Beneath A Thousand Skies

Summary:

She had no need for the tides to be kind, not if she became the storm

The Selkie Isles were meant to be a safe haven for Isla Blackwood, a place she could finally call home. Instead, she finds herself hunted across the sea for a pelt the Grand Admiral will do anything to recover.

But the Admiralty isn’t the only threat on the horizon. A terrible mist sickness plagues the isles, carried by the vengeful spirits of fallen selkies. To stop it, Isla will need to learn the lost secrets of her mother’s rare magic—if she can earn the trust of those who call her an outsider.

Back in the capital, Darce Galbraith prepares to set sail with the enemy fleet. Surrounded by danger, he will do all he can to sabotage their search—even if it means risking the wrath of the Grand Admiral himself.

A storm is ready to break on human and selkie alike, and only the tides know what’s waiting on the other side…

In all honesty I do not have the words to describe the sheer emotional impact this book had on me. I’d read the first couple of chapters and then life got in the way for a while, so I came back and started from the beginning – and I did not stop, not even as the clock crept past bedtime, and then midnight and far too late and early in the morning for a work day. I could not pull myself away from this story, this world, with all the little details of the Scottish influence that were woven through out, and the twists and turns of fate and fortune and choices. Finishing this book was gut-wrenching because I just wanted to keep going, and yet at the same time the ending, and the way Scrimgeour brought this middle installment to the end was perfect – and I spent a good hour or so afterwards just mulling over what I had read. And even now writing this review, I’m going over all the little details, the emotional moments, the twists, the lore – and honestly Mists of Memory is everything that I love about this genre.

Mists of Memory picks up where Sea of Souls left off, still in the ripples of the events that ended that book and Scrimgeour doesn’t waste any time at all in pulling us back into this world, and into the very real threat and stakes that rose throughout book one but reach another level here. This is a middle book that set out with a purpose; and Scrimgeour has taken all the elements that made the first book so brilliant and made them shine like the ocean under a noonday sun.

One of my favourite aspects of this series has always been the worldbuilding, and that remains more true than ever. We see the scope of the world itself increasing, from the home of the Selkies – and oh the details about the Crannogs made me so happy – to the search for the Soul Ships, as well as revisiting familiar places through new eyes; and I loved that we get to see the impact of the events that the characters are wrapped up on having a phsyical impact on the world itself. Amburgh I found particularly interesting as a spiderweb of different machinations, but also as a battleground for the hearts, souls and freedom of nearly every character that we have come to know and love.

Folklore is embedded into every layer of this book, from elements taking from Scottish Folklore, to the internal folklore of this tale and Scrimgeour does it in such a way that it feels like you could step into the haar and find the selkies there waiting for you. However, what truly delighted me with the lore in Mists of Memory was both the idea of cultural memory and knowledge being passed down both in general, with the way we see it play through Sentinels and Guidebirds for example, or the lore of the Selkies about how blood is used; but also through dreamwalking. The idea that there is this huge depth of knowledge, an archive that is carried from generation or generation – or should be. But, also how fragile that knowledge can be, and how easily it can become lost or twisted, with the true meaning lost to the tides of time; but also strong and powerful the truths at the centre of that lore can be. The journey to find the Soul Ships and discovering the truth of blood and sacrifice and the haar, were my favourite elemnts of this book – with each new thread adding depth across the world and story.

There was also an interesting parallel that as that journey reached its pinnacle, and the old tales were becoming more real and spreading, confronting the established beliefs and order of the world; the more straightforward the path became. The truth being uncovered in the old tales, being mirrored with a realisation of truths and choices in the characters lives.

The development of the lore around Selkies, the gun-anam, blood and sacrifice and the haar and soul ships was beautifully handled; and I loved that it only added to the depth of the representation of selkies in this series. This series, along with Hannaford’s The Black Hind series show this mythical people as they could be – and I am absolutely living for it.

As divine as the worldbuilding is – and I could go into raptures about that all day; it is accompanied by absolutely masterful character writing. Because this world, the folklore, the old tales and the truths are all shaping and being shaped by the characters; and that is very much true of all elements in this series, everything has a ripple effect on everything else.

Isla is very much evident of this, and I said in my review of Sea of Souls that it felt like a coming of age story for her, even though it wasn’t really as she had already made something of her life at sea. But, if that was a story of her finding herself, Mists of Memory was the story of her claiming herself. Of both accepting who she had become, and the weight that meant bearing, but also in choosing to fight for both parts of herself – it would have been so easy, and understandable for her to latch onto this new life, this future for the selkies and herself she was fighting for and turn her back on everything else, but to chose to fight both halves of whom she was. To want to save both sides, made for an incredibly compelling character arc. And it’s still a journey, she still has flaws, chooses with heart over head – to the detriment of herself and others at times; but that just makes her even more compelling to read and there were moments from her POV where I was shouting at her, others when I wanted to hug her, and always, always wanting her to succeed.

