Dark Water Daughter by H.M. Long – Review

Published: July 18, 2023

Publisher: Titan Books

Series: The Winter Sea #1

Genre: Fantasy

Pages: 464 (Paperback)

My Rating: 4 Stars

A copy of this book was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Synopsis:
A stormsinger and pirate hunter join forces against a deathless pirate lord in this swashbuckling Jacobean adventure on the high-seas.

Launching the Winter Sea series, full of magic, betrayal, redemption and fearsome women, for readers of Adrienne Young, R. J. Barker and Naomi Novik.

Mary Firth is a Stormsinger: a woman whose voice can still hurricanes and shatter armadas. Faced with servitude to pirate lord Silvanus Lirr, Mary offers her skills to his arch-rival in exchange for protection – and, more importantly, his help sending Lirr to a watery grave. But her new ally has a vendetta of his own, and Mary’s dreams are dark and full of ghistings, spectral creatures who inhabit the ancient forests of her homeland and the figureheads of ships.

Samuel Rosser is a disgraced naval officer serving aboard The Hart, an infamous privateer commissioned to bring Lirr to justice. He will stop at nothing to capture Lirr, restore his good name and reclaim the only thing that stands between himself and madness: a talisman stolen by Mary.

Finally, driven into the eternal ice at the limits of their world, Mary and Samuel must choose their loyalties and battle forces older and more powerful than the pirates who would make them slaves.

Come sail the Winter Sea, for action-packed, high-stakes adventures, rich characterisation and epic plots full of intrigue and betrayal.

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Like so many good pirate stories, Dark Water Daughter begins with our protagonist, Mary Firth, about to be hanged. That was a sure way to catch my attention, particularly when that was immediately followed up with her dashing escape with a fellow prisoner. Up until this point Mary has spent all her life living in a ghistwold, which is a magical forest where the trees grow into the Other and are inhabited by spirits called ghisting. These trees are harvested and carved into ship figureheads and the ghisten will then protect its ship until the figurehead is burned or otherwise destroyed. 

Mary herself is the daughter of the most powerful Stormsinger, though her mother has been missing for many years and Mary has presumed her lost forever. Mary has been trying to keep her own abilities under wraps for her entire life, but that goes awry as soon as she sings up a violent storm to escape the gallows and is sold to pirates. She brokers a deal with pirate captain James Demery to destroy Silvanus Lirr, a brutal pirate lord bent on destruction and pillaging, in order to free her mother who is serving as Lirr’s stormsinger. All the while, Mary keeps bumping into Samuel Rosser, a former navy man turned pirate hunter and the two develop a certain sense of admiration for one another. 

This was a dashing sea-faring adventure full of peril, treasure, and fascinating magic. The various magical affinities were wonderful and learning how they work and interact with one another was one of my favorite parts of the story. Stormsingers use their voice to control winds and weather patterns, which as one would imagine is very useful to a ship’s captain. A Sooth can look into the Other, or Dark Water as some call it, and see visions and track other magic users. A Magni can sway emotions, which is terribly dangerous in the wrong hands. 

The story is told in dual POV, featuring the occasional flashback to flesh out Mary’s journey from stormsinger in hiding to a convicted highwayman about to hang. I preferred Mary’s POV, mostly because she was at the forefront of the action and was always on the cusp of danger. Samuel Rosser’s POV chapters were largely spent dealing with his own inner demons and trying to track down Mary so that his captain might catch Silvanus Lirr. As the story progressed he grew on me but Mary remained my favorite. 

Overall, this was a thrilling fantasy story perfect for fans of R.J. Barker’s Tide Child trilogy, which I would highly recommend if you haven’t read it! Dark Water Daughter is the first in H.M. Long’s The Winter Sea series and it looks as if the second book is expected to release in summer 2024 based on the author’s website.