Hi friends and happy Wednesday! I hope you are all well. Today I’m posting my review of Song of the Current, the first novel in this duology by: Sarah Tolcser.

Song of the Current by: Sarah Tolcser: Caroline has lived on the river, like her family has for generations. Destined for the river, they claim that the river god guides them on their voyages. For seventeen years, Caroline has waited for her calling, patiently listening, but it hasn’t spoken her name yet. Tired of waiting she takes her future in her own hands. When her father gets arrested for refusing to transport a mysterious crate, she agrees to do it in exchange for his release. Not knowing what she’s getting into she finds herself in positions she never thought possible, leaving her with hard choices to make. This was an exhilarating novel, and the reader had a lot of fun reading it, but there was a lack of world building that left the reader feeling confused and just not as satisfied with this book. The world building was good, but it felt like it could have been better; it didn’t feel like it was explained enough. This novel has a species called ‘frogmen’ but we don’t really learn much about them aside from fact that they are treated like slaves, aside from the one who travels with our main character. This could have been such an interesting thing to explore and explain, but it just never got fleshed out. The talk of boats and shipping was daunting to read; the author clearly did research, but this reader was thrown off as to what Tolcser was talking about at times. The actual plot was fun as it had this magical aspect to it that was fascinating and had the reader invested in the rest of the story. When one of the characters shows up in a peculiar way, it really amped up the story and left us wanting more. The characters were good, a little half-baked like the world was, but they were good enough that the reader was able to understand and feel for them. There is a sequel to this that the reader is interested to try out to see where these characters and the plots go from here. In the end, this novel was good, it wasn’t great but it held a lot of heart, with good writing.