Let's visit The House in the Cerulean Sea

 

So today I’m talking about The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune. This is a book that, as far as I’m aware, has been out for a good few years, but I’m only getting around to reading it now. I’ve previously read Under the Whispering Door, and it’s one of my favourite books, so my hopes were high for this one.

The blurb says that Linus Baker leads a quiet life. At forty, he has a tiny house with a devious cat and his beloved records for company. And at the Department in Charge of Magical Youth (DICOMY), he’s spent many dull years managing their orphanages. Then one day, Linus is summoned by Extremely Upper Management and given a highly classified assignment. He must travel to an orphanage where six dangerous children reside, including the Antichrist. There, Linus must somehow determine if they could bring on the end of days. But their guardian, charming and enigmatic Arthur Parnassus, will do anything to protect his wards. As Arthur and Linus grow ever closer, Linus must choose between duty and his dreams.

The first chapter has Linus doing a visit to this orphanage that houses magical kids, and this girl, Daisy, has flung a chair at this other boy, Marcus. The master of this orphanage tells Linus that the kids like him since he sees them as actual children, rather than just a number, like a lot of the other caseworkers do. Having read the whole book before actually writing a lot of my notes down, I now see how this was very much foreshadowing for the rest of the book, and the majority of the story. The master of the house then asks Linus how he could do his job, and then it gave me the vibes that Linus wanted more from his life, more than just going to work and coming home.

Our second chapter sees Linus at work, at DICOMY, and to say that he works at a DICOMY, for magical youth, it’s wild how much of a hole his place was. He did work in an office, but there were no cubicles or anything. He worked in one massive room with hundreds of other people on rows and rows of desks. You also meet his supervisor and her assistant which very much felt like characters. I know that’s a stupid thing to say, since they are literally characters, but I mean this in the sense that these first chapters gave me the same vibe as the video game Alice Madness Returns. And that Linus’s place of work very much felt like the Hatter’s Domain. And that is a very niche reference that I don’t think many will get, but oh well. But the two of them felt like they were meant to be strict things, rather than people.

Anyway, he ends up at this orphanage with the six kids. There’s Lucy, like Lucifer, the six-year-old antichrist. Chauncey, who is this blob that, from what I gathered from reading the description of him was meant to be some take on a boogeyman. Talia, a gnome. Phee, a forest sprite. Sal, who could shapeshift into a little Pomeranian, and Theodore, a wyvern. And this might be a stupid thing that I’m about to say, but I think my favourite part about them was getting to see them just be children. I know that they’re magical beings, and Talia may have been like 260 years old, but they were all still children. There’s a point in the book where they all go out one Saturday, because on Saturdays they have these special expeditions, which is basically where they got to play pretend around the island they lived on. Then, Linus, Arthur, and the kids all go on this school trip to the local village, and it was so sweet. It was a bunch of little kids excited to be somewhere new. And it was fun, there was one part where Talia is lamenting that she didn’t bring her shovel with her, and when Lucy suggests they go to a graveyard, she’s sad because she doesn’t know how she’s going to dig up dead bodies.

It was odd, the book had a very British aesthetic to it, yet the characters and locations were all American. Like, as a British person reading the book, the locations given and described all gave off a very specific proper British vibe to them. Linus’s house, for one, felt like he lived in one of the terrace houses that you’d see in a more industrial town, somewhere up North where mining was super prevalent. The whole thing just felt like it should have been set in the UK, but yet it wasn't.

This is one of those books that read like it could be one of those family movies that gets played every year around the holidays. To me, it was all there about found family, or moving away from what makes you unhappy and discovering what it is you truly want in life. The whole book was very sweet. Like before, how I said this book felt like it should have been set up in the North of England, because it fully felt like it, there’s a very specific British Christmas content vibe that the book had to me – message-wise, at least. But in that vein, I, personally, had a tough time feeling when it came to the book. I felt more for the children more than anything. Because even though this book did take it to extreme lengths, by making them magical beings, I really did appreciate the message of no matter who, or what, a child is, they deserve somewhere to be safe and to be loved. And to be honest, I never really felt like there were any stakes throughout this book. Overall, it just felt like a very nice book to read. Once I read it, it was like I’d put the book down and thought to myself, “Aww, that was nice”, because it was nice, but there was nothing that really blew my tits clean off, you know? Like the email that was sent to Margaret.

Okay, bye!