The seas are dark, deep, and full of mystery. Older than much of the surrounding land (the Appalachian Mountains might be older, but that’s a different article), older than all life on Earth, oceans exert a primal allure over everyone who dares to explore the watery depths. Writers have always been drawn to the briny deep as well, finding inspiration for everything from high-seas adventure to terrifying stories of what lurks beneath the tides. As it can be difficult to navigate these busy waters at times, here are seven books about nautical journeys, and the mysteries and magic one might encounter above and below the roiling waves…
The Boatman by Alex Grecian
June James boards the Maria Calypso on her honeymoon. It’s a perfect moment, setting sail with her husband just as she’s finished the draft of her first major novel, the two of them joking and leaving their anxieties behind on land. Then the sinister man in the white suit poles his way alongside the boat, the captain orders a gun taken out of the ship’s safe to shoot him, and the situation suddenly takes an eerie, unnerving turn. The Boatman represents death, and as long as he’s chasing the Maria Calypso around the world, that means everyone on the boat might be safe from death—at least in the minds of the mentally deteriorating passengers. Grecian’s story of desperate people running from death is fueled by the sinister appearance of the Boatman, but it’s in the immortal passengers where the horror lies, as they begin stockpiling weapons, throwing all their resources into the cruise ship, and eventually resorting to more sinister means of slowing their relentless enemy down. It’s a terrifying exploration of immortality and an interesting twist on the “lost ship” genre, all centered on the terrifying image of a lone man on a boat in the middle of the ocean.
The Folly of the World by Jesse Bullington
Bullington’s vision of the Middle Ages lends itself to crass, grotesque places. His tale of 15th-century Holland after a massive flood is no different. Beginning with a ram skeleton stuck to a moss-covered windmill and one of the protagonists contemplating how much he’ll enjoy his own hanging, Bullington introduces a new cast of ne’er-do-wells for his revisionist-Western brand of medieval misadventures, led by a con man on the trail of treasure in a flooded town. Aided by a murderous psychopath and an unwillingly indentured young woman with a talent for diving, the conniving Jan embarks on his doomed mission, one that’s filled with danger and treachery at every step even before they can reach the newly formed inland sea. While the abrasive and extreme nature of Bullington’s settings isn’t for everyone, the unusual balance between gothic imagery, alternate history, and noir that Bullington strikes here is perfect for a dark tale of dark deeds.
Devil of the Deep by Falencia Jean-Francois
Lu Ortega is a distinguished officer in the Fleet tasked with a mission to retrieve a sacred artifact from a young ocean-dweller. Pearl is a merwoman entrusted with an important talisman significant to Agwe, the god of the sea, currently stuck as a mute land-dweller on the run from a cult that wants to forcibly marry her to a dictator. Nnenna is a pirate warlord known as “The Devil of the Deep,” scourge to the Fleet and currently the protector of Pearl and Agwe’s conch shell. Jean-Francois’ tale of conspiracy, corrupt religions, dead sea gods, and nautical intrigue plays out in quick chapters switching between POVs, each one flipping breathlessly to the next with the pace of a serial cliffhanger, but it’s in her complex characters where the book truly shines, with Lu’s conflict between duty, faith, and the discoveries he makes over the course of the novel, Pearl’s crisis of faith and the body horror of her “curse,” and Nnenna’s pirate swagger juxtaposed with her anxiety-riddled dreams and personal relationships.
On Stranger Tides by Tim Powers
A puppeteer named John Chandagnac is bound for Jamaica to reclaim his family’s honor when the boat is captured by pirates. Brought to an anarcho-syndicalist pirate haven in the Caribbean and rechristened with the name Jack Shandy, Chandagnac is plunged into a world of voudoun, alchemy, and the Satanic figure of the seas himself, Blackbeard. Powers’ classic adventure novel starts slow but gets weird very fast, as Shandy is forced to navigate competing sorcerers’ schemes, brushes with the undead, and a search for the fountain of youth. Once it gets going, On Stranger Tides turns into a swashbuckling dark fantasy adventure worthy of a matinee screen (and of course, it has served as the inspiration for a very loose film adaptation) with Powers’ customary eye towards adding real-world details—in this case, legends of the South Atlantic, folklore, and a surprisingly historical perspective on piratical political beliefs.
The Kingdom Beyond the Waves by Stephen Hunt
Amelia Harsh, famed adventurer and archaeologist, is putting together a crew. Their goal? Discover the lost city of Camlantis, a utopia sunk beneath the waters of the treacherous jungle of Liongeli. Aided by a motley assortment of pirates, criminals, mercenaries, and her eccentric robot companion Ironflanks, Harsh pilots a decommissioned submarine into the unknown. What begins as a pulp story (the second in a seven-book series) that starts out somewhere between Jules Verne and jungle adventure quickly morphs into a power struggle for the secrets within Camlantis, as shadowy governments, masked heroes, supervillains, and cultists converge on the lost kingdom and its dangerous technology. While some might be daunted by Hunt’s kitchen-sink approach to adventure and fantasy, the bombastic way he mashes genres together at high speeds creates a story that wears its influences clearly but transforms them into something unique and compelling.
Sacculina by Philip Fracassi
Jim, his ex-con brother Jack, his brother’s boisterous friend Chris, and their emotionally exhausted elderly father charter a boat for a fishing trip. When the wind and waves are too heavy, the boat’s captain tells them of a perfect fishing spot about an hour out, a deep section of ocean full of fish and unnaturally still. Sure enough, they find their fish, but also attract the attention of something else…something that soon makes its presence known and pulls the men into a desperate struggle for their lives. The sudden onslaught of violence, Fracassi’s exploration of the deep bonds between the men on the boat, and their sheer loneliness and isolation out on the open water make this book an uncomfortable read even before the body horror and nautical terrors kick in, turning a story of survival on the high seas into a deeply upsetting story of alien horrors.
Tidepool by Nicole Willson
On a business trip to the town of Tidepool, Henry Hamilton is enticed by the town’s wealthy matron Ada Oliver down into the basement, meets her daughter, sees something horrifying about her, and promptly disappears without a trace. Sorrow Hamilton, his sister, comes to Tidepool looking for Henry and begins her own series of encounters with the strange inhabitants of the town. While they do their best to get Sorrow to leave, Sorrow has her own agenda and the strange goings-on in Tidepool (including bodies washing up on the beach) do nothing to deter her. Willson’s belligerently rational heroine and the deadpan humor found in the descriptions of the town create an offbeat picture of Tidepool, a place where the general unnerving events, eccentric locals, and elder gods in the deep try their hardest to force a narrative, whether the protagonist wants to be a part of it or not.
While a complete list of works of nautical horror and fantasy would run as deep as the seas themselves, we hope this list offers some interesting places to dive in! And of course, please recommend your own favorites in the comments below.
