The Sea Prince

I loved this book. I confess that, had I known it was MFM before I started it, I would have resisted. I am MM all the way, but Elizabeth Schechter gives us such a crew of wonderful characters that I fell in love with all of them and was willing to set my biases aside.

Schechter drops us into the middle of a sea battle, during which Tarjiaan, the Sea Captain-Prince of Meradon, works with his swashbuckling crew aboard his ship, the Wave Runner, to fend off a surprise attack from the Imperial fleet. In the course of this opening battle scene, we learn an enormous amount about both Tarjiaan himself and the world in which he lives.

We learn about the land-based empire, where mages (magical humans) exist, but where there is no technology to speak of. We also learn that Meradon is an ocean-going kingdom, driven from the land when the Emperor took over the “sand and sun,” including the three other land-based kingdoms over which he now has dominion. The Meradonese took to the oceans, where there is no magic, but where there is technology. Instead of mages, the people of Meradon have mancers—men and women who have an uncanny gift of making and controlling machinery and systems. The Meradonese live in vast sub-oceanic pods, with fleets of high-tech sailing vessels on the surface of the sea.

The plot of the novel is fairly complicated, as one might expect; yet Schechter manages to build this world with rich detail and exactly the right amount of information so that we can understand the cultural and political context of the story in which we find ourselves.

Tarjiaan is a profoundly good person. He is brave and ruthless, but also devoid of personal prejudice and merciful beyond anyone’s expectations. He has lived through great tragedy and personal trauma, yet somehow, at thirty-four, manages to remain a loving, just, and kind-hearted man. The Empire fears him as the unconquerable Sea Prince, while the people of Meradon adore him as the beloved heir to the throne.

For all its fantasy-world environment, there are contemporary issues at the forefront of the narrative, ranging from racial prejudice and sexism to the impact of physical disabilities. It is all accomplished with grace and imagination by an author who writes very well and with highly-tuned emotion. I wish I could talk more about the other characters and some of the plot details—but I wouldn’t want to spoil this for anyone else. I had great fun discovering and being surprised by the author’s twists and turns.

While the story in “The Sea Prince” reaches a proper conclusion, the author promises more in this series. I will surely grab each new instalment as it appears. These are people I want to get to know more.