The Bright and Breaking Sea by Chloe Neill

The Bright and Breaking Sea by Chloe Neill

Narrated by Danielle Cohen

I can’t even tell you how excited I was to see The Bright and Breaking Sea come up in my “forthcoming releases” search a few months ago. The concept seemed unique and fresh and my positive prior experience with this author meant I had to listen.

The Bright and Breaking Sea is book one in Neill’s new Kit Brightling series and the first thing I need to tell AudioGals readers is that it is not a romance – do not expect a HEA in this book. It is, I believe, a fantasy romance series but it will take some time for that to work itself out and there is only the very beginning of that process in this book. While the story ends on a hopeful note it is not quite a HFN either and the romance is definitely not the main focus of the story.

Captain Kit Brightling is 24 years old and a captain in the “Queen’s Own” a branch of the Isles’ navy – here called the Crown Command – which reports directly to the Queen. Set in an alternate universe but modelled on a Regency England vibe (albeit with some notable exceptions), the story gives different names to familiar landmarks. For example, France becomes Galea, England becomes “the Isles” and Penzance is Penster. It’s clever because it manages to borrow many of the Regency tropes without being at all limited to them.

In this world, some people have magical “alignment” and Kit is aligned to bodies of water, most especially the sea. There are those who have alignment to the land or the wind and I presume there are others (maybe fire?) but they’re the only ones I came across so far. During the Brightling AU version of the Napoleonic wars (the emperor here is Gerard and he’s imprisoned on an island so we have some foreshadowing of what will happen soon), magic was used and it was akin to the atom bomb in Japan during WWII in some ways, causing much death and destruction. Similar questions are raised as to whether it was worth the price to end the war and the jury is still out. Manipulation of magic is illegal but nonetheless people are exploring ways to do so both for the Crown and against it and there is also the grey area of what Kit does which she refers to as “touching the current”. Kit maintains she is not manipulating the magic, rather she uses the strength of the magic to move her ship more quickly but she does not change the course of the magic. Even that use has its price, with small burns on Kit’s hands the cost of touching something so powerful and dangerous.

Kit captains the Diana, ostensibly a courier ship for Queen Charlotte but she is actually involved in quite a lot more than that. When the book begins, she has intercepted a message from the exiled Gerard indicative of a traitor within the Crown Command. Upon her report to the queen, she is tasked with a separate but related rescue mission and here we are introduced to Viscount Colonel Rian Grant, a former member of the Isles’ Army, now retired. He knows the man they are to rescue and Kit’s ship is to be the source so they must work together. Neither are thrilled about it at first but over a fairly short time they come to respect and trust one another and eventually that turns to like and attraction.

What they discover on the rescue mission sends them on yet more adventures and a threat to the Isles and the magic in the world as well.

I liked that this universe has women sailors just as common as men and women captains too (I did not spot any trans or non-binary characters, at least not yet, alas), and I liked that many characters were also ethnically diverse. I was a little curious about the gender politics, though. I don’t think I’ve quite got a handle on it yet. Women are accepted and respected in the navy and they wear trousers as part of their uniform, but outside of official duties, women seem to still be required to be chaperoned and wear the same kind of dress that we typically see in a Regency-set book. I couldn’t quite square that circle, to be honest.

Not surprisingly there are still pockets of people (cis men mostly; let’s be honest here) who even in this world believe women should not be in positions of power or leadership and both Kit and the Queen come up against it in the story. That part I understood but the juxtaposition of Kit needing a chaperone so she could attend a pleasure garden with Rian (for spy detection purposes) seemed a little nonsensical when she and Rian were alone together on board ship many times and nobody thought twice about it.

The narration was a little mixed for me. Ms. Cohen is British and has a fantastic range of English dialect accents to draw from and she used them here with skill to both help shape the characters and differentiate them.

Where I was less convinced was with Ms. Cohen’s depiction of Rian Grant. The voice she gave him didn’t quite work for me. It didn’t sufficiently reach the level where it sounded like a natural voice in my ears. It always felt a little forced and put on. Other male characters felt more convincing however. That said, it’s possible I’m just particular in my tastes here. There are very popular narrators who win awards who I cannot listen to because I do not like their “hero” voice. I wouldn’t say Ms. Cohen’s performance here would put her into that category for me. Even though it didn’t entirely work for me, I will be more than happy to listen to her narrate the next book in the Kit Brightling series.

More broadly, I’m very much looking forward to where this series will go and Kit and Rian’s further adventures aboard the Diana and beyond. Kudos for such a fascinating and innovative adventure tale. More please.

Kaetrin


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2 thoughts on “The Bright and Breaking Sea by Chloe Neill

  1. This sounds really good – it’s always a shame when the narration doesn’t quite do justice to the author’s words. I might give it a go in print; there are very few female narrators who work for me these days.

    1. You might like the hero voice better than I did Caz. Maybe try a sample? We don’t share the exact same taste (I’m thinking of a very popular female narrator of historicals that you enjoy listening to and I very much don’t) so maybe Ms. Cohen will be just the ticket for you?

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