And the Ocean Was Our Sky

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