Books: The House In the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune (2020)

“Linus Baker leads a quiet, solitary life. At forty, he lives in a tiny house with a devious cat and his old records. As a Case Worker at the Department in Charge Of Magical Youth, he spends his days overseeing the well-being of children in government-sanctioned orphanages. When Linus is unexpectedly summoned by Extremely Upper Management he's given a curious and highly classified assignment: travel to Marsyas Island Orphanage, where six dangerous children reside: a gnome, a sprite, a wyvern, an unidentifiable green blob, a were-Pomeranian, and the Antichrist. Linus must set aside his fears and determine whether or not they’re likely to bring about the end of days.But the children aren’t the only secret the island keeps. Their caretaker is the charming and enigmatic Arthur Parnassus, who will do anything to keep his wards safe. As Arthur and Linus grow closer, long-held secrets are exposed, and Linus must make a choice: destroy a home or watch the world burn.”

Perhaps one of the most hopeful fantasy novels I’ve read in a long time. The House in the Cerulean Sea is charming, funny, and above all, well written. But, like most books I post here, I always do some research; get the temperature of people’s feelings on the tale. And that's where the trouble begins.

So, one reviewer on Goodreads noted that author TJ Klune has said this novel was inspired by The Sixties Scoop, “a term coined by Patrick Johnston, author of the 1983 report Native Children and the Child Welfare System. It refers to the mass removal of Aboriginal children from their families into the child welfare system, in most cases without the consent of their families or bands.” And so, a few reviewers have taken him to task for trivializing and sugarcoating things, even though the book is not really about those horrible events (some which have recently come to light) that took place in Canada and other areas. And yes, this sort of brought me down on the high I had with this book, because it now feels like just another white dude using BIPOC trauma as a springboard for a their fiction.

So now it’s a problematical book and I don’t know how to feel about it. I mean, I enjoyed it. I loved the gloomy, 1984 feel it had, I loved the off-kilter Douglas Adams inspired humor; I loved Lucy (AKA, Lucifer, the son of Satan), and I thought it was a fresh take on the magical children trope. But we all know what has been happening in Canada over the last few months, with the discovery of unmarked graves of hundreds of Native and Aboriginal children in orphanages run by the Catholic Church (also what was done to the Natives here in the United States and Australia). It’s a horrible stain on our moral conscious that children should never be abused and killed for being who they were and not what we want them to be. Kids died because they would not give up their heritage. So while conservative whites rail against the notion that America is not a racist nation, the past –as Stephen King always notes- does not stay in the past. But we refuse to acknowledge it, we refuse pay the reparations that is so needed.

While I highly suggest reading this book, also take the time –as I will try- to make amends for what as a nation, a country (be it the US or Canada), our ancestors did to those Native and Aboriginal children. And while most of those events stretch back to the late 19^th Century, also understand some of these events continued well into closing years of the 20^th Century.