Review Detail

The story:
Kinneret Raza is a tough, adventurous, headstrong young woman with the misfortune of being on the lower rung of the caste system her society employs. She is looked down upon by the upper and middle castes, and longs to improve her station in life so she can one day captain her own ship and show her true feelings to her high-caste friend, Calev.
When Kinneret’s little sister is kidnapped, she is forced to make a deal with a dictatorial amir in order to retrieve her. Using all her nautical and salt-witch skills, she must power through a variety of dangers in order to save the only family she has left.


What I loved:
Kinneret is a great main character. She is every inch the adventurer, with enough chutzpah to fill an ocean. It’s very easy to root for her as she battles pirates, classism, and her own desires. She is a heroine that many young readers will love.
Alisha Klapheke does a fantastic job building the world around Kinneret, so much so that we can almost see the story play out inside our heads, like a rollicking adventure movie. It’s a world we want to dip our toes in, and one that will stay with us long after the final page has turned.

What I didn’t love:
That being said, the author does such a thorough job building the world around Kinneret that, on several occasions, the story itself grinds to a halt. There is a fair amount of action and danger in this book, as one would expect, but there are also long stretches of exposition that slow the pace down to a crawl.
The romance in Waters of Salt & Sin, I have to say, breaks no new ground. Low-caste girl, high-cast guy, two kids who clearly love each other but can’t be together because of the rules of society. It’s been done before, and while readers might find the romance element here satisfying, I found it quite predictable.
Honestly, outside of Kinneret (and Odon, who was easily my second-favorite charater), most of the characters lacked depth for me. The villains were as villainous as they needed to be, but I wish there could have been more characters with as much charisma as Kinneret.

My Final Verdict:
Waters of Salt & Sin clocks in at 386 pages, though it feels even longer at times. If you like immersing yourself in a colorful, well-written world, then this might be worth your time (and patience). However, I think about fifty pages worth of extraneous story could have been cut and nothing would have been lost. A marginal thumbs-up for me.