Author(s): Laline Paull

General Fiction

Bestselling author of The Bees, Laline Paull returns with an immersive and transformative new novel of an ocean world - its extraordinary creatures, mysteries, and mythologies - that is increasingly haunted by the cruelty and ignorance of the human race.

Ea has always felt like an outsider. As a spinner dolphin who has recently come of age, she's now expected to join in the elaborate rituals that unite her pod. But Ea suffers from a type of deafness that means she just can't seem to master spinning. When catastrophe befalls her family and Ea knows she is partly to blame, she decides to make the ultimate sacrifice and leave the pod.

As Ea ventures into the vast, she discovers dangers everywhere, from lurking predators to strange objects floating in the water. Not to mention the ocean itself seems to be changing: creatures are mutating, demonic noises pierce the depths, whole species of fish disappear into the sky above. Just as she is coming to terms with her solitude, a chance encounter with a group of arrogant bottlenoses will irrevocably alter the course of her life.

In her terrifying, propulsive novel, Laline Paull explores the true meaning of family, belonging, sacrifice - the harmony and tragedy of the pod - within an ocean that is no longer the sanctuary it once was, and which reflects a world all too recognizable to our own.

Matilda Bookshop Review

Ea is a member of the graceful Longi tribe of dolphins. Hers is a harmonious and contented existence, despite the two major difficulties of her life; her personal suffering from a kind of ocean tone deafness (an affliction which sets her apart from her pod) and her groups longing for the ancestral waters they were cast out of long ago.

A lone Rorqual whale sings a new song on the periphery of Longi territory. A lament for the rest of his kind, lost to a new force of physical and sonic violence even the sea giants are vulnerable to.

Despite the various ungulate narrators and beautifully alien underwater setting, this is a heartbreakingly human story. The perils of life under the sea and under human interference are made palpable, but this is no morality tale. It is a deeply personal exploration of individual experiences; of transcendent connection with each other and the ocean contrasted violently with harrowing loss. There is nothing quite like Pod. This one will stay with me for quite a while. Emilie