RJ Barker’s Tide Child trilogy

I’m back with another review! It’s been a while since I’ve written one of these, but this series made quite an impression. I’ll avoid plot spoilers here, but some things will inevitably need to be spoken of in more detail. You’ll get no more warnings! Onward!

RJ Barker’s Tide Child trilogy is a fantasy series set in a vast archipelago ringed with ceaseless storms. It is a harsh world, consisting of small islands, with a single mountain range running down the middle separating the Hundred Islanders from the rival Gaunt Islanders. Obviously, ships are a critical part of, well, everything in this world. The biggest and most seaworthy are the boneships—large vessels made from the bones of sea dragons, called ‘arakeesian dragons.’ But none of the monsters have been seen for years now, and the boneships are slowly decaying. The power of the Hundred Islands and their ongoing war with the Gaunt Islanders is at stake. Then there comes a rumour to a ship of condemned criminals, the Tide Child, that an arakeesian has been spotted once again…

In this review, I want to discuss what I found to be the most impressive aspects of Barker’s trilogy. And the foremost of these, for me, is the worldbuilding. It is both original and thorough. The former I admire, but what really struck me was the latter. By ‘thorough’ I mean that Barker seems to have truly thought through the concepts of his worldbuilding, so that the consequences percolate down to even the little details. From top to bottom, the worldbuilding is coherent and sort of ‘flows,’ in a way difficult to describe. Here’s a linguistic example: quite a few placenames end with ‘-hulme;’ it’s obviously an in-world suffix. But it doesn’t take long to realize that ‘-hulme’ is actually just a form of ‘home’—so ‘Shipshulme’ is ‘ship’s home,’ and sure enough, it has a major port (though, to be fair, pretty much everywhere is a port, in an archipelago). But what then of, say, ‘Bernshulme’? ‘Bern’s home.’ And that’s where the thorough-going nature of the worldbuilding really kicks into high gear. The Bern are the ruling caste of the Hundred Isles. You see, the entire world is strongly matriarchal—only women rule, and only women who have birthed healthy children. That actually becomes their title: ‘Ninebern,’ or ‘Thirteenbern,’ i.e., having ‘borne’ nine or thirteen children.

Incidentally, this is another of the things I love about this series. It’s a matriarchal world, but not in some feminist power-fantasy way, and not even in a ‘let’s shake things up’ kind of way. In the world of the Shattered Archipelago, humanity is barely hanging on—food is hard to come by, building materials are scarce, and war is constant. There are even indications of some sort of genetic damage rampant in the population, with many children having birth defects. So of course the social priority is women, in particular women who have proved their genetic health through bearing healthy children. They are the most important people for the survival of the nation—more, of humanity itself. Accordingly, they call the shots, and they have their pick of mates.

But, returning to the thorough-going nature of the worldbuilding, this matriarchal social structure resonates throughout every level of society. Thus, anyone addressing mixed groups always lists the women first—’girls and boys.’ The pantheon of the world consists of a triplet goddess—Maiden, Mother, and Hag. The captain of a ship is always called ‘shipwife,’ regardless of sex. Ships, then, are male, rather than female, as they are in our world. The crew are called ‘deckchilder’—that is, ‘deck-children’—and addressed by the shipwife as ‘my girls and boys.’

Barker has also devised a multitude of ranks and nautical terms that are at once novel and immediately understandable (a ship’s ‘wing’ is clearly his sail; his ‘spine’ is obviously his mast). Similarly, he gives the sun and moon new mythologically-based but intuitive names (Skearith’s Eye and Skearith’s Blind Eye, respectively).

Barker’s concern for words and terms shows again in his use of the aforementioned arakeesian dragons. They’re often referred to as ‘keyshans,’ a word which looks quite different, but once spoken is immediately recognizable as a shortening of ‘arakeesian.’ And this is a brilliant move because it’s so realistic. Of course no one (with dubious education) on a ship is going to continually say a word as long as ‘arakeesian.’ It will naturally get shortened down. And what’s more, ‘keyshan’ both sounds and looks like a more informal sort of word than its parent. This is prime linguistic worldbuilding.

This is what I was trying to capture by ‘thorough’ worldbuilding. It seems like Barker has taken a few basic facts about his world, and allowed them to have realistic, far-reaching consequences. The result is that the world feels whole and complete, as if it really is an entirely different world presented to us. I think I, and many others, could learn a lot from this approach, where a little goes very far indeed.

I do have a minor criticism or two. In particular, the very ending of the series seemed a little too abrupt, as it were—not in terms of pacing, but in terms of worldbuilding; it introduced too much too late. That is not to say that it wasn’t foreshadowed (it was), or that it doesn’t logically hold together (it does). It’s just that, to me at least, it felt like it opened up the scope of the world quite dramatically. Usually this is a good thing, but I don’t think the penultimate chapter or two is the place to suddenly reveal the true expanse of your world to readers. A sort of mistake of world-reveal pacing, as it were. However, it should be noted that other readers have found the ending very compelling, so perhaps it’s only me who feels that way.

It wouldn’t be fair to end on a criticism, so I will share one more point on which I think RJ Barker is excellent. In a sort of Q&A appendix, he writes that characters and character arcs are a major focus for him when writing. And this, I think, is precisely the right approach to take. As much as I love worldbuilding (as this review amply demonstrates), character is even more crucial to story. And Barker is not just blowing smoke when he claims to prioritize character writing. The cast of the Tide Child trilogy are in fact complex people with individual motives, problems, and traumas, who go on real emotional and psychological journeys; I won’t take the time here to discuss the varied and powerful arcs of Joron, Meas, Muffaz, Guillaime, Farys, and a host of others. And there is, of course, action galore and bountiful plot twists. And I must say, there is something about a sea story that just hits right.

A compelling plot featuring realistic characters in a novel, well-built world? What more could anyone ask for? RJ Barker: well done, sir.