A Letter from the Lonesome Shore

E. and Henerey have spent their courtship at a distance, loving each other through letters sent across long stretches of sea. Neither expected to carry that courtship on face to face. Now they are together in an underwater city, and the city has mysteries of its own.

This is a magical-academia fantasy with a romance of manners and a found-family warmth. It closes the Sunken Archive duology, so it follows directly on from the first book and rests on what happened there.

The story is told in the same epistolary form as the first volume, through letters and documents. The tone is cozy and gently romantic. Academic wonder at the strange marine world takes more room than the mystery plot does.

The pair's slow-building devotion reaches its resolution here, and the question is how two people who know each other through the page manage in the same room. Readers who followed E. and Henerey from the start will get the most from it, while newcomers will find less to hold onto.