About "Thicker than Water"

Thicker than Water (hereafter TTW) is YA high fantasy.  There's not really a magic system or anything, but there are water spirits, and they control the changing seasons.  Long ago, the water spirits were revered, but then times changed and people forgot their importance.  To reassert their power and their place in the world, the water spirits married into the ruling families of the four primary Thiosoran Realms.  Each of these realms has a dominant season in which it is the most powerful.  (There are also secondary realms, realms that split off from the four primary realms, but they aren’t so much the focus of TTW.) 

The story focuses on the ruling family of the winter realm of Kinh, the Ilsedines - more specifically, the twin heirs, Malous and Jonalee.  They've recently found out that their father, the king, has chosen to make political marriages for them.  Well, they don't like that too much, and they scheme to escape the arranged marriages.  Things...don't really go according to plan.  In a moment of anger, they go against the covenant made between the water spirits and their ancestors and watch the sacred ritual to change the season from summer to fall.  However, the twins make a mistake and disturb the ritual.  The water spirits never allow mortals to watch their rituals, and so the price of disobeying them is death.  But, they decide to be forgiving, and only ask for one of the twins to be sacrificed, as they are of royal blood (and water spirit blood).  So, the twins are forced to decide which of them is going to be sacrificed to the water spirits, and which of them will continue on to rule the realm. 

In addition to making this incredibly difficult choice, the Ilsedine line is being threatened by a rebel called the Siren.  Nearly untraceable, the Siren goes about the City of Stars spreading lies – and truths – about the Ilsedine line.  Her motive: to control the realm through the twins’ cousin Aleia, a ditzy party girl who would be next in line for the throne if the twins were out of the picture.  The Siren knows secrets, things the Ilsedine line would be shattered by if they got out.  But she’s got secrets of her own, and guards them with her life.

So, yeah, it’s a pretty high-stakes book.

What I love most about TTW is that there are no morally white/black characters; everyone is shades of grey.  When I was growing up, I was always frustrated that there were no books where the bad guy wins.  Sometimes I just wanted to see the world burn.  I finally got a bit of that in the Pendragon series, but at the same time, there were distinctly good and evil characters, and I didn’t like that either.  (I know, I know, I was an annoying reader.)  Everything I wrote as a tween and young teen contained a plot where it turned out that the protagonist was actually destroying everything, or that the antagonist was really the person trying to save the world, that kind of thing. 

Those thoughts definitely carried over into TTW.  Whether the Ilsedine twins are “good guys” or not is up to the reader to decide.  They’re partially victims of things happening around them that they can’t control, but they can certainly control whether or not they interrupt the water spirits’ ritual.  The fact that they want to take down the Siren could be lauded as admirable, but they don’t fully understand what drives her.  They’re kind of sucky people.  But still, they're just trying to keep their family together - isn't that at least a little redeeming?

The Siren, on the other hand, seems like a villain, but in my mind she isn’t.  She sees corruption and deceit and wants to destroy it.  Her methods are morally shaky, I admit, but operating at her level, you don’t really have a choice.  If she had another option, I’d like to think that she would take it.  To her, though, this is the only option.  She’s worked at it for ten years, and now she finally has the chance to take the Ilsedines down. 

Is that evil? 

It’s up to you.