Author: Sarah K.L. Wilson
Series: The Fisher King #1
Genre: Adult Fantasy/Mythology
Publisher: Orbit Books
Publication Date: February 24, 2026
Edition: eBook
Source: NetGalley
Pre-Order: Amazon US | Barnes & Noble | Bookshop | Kobo |
Synopsis:
Queen Coralys rules the Kingdom of the Five Isles, but when disaster strikes, killing her husband and destroying half her nation, she pleads with the gods for salvation. And they do save her, turning back the terrible winds and tide and snatching her islands from the brink of destruction.
But the gods have a wicked sense of justice and they demand an exchange for their Coralys must marry the first man to set foot on her pier. Coralys expects the fleet of a neighboring country to come to rescue her people, led by its prince, a loyal ally. What she gets instead is a fisherman so sunburnt and stinking that her court can barely keep their breakfast down.
Coralys marries the fisherman just as she promised the gods, and sets out with him in his unkempt dinghy, with nothing but hopes of revenge against the gods to keep her from despair. But what she does not know is that the fisherman is actually the god of the sea. And he stepped on her dock for a reason.
His own kingdom besieged, his body terribly wounded, and his place as a god threatened, the fisherman has plans to turn the tides set against him and finally offer a place of refuge for his people. But working the magic he needs will require the help of the one woman bent on his destruction.
Queen Coralys rules the Kingdom of the Five Isles, but when disaster strikes, killing her husband and destroying half her nation, she pleads with the gods for salvation. And they do save her, turning back the terrible winds and tide and snatching her islands from the brink of destruction.
But the gods have a wicked sense of justice and they demand an exchange for their Coralys must marry the first man to set foot on her pier. Coralys expects the fleet of a neighboring country to come to rescue her people, led by its prince, a loyal ally. What she gets instead is a fisherman so sunburnt and stinking that her court can barely keep their breakfast down.
Coralys marries the fisherman just as she promised the gods, and sets out with him in his unkempt dinghy, with nothing but hopes of revenge against the gods to keep her from despair. But what she does not know is that the fisherman is actually the god of the sea. And he stepped on her dock for a reason.
His own kingdom besieged, his body terribly wounded, and his place as a god threatened, the fisherman has plans to turn the tides set against him and finally offer a place of refuge for his people. But working the magic he needs will require the help of the one woman bent on his destruction.
This version of The Trident and the Pearl is an uncorrected ARC.
This book was strange. Narratively, we are stay in the MC's head which leads to a slightly unreliable narrator. We only know what she thinks and sees, so as readers we're never given the full picture. And I gotta be honest, it left me anxious and frustrated for most of my read. I was invested, because I really wanted to know what was going on. I just hated only knowing one small side of the story. I didn't learn until I was finished reading that this book was inspired by the Arthurian tale of The Fisher King. I'm not familiar with that tale, but for those who are, it might add context or perspective to some of the events in this book.
This pacing of this book is interesting, it starts out pretty fast paced. A lot happens in those first couple chapters, but then it kind of plateaus. Coralys spends 90% of the book talking about wanting revenge for her husband's, Leiv, death. She blames the Sea God, or the Gods in general. She keeps demanding that her new husband, the one she was semi-tricked into marrying at the cost of her previous husband's life to save her islands, to help her get revenge and he passively refuses. Asking her for patience. This is where I think a dual-POV could've helped the story. There is a reveal about 50-60% of the way in that doesn't really feel like a reveal. It only is because of being stuck in Coralys's head.
We are also constantly told, by the MC, that she is highly intelligent. How she was trained by the best, and how she always did the lowly jobs of the citizens to she knew what they did day to day. But her actions don't show me that she's very smart. She's very gullible, and a little reckless. I kept trying to figure out how old she's supposed to be, based on some context clues early 30s maybe? But her decision making, made her seem far younger at times.
There are two main this that didn't work for me in this book, and one of them was the romance. We don't get enough time with Leiv to care about his death, less than one chapter. There's no foundation that as readers we get to see for his death to impact us, and then in the next chapter, her new husband, Oke, shows up and he seems to be instantly infatuated with her, for reasons I don't think were ever explained.
For me, it felt like there were too many plots competing for center stage that didn't feel connected. Though I think there were supposed to be connected. There is quite the cliffhanger for this book, that even with all my qualms.
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