Lalani of the distant sea

by Erin Entrada Kelly

Other authorsLian Cho (Illustrator.)

Paper Book, 2019

Status

Available

Call number

813/.6

Genres

Fantasy

All Topics

Fiction

Collection

Children

Publication

New York, NY : Greenwillow Books, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, 2019.

Description

"Twelve-year-old Lalani Sarita takes on the impossible task of traveling to the legendary Mount Isa, towering on an island to the north. Generations of men and boys have died on the same quest--how can a timid young girl in a tiny boat survive the epic tests of the archipelago?"--

User reviews

LibraryThing member Salsabrarian

Lalani lives in a village on a tropical island named Sanlagita. The island has Mount Kahna where a beast is said to live. The villagers don’t dare climb the mountain and say daily benedictions to the mountain. Across the water the island of Isa is a promised land of sorts; if only they could get

there they could bring back riches. But no Sanlagitan sailors have ever survived the trip to Isa. Lalani actually meets the beast of Mount Kahna who grants her wish for rain. But when the rain doesn't stop, Lalani decides to sail alone to Isa and get help from Fei Diwata.

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LibraryThing member reader1009

children's middlegrade magical realism fiction (fictional island village with rich folklore filled with mysticism and women/girls stuck in domestic servitude)
Read to p. 120 (about 1/3 of the way through). This was more world-building than plot or character development. It took over a hundred pages

before Lalani met the man of the mountain, and there are also odd tangent strings (stories told, sidebar stories on what is happening to thusfar minor character Hesbi) that contribute to the world-building but not much else. It is lyrically written, but I didn't feel that it was particularly going anywhere. I imagine the tween boy Hesbi takes a larger role later, but got tired of waiting for Lalani's story to begin.
Kirkus calls this "fast-paced" and "gripping," but I would say "quiet" and something like "curious."

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LibraryThing member electrascaife

Lalani lives on an island where the women must spend their lives mending fishing nets and fearing the deadly disease some contract from pricking themselves with the needles, while the men rule. The natural environment on the island is just as harsh: it hasn't rained in so long that crops are

failing and there's not enough drinking water, and they live in the shadow of a mountain they all think is inhabited by a monster and a mountain spirit who's easily angered. Circumstances worsen, especially for young Lalani, to the point that she decides to sail for the fabled land to the north for aid on a mist-filled sea that has yet to allow anyone who has attempted the journey to return.

Not my favorite of Kelly's books, but still pretty darn good. Think Moana but slightly darker and with a slightly more intricate set of fantastical beings.

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