The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea

By: Axie Oh

Narrated by: Rosa Escoda

Deadly storms. An ancient curse. Will her sacrifice save them all?

For generations, deadly storms have ravaged Mina's homeland. Her people believe the Sea God, once their protector, now curse them with death and despair. To appease him, each year a maiden is thrown into the sea, in the hopes that one day the 'true bride' will be chosen and end the suffering.

Many believe Shim Cheong - Mina's brother's beloved - to be the legendary true bride. But on the night Cheong is sacrificed, Mina's brother follows her, even knowing that to interfere is a death sentence. To save her brother, Mina throws herself into the water in Cheong's stead.

Swept away to the Spirit Realm, a magical city of lesser gods and mythical beasts, Mina finds the Sea God, trapped in an enchanted sleep. With the help of a mysterious young man and a motley crew of demons, gods and spirits, Mina sets out to wake him and bring an end to the storms once and for all.

But she doesn't have much time: a human cannot live long in the land of the spirits. And there are those who would do anything to keep the Sea God from waking....

The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea is a magical feminist retelling of a classic Korean legend, perfect for fans of Uprooted and Miyazaki's Spirited Away.

©2022 Axie Oh (P)2022 Hodder & Stoughton Limited

Critic reviews

"Clever, creative and exquisitely written." (Stephanie Garber, Sunday Times best-selling author of Caraval)

"A beautiful, mesmerizing retelling." (Elizabeth Lim, New York Times best-selling author of Six Crimson Cranes)

Beautifully Written

The tale has friendship, romance, family, loyalty and an absolutely breathtaking and atmospheric, sensory world building. If you like Spirited Away, you’ll love this. The narrator has a nice voice and is a competent reader, but lacks the ability to change her voice to depict each character. However, I still enjoyed listening to it and will listen again.

Good for the soul

A story of courage, hope and live that has been presented beautifully through a plausible fantasy.

Loved it

I read/listen a looot. So I tend to just feel that many books are similar, some better than others. But this IS a wonderful story with great messages: be brave, follow your heart and you will follow your destiny..

I was looking forward to this, but I was bored

I was so bored by this, I kept raising the speed of the audiobook to finish it as fast as possible. While I enjoyed the reveal of who the 3 spirits that helped Mina are and while there were (some, but not much) Ghibli vibes, specifically at the beginning, they disappeared pretty quickly, at least for me.

I found the protagonist, Mina, to be bland and boring and that everything came easily to her. Everyone she met came to adore her, sooner or later - usually sooner; she "saves" everyone; her choices don't really have any bad consequences. And while her romance isn't a true insta-love, it's still quite quick, imo.

It also felt more like a middle-grade than a YA, not that that's a bad thing. I am actually kinda sad that I didn't have a chance to read it as a 12-13 years old, as I think I might have adored it at that time, as I was much more forgiving regarding bland characters and was able to self-insert. So I think it's a cute fantasy book for a pretty young audience, but I didn't really enjoy it. If I wasn't reading it for a reading challenge (r/fantasy bingo 2024), I would have likely dnf-ed it.

The audiobook narrator, Rosa Escoda, was fine, but I didn't particularly enjoy her narration. Now, I am not a native English speaker, so I cannot say this for certain, but her narration sounded very British to my ears, which kept taking me out of the story, since in my mind, it clashes with Korean mythology. According to the quick Google search, she seems to be Korean, which makes it even weirder, so maybe the problem's in me?
Also, I had problems with her pronunciation of characters' names. I would hear Mina one second, Nina another, Meena on the third one. Same was true for most other characters as well. Is it Minjing or Nanjin or something else? I didn't have a physical book with me, so I couldn't check. This also meant that in certain scenes, where characters with similar names do stuff together, I would need to use context clues to figure out who is who.

So, all in all, I don't think that this is a bad book at all, but I was quite bored by it and couldn't wait for it to end. And I didn't enjoy the narration.

Maybe it's better if you have read the originals?

I am not familiar with the original stories so I have no emotional attachment to what I understand are characters of folklore, and almost nothing in the book really made me change my mind. It starts off really well and then I am thrown into a world with a bunch of things that I can see someone enjoying if they can go "Oh, it's THAT guy!" but in no other way, really.

There are so many characters introduced in so little a time, and they have so little to actually expand, that I really had a hard time caring for anything that happened to anybody. I kept thinking "why am I being bothered with those people?". Everyone being pretty much "your average teen" coded didn't help me much with the believability of them all being gods and spiritual beings. Honestly, if half the book took place back on shore and showed how the rest of the people were dealing with Mina's surprise sacrifice it would have carried so much more weight and been so much more interesting. How does her brother that she sacrificed herself for deal with it? How does the village treat the chosen bride now? Leave Mina with one accompanying character (same one that the "twist" is focused on) and bam, we're gucci.

I could really critique further: plot contrivances are introduced and then resolved at the blink of an eye, the portrayal of deities is generic as well (we've seen the "actually egoistical and juvenile" angle so many times it's yawn inducing), and the "magical feminist retelling" part of the book blurb seems like false advertising - what is feminist about how Mina handles the situation, really? She just walks around and goes "hey, you could be nicer" to people, they go through deep introspection and figure "hey, I could be nicer" and resolve the plot contrivance. I mean, I can see how that is all good and effective, but not exactly breaking the stereotype of the caring supportive woman. She ends up the tool needed for everyone else to save the world.

If there is one positive thing I could say about the book is that it does indeed feel like a fairytale in writing style and presence; all the genre flaws there being reflected in their splendor. If you have nostalgia for the fairytales you read as a child (and maybe specific classic Korean ones), sure, you may vibe to this one. Most of us however went to fantasy looking for a medium that outgrows the fairytales in a meaningful way, and this book definitely doesn't.

A note on Rosa Escoda's performance: it really isn't great. I can see hers being a bit of a social casting more than anything else, a series with a pronounced Korean heritage being read by your average native English speaker may leave a bad impression, and a note of a certain Eastern accent can certainly add a few layers of immersion, especially around the pronunciation of traditional names. Rosa however, while of Asian origin, has almost no actual accent; what she has are pronunciation flaws, and the way "v, f, s" were mouthed out made me feel like I am spat at from the other side.