Water Book Review

This week I have been reading Water, a fantasy novel by Terra Harmony.  

The story centres round Kaitlyn Alder, a sarcastic, feisty loner who travels the world as a photographer. The book opens with her getting buried under an avalanche, only to survive and find herself in a strange lab in an exotic location. She tries to escape and is quickly captured. 

When she is finally released, she is taken to the centre’s leader Cato - who is in fact her long lost godfather. He explains to her that she has the power to control the elements and that she was brought to the centre to be trained in how to control them and use them for the good of nature and mankind by keeping nature in balance if they need to send her out on missions. 

Now this is the reason why I hated this book so much. All the main characters are utterly insane. And I don’t mean that they are a bit quirky, their actions have no logical reasoning behind them. I have nothing against characters that make mistakes or have issues. But characters like this just don’t work when their actions are poorly justified or they don’t redeem themselves later on in the story. The next part of the plot is a perfect example of this.

After being told she can control the elements Kaitlyn loses her temper because she realises that she may have inadvertently killed some people in avalanches, tropical storms, etc, etc, she caused in years gone by without realising. She blames Cato for this - remember her godfather - then attempts to kill him by creating a hail storm. 

Fortunately Cato is saved by Micah, who stops Kaitlyn by kissing her. Then instead of showing any regret for her actions or even asking if her godfather is ok, she goes and sleeps with Micah. So within five minutes we’ve established that the protagonist is both a psychopath and a whore. But trust me she has nothing on some of the other characters.

Moving on with the story, Micah is charged with training Katie on how to control and use her powers while keeping her safe from Shawn. Shawn is portrayed as the bad apple in this story and is out to get Katie at every turn. You find out later but you can see that plot twist coming from ten miles away.

But I digress, Micah and Katie become lovers for a time - up until the point Micah’s ‘training’ nearly gets her killed on no less several times. But that is nothing compared to what he does in one of his later training sessions. He locks Katie with him in a greenhouse where Shawn is blocking her from using her powers. The idea of the exercise if to teach her how to cope under extreme stress, defend herself and escape. 

So anyway, Micah and Katie start having a punch up…then he attempts to rape her. Fortunately Katie fights him off and escapes. I think this one scene encapsulates perfectly what my problem with the characters is.

I have no problem with controversial themes in novels but when the other characters start defending Micah’s actions because it was all in the name of ‘training’, I find myself as baffled as I am offended. She’s in a large facility, which has dozens of staff members and no-one objects to what happens or even tries to intervene? I find that highly unlikely.

Anyway, in the strange world these characters exist in, the staff behave accordingly - by leaving. Not because they fear a rapist but because they fear Katie. They clearly must have packed up logic in their suitcases when they left. And if you’re expecting some big redemption scene at the end where the characters make up for their earlier actions, you’ll be severely disappointed. 

Also you find out later that Micah’s ‘rape-training’ exercises are completely unjustified when Kaitlyn gets sent on one of her first missions. That’s because we all know that the job of saving plankton comes with the very high occupational risk of getting raped. 

I’ll make one thing clear, I don’t hate this book. I liked the plot and the narrative flowed (no puns intended) very well throughout and it was well written. But the characters just don’t make any sense.

Water had a strong plot that was unfortunately ruined by a terrible cast of characters. I’m definitely not going back for the sequels. 

Water gets 3/10