A Review of Dinesh Thiru’s Into the Sunken City (HarperTeen, 2024)

[lsobiesk]

Written by Stephen Hong Sohn
Edited by Lizzy Sobiesk

I went into Dinesh Thiru’s Into the Sunken City (HarperTeen, 2024) having avoided much paratextual material. I just knew it was sort about diving and the water (just by looking at the cover LOL), so as I got further into the book, I started to get confused. Why was there so much rain? Why was it also raining in Arizona? I then began to slowly piece together that we are in a dystopian fictional world set in the far future. HA! Surprise was on me =). In any case, sometimes I like to go into books without much context and just figure things out as I go. In any case, let’s let the official marketing description give us some further crucial information: “For Jin Haldar, this life is nothing new—ever since her father died in a diving accident, she’s barely made ends meet for her and her younger sister, Thara. Enter Bhili: a drifter who offers Jin and Thara the score of a lifetime—a massive stash of gold hidden in the sunken ruins of Las Vegas. Jin knows it’s too dangerous. She stopped diving after her father’s accident. But when her sister decides to go, Jin’s left with only one choice: to go with her. A ragtag crew is assembled—including Jin’s annoyingly hot ex-boyfriend. From there, a high-stakes heist ensues that’s beyond even Jin’s wildest fears. Crumbling ruins, sea beasts, corsairs, and a mysterious figure named João Silva all lie in wait. To survive, Jin will have to do what she promised herself she’d never do again: dive.”

 

This YA novel is billed as a “fantasy adventure,” but I’d actually consider it a dystopian science fiction. The novel is pretty dark. In this future, a failed cloud seeding effort ultimately resulted in the world being in sort of an endless rainstorm, with most of the continents being flooded over. Arizona, which you and I all know as a place of desert landscapes and arid environments, is mostly covered by water. Money is hard to come by and most of what was the United States is dominated either by military entities or pirates. Jin and her younger sister Thara are barely able to survive, as they own an inn that occasionally still gets the occasional straggler. When Bhili, one of these stragglers, comes into their life, she offers them coin, which provides them a limited measure of stability, until of course, the people who know about her and her money come after her. Bhili, in fact, has knowledge of an incredible treasure is still buried under the water in what was Las Vegas. Bhili is able to convince Jin, Thara, Jin’s ex Taim, as well as Thara’s romantic interest Saanvi to try to get the loot, but Silva and his corsairs eventually crash the party. Silva is a particularly dastardly villain, and here I will start to reveal some spoilers. At one point, realizing that Saanvi will have no role in their upcoming ventures that will take them into the titular sunken city, Silva and his allies kill Saanvi point blank. Thiru’s novel is thus established as this kind of violent world, and we’re in a future in which climate catastrophe has limited the possible trajectories of anyone who is alive. Fortunately, Thiru has created a very spirited protagonist, the kind that you know will be able to do what it takes to support the people she loves and potentially even to make it to the last page. The sequence that takes us under the water and into Las Vegas is quite thrilling, and Thiru throws in some extra obstacles that those into seafaring adventures will find compelling. As a note, the main characters are clearly of South Asian descent, and Thiru fills out his cast with a diverse crew. An interesting detail is that Jin’s father—who we discover has died in a diving accident before the events that begin the main narrative—is one who takes inspiration and solace in the Vedas, which are Hindu religious texts. It would seem that most characters are at least tangentially marked ethnically, with Silva being revealed to be of Brazilian background. A definite page-turner anchored by a strong narrator. Fans of dystopian science fiction will enjoy Thiru’s worldbuilding and ecocritics will ultimately gravitate to the environmental warning that Thiru’s text mobilizes.

 

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