined it all done up in Ghibli-esque animation it was quite lovely. On the other hand, the sprucing up was quite necessary, because Klune seems to have settled on the word "cerulean" and promptly decided that that was enough fine prose for one book. And yet, despite lacking the details that might have brought it to life, the writing tends to be unnecessarily bloated:
His small wooden desk was almost at the center of the room: Row L, Desk Seven in a room comprising twenty-six rows with fourteen desks in each row. There was barely any space between the desks. A skinny person would have no trouble getting by, but one who carried a few extra pounds around the middle (few being the operative word, of course)?
The first sentence could be removed with no loss of meaning whatsoever. In fact, all that would be needed to conjure up images of drab government offices, stricken by austerity and surveillance managerialism, would be to say that the room is too small for the several hundred desks crammed in there, that the ceiling is low and the fluorescent lights wash out all the colours. It really doesn't matter precisely how many desks there are, or where Linus is sitting. The difficulties that these arrangements cause him don't need to be explained, since Klune alludes to them whenever Linus moves in or out of this array. This description carries on for another two sentences after this, and it's all unnecessary. This is characteristic of the writing throughout the book.
Another reason for this bloated feeling is the unfortunate habit of italicising and repeating passages from earlier in the book when they become thematically relevant. It's all unnecessary. I'd much prefer the book trusted me to pay attention, rather than trying to connect the dots for me. It's a little insulting.
Linus was a boring protagonist. To improve the book, I think he should have been even more boring. He meets Lucifer the Antichrist, Prince of Devils, son of Satan (Lord of Hell, Devourer of the Abyss, etc. etc.), and yet this provokes no crisis of faith whatsoever. He remains a lapsed Christian. This is very funny. The book does not acknowledge that this lack of change might be significant. Instead, it will have him say or do something remarkable, with no setup or further recognition: for example, he is revealed to be familiar with the work of Kant and Schopenhauer, even though he goes to work early, gets home late, and never does anything for fun except listen to his records. It's done purely to try to create a nice moment, not because it makes sense for Linus as a character. Towards the end, it's mentioned that he remembers the names of every child he's ever worked with (which seems to contravene his character arc, which began with a staid refusal to get attached), and shortly afterwards he recites a passage that one of the kids read out exactly once, shortly after they first met. Does he have an eidetic memory? This is apparently not worth commenting on.
On top of all that, the book's morality is mind-numbingly simplistic. When the magical islander children are brought to the village, we see not two instances in quick succession where the island kids have a moment of connection with the village kids, before the village parents whisk their children away hatefully. Yes, Mr Klune. Children are pure and innocent angels. We get the point. It is around this time that Linus tells one of the islander kids that "you can always judge a person by how they treat animals. If there is cruelty, then that person should be avoided at all costs. If there is kindness, I like to think it’s the mark of a good soul." I, for one, am glad we have such a reliable litmus test for determining if people are bad or good. Surely, bad people could never be nice to animals.
Okay, well, it's a cosy fantasy book. It's not trying to present itself as a nuanced, shades-of-moral-greyness sort of story. Right? Wrong! The book repeatedly insists that "It cannot be boiled down to black and white. Not when there is so much in between. You cannot say something is moral or immoral without understanding the nuances behind it." It is, however, very much a black and white sort of book. All the children have tragic backstories, but now they are sweet and lovely and kind. They are raised by someone with a lot of orphanage-related trauma, but fortunately this has absolutely no bearing on his behaviour and he remains a perfect father figure at all times. Even when one of the kids has a nightmare and his powers run wild, nobody gets hurt, because he simply doesn't want them to be. For The House in the Cerulean Sea, not hurting people is a simple matter of not wanting to hurt them. If someone is racist, they're obviously bad, but fortunately you can change them by having a stern word with them and shaming them into being better. If the authoritarian, racist government is perpetuating systemic harm to children, this can be resolved by