And the Ocean was our Sky by Patrick Ness

If you get to know your enemy, you might not hate them after all. This book kind of blew my mind. There is no getting around the fact that it’s REALLY weird, but I LOVED everything about it. It is based on Moby Dick, which is a novel told from the perspective of whalers seeking revenge on a whale, whereas this book is told from the perspective of a whale seeking revenge on humans. 

The main character (whale) is called Bathsheba, and she is part of a group of hunters that hunt humans. They have their own ships and harpoons, and while at times I struggled to get my head around these sorts of things, there are really beautiful illustrations that helped me understand what was going on. 

In this book, whales are just as cruel to humans as humans are to them. Prejudice, evil, war, revenge, and the foolishness of all these things is explored, which seems pretty timely with the way the world is going these days. 

“For there are devils in the deep, but worst are the ones we make.”

This is a book for exploring #prejudice, #war, #revenge and #evil.

Video review here.