[n.b. A ‘no star’ rating for books I review does not imply criticism—I rarely give ratings, as giving stars is an unhelpfully blunt instrument and all too often involves comparing apples with oranges.]

Isla Blackwood is a scion of nobility in Silvreckan, a sort of alt-Scotland, and she bolted seven years ago for the sea. She is now returning because her mother is mortally ill. Although Isla wants nothing more than to return to the seas that call her, events overtake not only her but her brother, Lachlan, and their guardian and swordmaster, Dacre. Like everyone in Silvreckan, Isla has always feared the selkies, but will have to join forces with at least one if they are to try and stop an escalation in violence.

This is a good, meaty (sometimes literally…) adventure, fairly low-fantasy in that it reads like a sort of pre-modern Scotland doused in mud and rinsed in folklore. It is very effective, and in places, the bumping up of the fantasy with the ordinary is funny, like Isla’s realisation that she really is home because it is slashing rain. It is very pacy, too, and gets down to the action quickly once Isla is back on dry land. There’s a certain amount of to-ing and fro-ing as the three main characters re-establish the relationships that were sundered when Isla took to the ships. Sometimes they seem to tread the same ground more than once, but it does create the effect of their paths to each other being formed by how they walk them.

The main reservation for the present reader—which is a matter of taste, so may not be a drawback for others—is the heightened register in which the tale is told. If from the first page, emotions are already being reified in strong physical terms—a letter ‘burning’ in her hand, dread ‘wrapping its fingers around her heart’—then what is left to you to describe what happens when you see a selkie take a bite out a man’s throat? If the prose starts at even the lower end of operatic, it risks ending up in the purple. At the very least, some readers will feel like there is a lot of loud emoting.

Scrimgeour writes the fantasy and the adventure parts significantly better than the romance. Again, this may be a personal preference, romance even in sub-plots really being no draw for this reader. But when it comes to the fluttering interactions between Isla and Dacre, the writing becomes undeniably clichéd. A writer who can present such a cracker of a plot, who vividly dispatches characters on treks across uneasy, frozen landscapes, or on desperate attempts to outrun in a rowing-boat both a selkie and a storm, can do better than faint smiles playing across the brooding swordmaster’s lips.

These are comparatively small points in the overall book, but they did make an impression, because when the book is good, it is very good. Its strongest points are the plot itself, and the atmosphere in which it unrolls, both of which are distinctive, immersive, and solidly realised. 'Sea of Souls' is the first of the ‘Sea of Souls saga’, and despite the few reservations, will definitely be a saga to follow.