Fathom [Hardcover]

Cherie Priest (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 9, 2008

“I can’t fathom them, and neither can you.”

The ageless water witch Arahab has been scheming for eons, gathering the means to awaken the great Leviathan. She aims to bring him and the old gods back to their former glory, caring little that their ascendance will also mean an end to the human race. However, awakening the Leviathan is no small feat. In fact, Arahab can’t complete the ritual without human aid.

Arahab’s first choice is José Gaspar, a notorious sea pirate from eighteenth-century Spain. But when the task proves too difficult for Gaspar, she must look elsewhere, biding her time until the 1930’s, when the ideal candidate shows up: a slightly deranged teenager named Bernice.

Bernice is sophisticated, torn from New York and forced to spend a miserable summer on Anna Maria Island, a tiny rock off the coast of Florida. She’s also been saddled with the companionship of her farm-raised cousin Nia. Eventually, Bernice’s disenchantment gives way to rage, which in turn leads her to commit a deadly crime. When Nia won’t cover for Bernice’s actions, she turns on Nia, chasing her into the deadly coastal waves.

But the timing is right and the elementals have better ideas: the moment the girls go under, Bernice is commandeered for Arahab’s task force, and Nia is turned into a strange and powerful new creature by a servant of the earth who doesn’t want to surrender his green fields and muddy plains—not yet, at least. Add in a hapless fire inspector who’s just trying to get his paperwork in order, a fire god whose neutrality has been called into question, and a bizarre religious cult, and rural Florida doesn’t seem quite so sleepy anymore.

Cherie Priest, who stormed onto the scene with the stunning Southern Gothic trio that began with Four and Twenty Blackbirds, now brings the same masterful writing and unforgettable characterization to the realm of near-contemporary rural fantasy. The result, Fathom, is fast-paced, stunning, and quite unlike anything you’ve ever read.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. A decidedly dark departure from Priest's Eden Moore saga (Four and Twenty Blackbirds, etc.), this stand-alone novel is equal parts horror, contemporary fantasy and apocalyptic thriller. During a summer vacation to her aunts coastal Florida home, innocent teen Nia sees her cousin Bernice commit a brutal murder and then get dragged into the ocean by a monstrous water witch. Nia becomes inadvertently entangled in a conflict between primordial creatures that endangers the very existence of humankind. Entombed in stone for countless years, Nia eventually emerges from her cocoon transformed, only to realize that an old god is close to awakening and destroying the world. Priests haunting lyricism and graceful narrative are complemented by the solemn, cynical thematic undercurrents with a tangible gravity and depth. This is arguably her most ambitious—and accomplished—work to date. (Dec.)
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From Booklist

Priest’s southern gothic Eden Moore trilogy (Four and Twenty Blackbirds, 2005; Wings to the Kingdom, 2006; Not Flesh nor Feathers, 2007) was praised for its atmospheric blend of suspense and supernatural intrigue. Now she visits similar moody territory in Florida in a myth-bending tale about immortal sea creatures. Arahab is a water witch with a singular and malevolent goal: to awaken an ancient sea monster, Leviathan, and restore the earthly reign of ancient gods while extinguishing the human race. Unfortunately, Arahab can’t complete the task without a human ally. When the opportunity presents itself in the form of a drowning woman, she grants virtual immortality to murderous, sophisticated young Bernice. What Arahab hasn’t counted on, however, is the wiliness of earth’s defenders, who transform Bernice’s cousin Nia into their own ally and encase her in a stony cocoon until an ultimate showdown between woman and witch. Although Priest’s quirky, character-driven yarn becomes mystifyingly outlandish at times, her creative vision is unlike anything else in contemporary fantasy. --Carl Hays

