Review of The Mountain in the Sea

The Mountain in the Sea

Author: Ray Nayler

Publisher: Picador

Date of Publication: May 30, 2023

 

                  A few specifics first: this story involves octopuses, creepy corporate bosses and henchmen, and pirate ships. Now a little more meta. People sometimes incline to notice the bizarre and miss the obvious. The Mountain in the Sea takes this idea and applies it to our current social structures and belief in what we know. It points out how we willfully fail to learn much of what is readily apparent and most critical, how any growth can become cancerous, and how people can withdraw so deep into themselves that they lose track of their actual center. Don’t give up! Just like my review, this story just takes a little bit of time and attention to get truly interesting.

                  The world in the book exists vaguely as it does today. Nations govern. Technology corporations increasingly blur the lines between business and government. People fight to save the planet and to kill each other, depending on the day and place. In this quasi-modern era, the massive tech company DIANIMA has sealed off the remote Con Dao Archipelago, where a species of octopus has been discovered that may have developed its own language and culture. A small team forms around the mission of studying them: marine biologist Dr. Ha Nguyen, who has spent half her life researching cephalopod intelligence; a battle-scarred security agent; and the world’s first (and possibly last) android. Their efforts are complicated by forces larger than DIANIMA attempting to seize the octopuses for themselves.

                  The concepts that inspire Nayler’s worldbuilding are well tailored to the story he tells. As technology leads to the development of more specialized jobs, new tech is as likely to be used for abuse as for enrichment. There is the feeling that both governments and non-governmental international organizations are either dictatorial or on the verge of losing control, and that people’s control over their own lives grows scarcer as well. Threats to survival grow even as resources diminish. These concepts, rooted in contemporary social experience, provide a solid departure point for Nayler’s advancement beyond our current inventions and discoveries. Where the story threatens to overburden itself is Nayler’s messy worldbuilding. The first portion of the book is filled with a number of novel technological creations, fictional corporations and their unnamed actors, and the required character development. The amount of novel items and social organization without sufficient elucidation is distracting. Excessive worldbuilding is sometimes paired with over explanation of Nayler’s characters. The characters are thought exercises as much as people – a quality I personally enjoyed – but the more a character is a vehicle, the less it is a person. Nayler’s alternating between the perspectives of several characters can also complicate how he uses those characters. They often feel more separated than connected due to the extreme variations between who they are and the circumstances that challenge them. As the story focuses more directly on the complicated thought processes of those characters, it clarifies in both its primary points of interest and its emotional heft. However, that focus on experience rather than place needs to occur a little sooner. I was most captivated by this book when I could picture the forehead wrinkles of a scientist frustrated by the impotence of her knowledge, or when I could feel the sadness of a person stuck in a place where they don’t belong. That re-connected me with the story. The problem was I often needed re-connecting because the writing had interrupted my connection.                   

For all of my gripes about the distractions of this book, there were some key elements that I liked. I look for books that make me both think and feel. Nayler inverted the typical linkage of those two things: The Mountain in the Sea made me feel because I was thinking, and not the other way around. I loved the choice to manifest our ignorance in the form of the endangered, knowledgeable octopuses, and the fact that the various actors in the book went to extremes to seize, understand, and use those octopuses. The ending is left entirely open, and that becomes surprisingly satisfying once the dilemmas and mental processes of the characters become the true focal point. I would suggest that readers regard this book as an otherworldly thought exercise to get the most out of their reading experience.