Darce was the character that took me longest to warm to in the last book, but here and with the introduction of his POV and the way Scrimgeour handles the weight of his choices absolutely turned him into one of my favourite characters. Isla is so central to the story, half human and half selkie, the bridge between worlds; but Darce is absolutely the same, both in terms of his own path as swordsman and now Sentinel, but also with his loyalty to both Isla and Lachlan. And I love that even with being soul bound, and almost being a north star to each other, this was very much a tale of two individuals finding a path towards each other, and then together, not as one, but as two beings supporting one another. It added an element to the romance that continued to devlop, and to the longing, and the choices they made, and I’m interested to see how some of their choices play out especially with the new knowledge of what blood and sacrifice mean.

Cunningham. In this man – if he can even really be called that at this point – Scrimgeour has created a villain that I revile but ultimately I am fascinated by; and the way Mists of Memory take the foundation laid in book one and then dive into the depths of his machinations with a slow peeling away of the horror that this man has committed and continues to commit. The way his relationship with Mara has the potential – even acknowledged – to mirror Darce and Isla, and seeing that weight in their own choices. What really fascinates me though is that in some ways he feels like a human gun-anam, in that while he is alive, he is a horror of blood and sea and his role in the violence behind the rise of the gun-anam; and I can’t wait to see where his story will end, because the destruction he leaves in his wake is the kind that feels like it will come calling for revenge on the tide.

Lachlan was a raw wound for much of this book, and Scrimgeour did a fantastic job with making him so. He was the living consquence of so many choices that had been made in the first book, both by others and by himself; and we got to see that play out. In some ways it felt like this was his coming of age book, as though with that step apart from Isla, he was able to find who he wanted to be – and it wasn’t an easy journey, and as with every character in this book, choice very much played a part in his path. With every choice having a price. And I loved that right until the very end, you could never tell which way his choice would fall, because just as Darce was pulled in two directions, so too was Lachlan.

Eimhir was my favourite character from the first book, and that remains true, for all the devasatation that has ended up bringing me with this book. Her strength was different in this one. In Sea of Souls we got to see her holding out a hand, against the backdrop of history and loss and the potential of losing herself; here her strength comes from love and family. She is still the fighter, the protector, but for a good portion of the book it felt like we got to see her as she should be, even with the pressure of what was happening in the world, and the way Isla took risks. Seeing that, made the events of the last part of the book all the more raw.

Mists of Memory much like its predecessor rmains very much a family saga, only in this one, that family has grown and changed, both for the better and for the worst. And we still very much have the central themes of acceptance – we see it in Isla’s trying to show she belongs with the Selkies, and Lachlan trying to forge a place for himself within the limitations around him and the noose around his neck; and we see it in the shifting, tentative alliances and friendships. But, even more so about accepting yourself – this was a thread in the first book, but here it has risen to the surface. As much as the connections and accepting of one another is core to the story, the real moments of individual strength are where we see the characters claim the path they want to follow – regardless of the cost, of the weight and pull of different allegiances – we see it when Isla choose to become the storm, when Lachlan makes his choice, when Muir reclaims his old title – and at the same time, we get to see the flipside of that coin with Eimhir.

However, one element that Mists of Memory focuses on far more is the idea of choice. Both on the individual level, but also the ripple effect of those personal choices. There is not one choice in this book that was a simple black and white answer; nor was there any choice made that was ever in isolation – every decision big or small had a ripple effect, on the other characters, on the world, on the fates. This is not a world where any choice is simple, it is a world that is set at odds against its own inhabitants – and where the simplest choice is to bow down to that world, to those in power. We see it with the influence of the Admiralty, and the hold that Cunningham has especially over the Sentinels, and through the tendrils of influence if Muir and Quinn in their own ways. We see it reflected in the selkie society too, with the influence and decisions of the chieftans and the weight of the past dictating paths to be taken.

‘And there lies the truth too terrible to admit, Eimhir had told her once. The men are the monsters, and the monsters men. This violence belongs to all of us. It will continue as long as we let it.’

Scrimgeour plays with that idea of choice with great skill, and everything in this book was a choice taken on the edge of a knife, whether the characters chose to fall on the knife held out to them and take the simplest choice, or whether they carved their own path and wounds. Blood was a choice. Family was a choice. Freedom was a choice. And every chocie was caught in a storm – pulled by situation, by emotion, by histroy – so that there was always a layer of moral ambiguity. The right choice was never simple, and was never the right choice for all and the wrong choices that were made, were often right in a painful way – I especially loved how this played out with Isla and Eimhir, and with the Sentinels and Cunningham and those were the rawest, most compelling moments.

Mists of Memory is a storm of a book, with all the drama and roar of thunder and the swells and lulls of winds that have the power to alter the course of everything. Sea of Souls was an absolutely stellar introduction to this saga, but Scrimegour has well and truly raised the bar with this sequel. There was no stopping once I had got into the flow, because the treachorous waters of this tale meant that it felt as though if you took your eyes of the horizon for even a moment you would be lost. Masterful character work, combined with a high stakes, emotionally gripping story and worldbuilding that will have me waiting for the haar to to roll in so that I can step into the world of this story – absolutely a book of the year for me, and I can’t wait to see where these characters and this story will go in the third book.