Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Nov 2022
480 pages
Genre: Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Publication Information
Ocean's Echo is a stand-alone space adventure about a bond that will change the fate of worlds, set in the same universe as Everina Maxwell's hit debut, Winter's Orbit.
Rich socialite, inveterate flirt, and walking disaster Tennalhin Halkana can read minds. Tennal, like all neuromodified "readers," is a security threat on his own. But when controlled, readers are a rare asset. Not only can they read minds, but they can navigate chaotic space, the maelstroms surrounding the gateway to the wider universe.
Conscripted into the military under dubious circumstances, Tennal is placed into the care of Lieutenant Surit Yeni, a duty-bound soldier, principled leader, and the son of a notorious traitor general. Whereas Tennal can read minds, Surit can influence them. Like all other neuromodified "architects," he can impose his will onto others, and he's under orders to control Tennal by merging their minds.
Surit accepted a suspicious promotion-track request out of desperation, but he refuses to go through with his illegal orders to sync and control an unconsenting Tennal. So they lie: They fake a sync bond and plan Tennal's escape.
Their best chance arrives with a salvage-retrieval mission into chaotic space―to the very neuromodifcation lab that Surit's traitor mother destroyed twenty years ago. And among the rubble is a treasure both terrible and unimaginably powerful, one that upends a decades-old power struggle, and begins a war.
Tennal and Surit can no longer abandon their unit or their world. The only way to avoid life under full military control is to complete the very sync they've been faking.
Can two unwilling weapons of war bring about peace?
"This earns a space on shelves alongside the very best of the genre." - Publisher's Weekly (starred review)
"Writing fantastically memorable characters, Maxwell masterfully draws out a rich and complicated story which explores military incursions, familial ties, and the impact of secrets revealed." - Booklist (starred review)
"This stand-alone set in the same universe as Winter's Orbit is an exciting, fast-paced sci-fi adventure with great worldbuilding and complex characters." - Library Journal (starred review)
"Ocean's Echo is a slow burn that eventually blazes into a supernova, a novel constrained in its location but massive in its ambition." - BookPage
"Compassionate, queer, slightly horrifying, and wildly inventive―Ocean's Echo whisked me into a faraway world of spacefaring outcasts and rogues, teased me with the promise of not-quite-human romance, and vaulted me into a transcendent meditation on identity, truth, and meaning of existence itself. What a glorious read!" - Ryka Aoki, author of Light from Uncommon Stars
"Ocean's Echo digs its teeth into the psychic-soulbond trope and gives it a good, hard, gleeful shake--and what falls out is a fast-paced and gorgeously written tapestry of exciting space adventure, heart-clenching romance, and deft examination of the duties we owe to one another and what it means to be human in a vast universe. I was hoping that it would give me the same feelings of awe and delight that Winter's Orbit did, and instead it delivered them on an even higher level. This is space opera at its best." - Freya Marske, author of A Marvellous Light
This information about Ocean's Echo was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Everina Maxwell is the author of Winter's Orbit. She lives and works in Yorkshire, where she collects books and kills houseplants.
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