I love the whole idea of this practice, personally all the best magic systems have heavy costs for power, and this is one that deserves to be explored more than it was. Shina’s trauma could have been handled better and given a little more page space, and I would have loved to see more interaction with Shina and Tazir regarding Shina’s decision to give up her eyes. It’s a problem, particularly when the personal stakes are plenty high enough to carry the story all on its own. This also has the effect of making it feel throughout the book as if we’re being told over and over again how high the stakes are without it being backed up by any action that the reader is privy to. I feel like I was promised pirates, and all I received was the rather mysterious Dragon Ships, which are never really explained very well and aren’t actually that big a threat to the characters over the course of the journey described in the book. This was largely made up for by Shina’s actually really fascinating weather magic and the accompanying sort of religious order that she’s part of, but still. Disappointingly, there was basically none. I also thought there would be more swashbuckling adventure.

Instead of being a good complement to Tazir’s sections, Shina’s brief POV scenes ended up being a somewhat irritating distraction from the real meat of the story. Worse, Shina’s viewpoint was utilized suboptimally in addition to simply being underused while it did offer a point of view through which the reader is given some extra information, mostly about Shina herself, there’s just not enough of it, and Tazir’s stronger personality is much more interesting and entertaining to read. I had expected it to be more equally split between Tazir and Shina, so this was a disappointment. In spite of the way the book description reads, The Drowning Eyes is told almost entirely from Tazir’s point of view. The gorgeous cover art and the book’s description had me very excited about it, but it just wasn’t quite what I expected. I expected to love The Drowning Eyes, but I’m sad to say I only liked it.

The Drowning Eyes by Emily Foster