The Devourer

By Alison Ames

Revenge can be a fierce motivator, capable of creating powerful bonds between the like-minded individuals driven to exact it. Add in a wild, uncaring ocean that is impossible to truly know (especially the denizens of the deep that live within it), and you have a framework for one heck of a tale—two angry women on the angry seas. It’s a setup realized in this month’s Big Picture when Adra, the human captain of the ship Worldeater, aligns herself with the Devourer, an undead monster trapped in her tomb of the ocean, all former humanity erased by time and fury. The two find common ground, each facing even more monstrous men who have harmed them grievously, and their resulting quest eschews common hallmarks of the revenge narrative as it empowers their singular focus.

A thirst for revenge has kept Adra going for almost a year on the high seas as she hunts down her brother’s ship, aiming to take back the map he stole and then kill him, preferably in as painful a manner as possible. She’s got a stalwart crew of pirates, loyal to her even when things go from merely bad—they realize what they thought was her brother’s ship was a decoy—to unbelievably bad when an unexpected surge of magic empowers a human-turned-monster. The Devourer emerges from the deep ocean hell-bent on a mission of her own to regain what was stolen from her, crossing paths with Adra as she does. Apparently, the captain who made the pilfered map is the object of her vengeance, and Adra’s brother is searching for the treasure that map reveals, so an exhilarating, shaky alliance forms between Adra and the Devourer.

There’s a familiar trend in revenge stories—particularly those with female protagonists—for the character to learn, grow, find other sources of peace, and move on from their narrow focus on vengeance. While forgiveness is likely an admirable and healthier path, it is one that limits the range of female emotion, excluding everything from righteous indignation to incandescent rage. Ames, however, brilliantly dispenses with nobility and goodness in Adra immediately—she is complex, tempestuous, deeply flawed, and has a hunger for retribution that is undiminished by the wisdom, patience, and kindness of her best friend and crew.

Everything becomes funneled through Adra’s powerful and consuming anger, and Ames uses both the ship and the vast infinity of the ocean in which it travels as brilliant symbols for the central concept. The ship is both comforting and stifling at once, just as a single-minded obsession provides structure but also limits one’s path, and the ocean Adra navigates is filled with expansive potential, but that potential could be wonderful or filled with unknown horrors. The pirate setting is well-integrated, with the creaking, well-worn ship almost as much a character as any of the people. The secondary cast is well-developed yet observed primarily through Adra as tools for her mission, throwing Adra’s inability to look beyond herself in sharp relief and requiring the reader to dive deeper to see them as people with lives and motivations of their own.

While the Devourer has no problem taking down the whole world if it will get back what is rightfully hers, Adra still has her humanity on her side and is left to grapple with the consequences of her actions, the ripple effects of all the harm done to her crew by her very hand. The book is clear, however, that this is not a result of contrition but more of determination: Adra is a woman who needs a path, and this alliance with the Devourer may not only help others but also answer for her own selfishness. Adra knows that as captain she doesn’t have the luxury of regret and must set a course toward something better, but readers hoping for those waters to be gentle may be in for a shock as Adra has been quite clear her joy lies in rocky—and morally ambiguous—seas.

—April Spisak, Reviewer