The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea Audiobook By Axie Oh cover art

The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea

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The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea

By: Axie Oh
Narrated by: Rosa Escoda
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Deadly storms. An ancient curse. Will her sacrifice save them all?

For generations, deadly storms have ravaged Mina's homeland. Her people believe the Sea God, once their protector, now curse them with death and despair. To appease him, each year a maiden is thrown into the sea, in the hopes that one day the 'true bride' will be chosen and end the suffering.

Many believe Shim Cheong - Mina's brother's beloved - to be the legendary true bride. But on the night Cheong is sacrificed, Mina's brother follows her, even knowing that to interfere is a death sentence. To save her brother, Mina throws herself into the water in Cheong's stead.

Swept away to the Spirit Realm, a magical city of lesser gods and mythical beasts, Mina finds the Sea God, trapped in an enchanted sleep. With the help of a mysterious young man and a motley crew of demons, gods and spirits, Mina sets out to wake him and bring an end to the storms once and for all.

But she doesn't have much time: a human cannot live long in the land of the spirits. And there are those who would do anything to keep the Sea God from waking....

The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea is a magical feminist retelling of a classic Korean legend, perfect for fans of Uprooted and Miyazaki's Spirited Away.

©2022 Axie Oh (P)2022 Hodder & Stoughton Limited Dark Fantasy Epic Fantasy Science Fiction & Fantasy

Critic reviews

"Clever, creative and exquisitely written." (Stephanie Garber, Sunday Times best-selling author of Caraval)

"A beautiful, mesmerizing retelling." (Elizabeth Lim, New York Times best-selling author of Six Crimson Cranes)
All stars
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The tale has friendship, romance, family, loyalty and an absolutely breathtaking and atmospheric, sensory world building. If you like Spirited Away, you’ll love this. The narrator has a nice voice and is a competent reader, but lacks the ability to change her voice to depict each character. However, I still enjoyed listening to it and will listen again.

Beautifully Written

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A story of courage, hope and live that has been presented beautifully through a plausible fantasy.

Good for the soul

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I read/listen a looot. So I tend to just feel that many books are similar, some better than others. But this IS a wonderful story with great messages: be brave, follow your heart and you will follow your destiny..

Loved it

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I was so bored by this, I kept raising the speed of the audiobook to finish it as fast as possible. While I enjoyed the reveal of who the 3 spirits that helped Mina are and while there were (some, but not much) Ghibli vibes, specifically at the beginning, they disappeared pretty quickly, at least for me.

I found the protagonist, Mina, to be bland and boring and that everything came easily to her. Everyone she met came to adore her, sooner or later - usually sooner; she "saves" everyone; her choices don't really have any bad consequences. And while her romance isn't a true insta-love, it's still quite quick, imo.

It also felt more like a middle-grade than a YA, not that that's a bad thing. I am actually kinda sad that I didn't have a chance to read it as a 12-13 years old, as I think I might have adored it at that time, as I was much more forgiving regarding bland characters and was able to self-insert. So I think it's a cute fantasy book for a pretty young audience, but I didn't really enjoy it. If I wasn't reading it for a reading challenge (r/fantasy bingo 2024), I would have likely dnf-ed it.

The audiobook narrator, Rosa Escoda, was fine, but I didn't particularly enjoy her narration. Now, I am not a native English speaker, so I cannot say this for certain, but her narration sounded very British to my ears, which kept taking me out of the story, since in my mind, it clashes with Korean mythology. According to the quick Google search, she seems to be Korean, which makes it even weirder, so maybe the problem's in me?
Also, I had problems with her pronunciation of characters' names. I would hear Mina one second, Nina another, Meena on the third one. Same was true for most other characters as well. Is it Minjing or Nanjin or something else? I didn't have a physical book with me, so I couldn't check. This also meant that in certain scenes, where characters with similar names do stuff together, I would need to use context clues to figure out who is who.

So, all in all, I don't think that this is a bad book at all, but I was quite bored by it and couldn't wait for it to end. And I didn't enjoy the narration.

I was looking forward to this, but I was bored

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I truly enjoyed every seconds listening to this book it's engaging, full of mixed emotions.

amzing

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