Since I have a history with Chinese folktales from my childhood, I am always interested in reading new retellings of Asian stories. It’s also cool how they have kind of become a subgenre of their own recently. Because The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea (I’m not going to keep repeating this charming yet over-long title) is based on Korean folklore, I am not familiar with the original story. This one is the story of Mina, a teenage girl whose village has long been ravaged by terrible storms and floods. Each year, they select a girl to become the sea god’s bride in the hopes of appeasing him and ending the curse that is destroying their land. This year, however, when Mina’s brother’s beloved is preparing to sacrifice herself to the sea god, Mina dives into the sea to take her place instead. Surprisingly, Mina is sent to the spirit realm (where various magical beings and the spirits of the dead live on).

This is not the first story I’ve experienced where a young person goes to the spirit realm in order to find a solution to a certain magical or spiritual problem (and if you’ve seen Pixar’s 2017 movie Coco, it’s not yours either). I enjoy how, in Asian folklore, the spirit realm is not the dark and tormented underworld of western traditions, but a fantastical realm full of magical beings. However, in this story I was a bit disappointed as it started to lean into its young-adult aspects. When Mina finds herself tethered to the sea god by a “red string of fate”, others come to steal her soul and sever that bond. From then, the story (again, I don’t know how much of it is original myth and how much is newly created) becomes more of a teenage adventure romance as Mina meets Shin (one of the sons of the spirit realm’s noble houses) and his allies. They eventually bond, and help Mina find her soul and encounter various gods and goddesses in order to learn about what’s happening to Mina and how to save her land.

I didn’t appreciate the coincidence that Mina ends up finding other attractive young people to help her quest (even though presumably the spirit realm is populated by a wide variety of spirits and beings), and she even starts to feel a bond and attraction to Shin. I found this angle to be distracting. I don’t imagine the themes of friendship and young love were as much a part of the original myth as this story has made it — but I guess that’s what retellings are for: to put a modern spin on an ancient tale so that today’s readers can connect and relate to it more. It’s too bad that I really didn’t relate — or care. I was definitely not the right audience for this particular retelling.

The mythology and the world building proved to be a bit confusing and jumbled. As the story went on, the red string of fate became a central element in what would happen to Mina and the sea god and even the people back home in the mortal world; and eventually I couldn’t really keep track of what the various beings were telling our main characters about what they needed to do, or what were the rules governing certain situations in the spirit realm. Mina had only 30 days to get her soul back or she would become a spirit herself, but that never really makes much sense and it’s not clear why that’s a problem. Mina also encounters other past brides of the sea god, and I found it confusing what that means and what they have to say about why they were not able to break the curse and why Mina might be the only hope for their homeland.

Bottom line is that this story might have been enjoyable for someone with totally different sensibilities than me. I am happy that Korean folklore is being chosen as a setting to tell a mildly charming adventure story about a young woman coming to terms with her own family relationships and her destiny, but it didn’t manage to hold my interest enough and ended up feeling a bit too typical of this subgenre, and unfortunately too forgettable.

2.5 stars

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