Book description
A fragment from an ancient legend draws Daniel au Fond, a young sea lion and an artist and dreamer who yearns for adventure, into an odyssey in search of the meaning of the legend and a quest for personal discovery
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Why read it?
1 author picked Beachmaster as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
Tom Shachtman's Beachmaster, in which the sea lion Daniel Au Fond becomes obsessed with deciphering the fragments of an ancient legend—or is it a key but semi-forgotten piece of sea lion oral history?—hit my young world in the midst of my own obsession with "The Cryptic Prophecy" fantasy trope.
Marine mammals are an uncommon choice for sentient animals in fantasy, and all this plus my own permanent obsession with exploration meant that the vast, literally ocean-crossing scale of this story, with its multiple and differing sentient animal cultures, made it irresistible.
Luckily for me, Beachmaster is actually the first…
From KJ's list on starring sentient animals (that not enough people know).
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On a small, isolated island, in a reclusive forest, lives bandit leader Marani and her brother Jacks. With their outlaw band they rob from the rich to feed themselves, raiding carriages and dodging the occasional vindictive…
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