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Tor Books; First Edition edition (December 9, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0765318407
• ISBN-13: 978-0765318404
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,424,349 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Cherie Priest is the author of eleven novels, including the steampunk pulp adventures Dreadnought, Clementine, and Boneshaker. Boneshaker was nominated for both the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award; it was a PNBA Award winner, and winner of the Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel. Cherie also wrote Fathom and the Eden Moore series from Tor (Macmillan), Bloodshot and Hellbent for Bantam, and three novellas published by Subterranean Press. In addition to all of the above, she is a newly minted member of the Wild Cards Consortium - and her first foray into George R. R. Martin's superhero universe, Fort Freak (for which she wrote the frame story), will debut in 2011. Cherie's short stories and nonfiction articles have appeared in such fine publications as Weird Tales, Subterranean Magazine, Publishers Weekly, The Living Dead 2, and the Thackeray T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities. Though she spent most of her life in the southeast, she presently lives in Seattle, Washington, with her husband and a fat black cat.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fathom Fascinates, December 31, 2008

By 

Berni (Sunnyvale, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fathom (Hardcover)

Cherie Priest's latest novel, FATHOM, is a fascinating look at a Florida that has so much more to offer than Disney. She's got gods and ghosts, pirates and parades. This is a fantasy novel that's not the same-old, same-old. You'll find no twee elves or lost kings or magic swords. Instead, it's a fresh world of sea gods, a depression-era murderess, and unlikely heroes.

Fans of Tim Powers should definitely read this book. Like him, she has the knack of finding actual weird things and seamlessly interweaving them with her prose until you can't tell what she's made up and what she hasn't. Priest is definitely a writer to keep your eye on.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful story, beautifully told, January 6, 2009

By 

Graeme Williams (Waltham, MA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Fathom (Hardcover)

Fathom is a story of two teenage girls, a handful of gods and a dead pirate. It gave me a lot to think about while it was a lot of fun to read. One of the girls, one of the gods and the dead pirate are working together to destroy the world. But the enjoyment in reading the book isn't so much in the suspense, but in the skillful way Priest blurs the line between realistic and fantastic, dancing along the boundary between a novel about real people and a fairy tale about symbols of good and evil, while juggling time, place and distance.

Why do people do what they do? Who knows? This is a story about things happening, not about things happening for a reason. Fathom challenges you to accept that sometimes things happen without warning or explanation, or because of forces beyond your control and understanding. It's a book about the power of the elements, of gods and monsters and things that go bump in the day. About the power in places and words and things. It's a fable about not playing with (metaphorical) matches, and letting sleeping powers lie.

One of the strengths of the characterization in the book is in the working out of choices, good, bad or just lucky. About who you can rely on and being redeemed or lost by the friends you make, or the allies you keep. I'm not sure I could accurately visualize either of the two teenage girls, but by the end of the book their choices are vivid and memorable.

Although authors pull their hair out when a book is dropped into a genre, dark fantasy is not too bad a description for this book. Sometimes things go badly; sometimes the cavalry arrives late, and for no reason. Sometimes all you can do is wait; sometimes the right thing to do is to run away as fast as you can.

Partly because two of the protagonists are teenagers, this would be an excellent introduction to modern fantasy for a mid-teen. But that was a few decades ago for me, so I can confidently declare that this is a great story for readers of all ages.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Southern gothic fantasy horror, and that's just to start, January 9, 2009

By 

Garret Reece (Florida, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Fathom (Hardcover)

I started this book standing in the kitchen, waiting for my tea to steep. Thirty minutes later, the tea undrinkable and my hip numb from leaning against the counter, I decided I should sit down, and managed to do so without ever lifting my eyes from the page.

Superficially Fathom is a story of saving the world, but it's not the usual fantasy adventure. People live and die because more by luck than by skill, there's no wise old man to tell the heroes what they need to know and do, and nobody's actions are without consequence. It's saving the world, so it's a fairytale, but it's a modern fairytale, adult and grim, with hard corners and no safety rails.

Fathom is not just a story about saving the world, though; it's about transformation, and family, and identity, and a great deal of other things, all lurking beneath the surface. It's also about Florida, and as someone who still lives here, I can say with authority she got it right.

This is the second book by Mrs. Priest that I've read, and with it she's established herself in my mind as an author to watch; I look forward to reading more of her work.