You need to get on board for what is, at its heart, a blog about being a whaler in the 19th century. The story isn’t gripping in the sense of a two minute movie trailer, but it does draw you in and lead you to care about a bunch of the crew as it drags on. It is the quintessential “slow burn” novel.

But it isn’t even the worst on that front. Any Brian Sanderson novel is going to have a similar “omg, is this going anywhere? And why won’t they just kiss already? Damn, now I know entirely too much about an obscure magic system methodology of turning whale cum into lighter fluid” element.

One book I could argue genuinely reads better on audiobook when you’re stuck in traffic for two hours a day.