A forbidden love, a doomed voyage, and a magical madness bring two young women together and hold them apart in J.M. Voris's first novel for adults, the sapphic fantasy Into the Burning Deep. Voris also writes young adult fiction under the name Jenna Voris.
Adrian and Ophelia both dwell aboard The Lyre, a ship carrying thousands of people who represent the only known survivors of the country of Tyranos, but they live in completely different worlds. Ophelia's sister took on the role of captain when their father, the former captain, died, leaving Ophelia with little to do but throw fabulous parties, wear elegant dresses, and feel desperately lonely. Adrian's older brother was an officer, but he went mad from an outbreak of the outlawed magic that drove the king of Tyranos insane and destroyed the country. Now Adrian has no family or station and works below decks as a mechanic. The Lyre is set to make its first landfall in 10 years in Calista, the only country willing to accept its passengers after their antimagic quarantine. Ophelia's sister arranges a politically advantageous betrothal between Ophelia and a powerful Calistan man, but Ophelia's heart belongs to Adrian. Then Adrian hears singing and sees another ship on the horizon; the ship calls out in a voice laced with what Adrian recognizes as perilous magic, and Ophelia answers it. Adrian must save the girl she loves, and the answer may lie in a alchemical journal with a fairy tale that begins, "This is the story of a girl who lived in another world on the other side of an infinite sea."
The myth of Orpheus and Eurydice meets the movie Titanic (sans any awkward questions about whether two people can fit on one floating door) in this stunning, sea-swept adventure. Voris surrounds the lovers with traces of Gilded Age opulence in a fantasy world where magic has become a dangerous, lost science. Class striations and star-crossed timing bring tension to a passionate connection between two young heroines who feel "the bone-deep ache of their joined existence" with all the intensity of both first and true love. Readers of new-adult romantasy like Rebecca Ross's Divine Rivals should pick up this dreamy, atmospheric voyage and not look away from its spooky charms as it builds a mythology around the world-breaking proprieties of thwarted romance and the timeless echoes it leaves. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads
Shelf Talker: A doomed voyage, a ghostly ship, and a magical malady threaten to separate two star-crossed lovers in this sapphic romantic fantasy.