And the Ocean Was Our Sky

I've seen the movie based on Patrick Ness's previous book, A Monster Calls, but I haven't actually read the book. I definitely see similarities in style between the two stories, though. The blurb calls it “lyrical” and “haunting” but I'd call them both trippy.

In And The Ocean Was Our Sky, the story is told from the viewpoint of Bathsheba, a whale. In her world, whales and humans have been at war as long as she can remember. Whales have learned the human language, and how to build ships and use harpoons. (Though how they actually DO these things with flippers is never explained. Just suspend disbelief and go with it.)

I think the hardest thing to wrap my mind around was the whales have an inverted view of gravity. To them, the human world of air is called the Abyss, and it lives below them. The ocean is, well, their sky, as the title says. Bathsheba mentions the dizzying moment when she breaches and the world turns on its axis as gravity changes around her. When the whales talk of swimming up, they mean deeper into the ocean, or down, to us.

It's a crazy, inverted, fantastical world, and you just have to go with it. The illustrations both help and confuse further, but I think the fever-dream feel of it is intentional.

Bathsheba and her pod are hunters of men, and they come across a sign from Toby Wick. (You know, instead of Moby Dick.) Toby Wick is a devil in the eyes of both men and whales, and Bathsheba's captain, Captain Alexandra, resolves to hunt him down once and for all and rid the oceans of his menace. On the way, Bathsheba talks to their human captive and learns not all men are hunters, and they have dreams and fears just like whales do. Disturbed, she begins to question her own morality, and what makes someone a devil.

The book is a quick read at 160 pages, probably half of which are full-page illustrations. But it is magical and surreal and well worth reading.

You can find all my reviews at Goddess in the Stacks.

An interesting and somewhat trippy retelling of Moby Dick from the perspective of the whales.

The title here alludes to one of the more clever concept of the book, which is the perspective of up and down when you live in an underwater environment. Here buoyancy is generally greater than gravity for those of us that breath the air so the perspective of things may change. Also the idea that the air will be the abyss as opposed the deep ocean - a valid change of perspective for a sea dwelling creature.

The other ideas are more fantastical and strange, with whales building ships that travel the currents and hunt humans for products to be made from their body parts. An interesting flipping of the Moby Dick story - the whales are as much the monsters as man and that concept of what makes someone become a devil is central to the story.

The other thing to praise here is the artwork, which is also suitably dreamy and surreal.

This is a strange book: I appreciate its clever ideas but some of the direct fantasy on the whales jarred a bit with the source material. Nonetheless it was a well written and interesting book

This book is like one of the concept albums that you're supposed to watch like a movie with all the music videos. It's absolutely doing something and I had a good time reading it but I think for maximum impact I needed to be at least familiar with Moby Dick.

I enjoyed the whales and the art! A gorgeous book.