I wish I could find the post that recommended this book to me strongly enough to put it on hold at the library. When it showed up, it didn’t look like my kind of thing, but it’s short and pulled me through all the way to the end.
It’s a portal fantasy as a vehicle for the author’s messages about spirituality and humanity’s possible future. I can’t even tell if the very advanced society under the ocean is meant to be aspirational, or a cautionary tale. Their science (sufficiently advanced to be indistinguishable from magic) is certainly enticing, but their main character Dido is arrogant and callously indifferent to his human visitor’s safety.
There is a brief sentence explaining why they all have white hair and green eyes, but it reads as a coverup for yet another future where the people of color have been erased.
It reminded me a little bit of George MacDonald’s children’s books, but the moral lesson was more ambiguous.
Tygertale posts more of the story and excerpts from an illustrated edition.
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