The Dark Tide by Alicia Jasinka | Book Review
The Dark Tide by Alicia Jasinka ★★★★☆ (contains spoilers)
336 pages, First published August 4, 2020
Genre: Dark Fantasy, LGBTQIA+, Young Adult, Romance, Fiction
Themes: Witches, Sapphic, Bisexual, gender roles, generational curses
Tropes: Enemies To Lovers, Hero/Villain pairing
I picked this book up expecting to love it for its's themes: dark fantasy ✔︎ witches ✔︎ queer representation ✔︎ strong female protagonists ✔︎ and I really did love it!
I adored the magic system with witches fighting generational curses through sacrifices, calming the ferocious, stormy tides with sailors knots and witches ladders, using their own spit, hair and blood to bind their spells. The magic felt like something real witches would practice and really immersed me in the world.
It had an engaging exploration of gender roles, using witches as a metaphor for violence against women, and people with typically feminine traits. The witches literally give pieces of themselves to fuel their magic and protect the village ~ for their magic is finite and once its spent they perish. But the villagers only see the public sacrifices of pretty young boys with bright futures, and they blame the witches for their collective fates, never considering the witches own, more subtle sacrifices. In retaliation the villagers capture witches and slaughter them violently, cutting off limbs and boiling their bones to steal every drop of magic, furthering the divide between two peoples suffering at the hands of the same curse.
The story briefly touches on the bisexual experience of feeling othered even in queer spaces for not being 'gay enough'. I even found myself feeling frustrated with Lina's naive adoration of a charming boy with no spine, thinking she was just gaslighting herself into comphet attraction until she gave me a reality check, reflecting on how what she felt for the boy had been real even if she no longer felt it.
Overall all, this was a well paced, delightful read with an immersive setting that had me actively thinking about its social themes surrounding gender and sexuality.