The Changeling Sea

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Since the day her father's fishing boat returned without him, Peri and her mother have mourned his loss. Her mother sinks into a deep depression and spends her days gazing out at the sea. Unable to control her anger and sadness any longer, Peri uses the small magic she knows to hex the sea. And suddenly into her drab life come the King's sons—changelings with strange ties to the underwater kingdom—a young magician, and, finally, love.

137 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published October 1,1988

Literary awards

About the author

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Patricia Anne McKillip was an American author of fantasy and science fiction. She wrote predominantly standalone fantasy novels and has been called "one of the most accomplished prose stylists in the fantasy genre". Her work won many awards, including the World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2008.

Community Reviews

Rating(3.9 / 5.0, 112 votes)
5 stars
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112 reviews All reviews
March 17,2025
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3.5 stars. There were three potential ships and I misidentified the endgame ship TWICE, lol. My skills are getting rusty.
March 17,2025
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I just couldn't get past Peri loving a man who was so tormented, who gave her nothing in return--was incapable of giving her any of himself. But she was still in love with him & pined for him when he was gone. Just not my favorite message for the target audience. Save the angst for the older crowd--I prefer children's books when the girl falls for a boy who is actually nice to her and thinks of her and not just poor, poor him.
March 17,2025
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An emotionally rich, well-plotted sea yarn from a generally excellent fantasy author. The half-human/half-otherwordly love triangle reminds me more than a little of Robin McKinley's Hero and the Crown, particularly in the way the afterlife is evoked to allow for a layered resolution; the debonair young wizard character has a whiff of Diana Wynne Jones's Howl about him, and the rustically witchy protagonist a whiff of Jones's Sophie, with her talent for "talking life into things"; the heart-tugging minor chords of the story's emotional palette, revolving around the inexorable power of the sea to take and keep what it pleases, put me in mind of John Allison's The Case of the Fire Inside, among other great selkie stories. This is a book with something to say about bereavement, mourning, and closure, and also about literature/storytelling/writing, which seems to be the true subject of this passage that is nominally about magic:

n  He smiled, his eyes, facing the sun, full of light. “Magic is like night, when you first encounter it.” “Night?” she said doubtfully. She skipped a beat with one oar and the Sea Urchin spun a half-circle. “A vast black full of shapes . . .” He trailed his fingers overboard and the Sea Urchin turned its bow toward the horizon again. “Slowly you learn to turn the dark into shapes, colors. . . . It’s like a second dawn breaking over the world. You see something most people can’t see and yet it seems clear as the nose on your face. That there’s nothing in the world that doesn’t possess its share of magic. Even an empty shell, a lump of lead, an old dead leaf—you look at them and learn to see, and then to use, and after a while you can’t remember ever seeing the world any other way. Everything connects to something else....”n


This was my third McKillip novel after Winter Rose, which was very formative for me, and The Book of Atrix Wolfe, which I honestly don't remember at all. I would rank it somewhere between the two -- quite satisfying.
March 17,2025
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เรื่องของเวทมนตร์ พ่อมด มังกร รัชทายาทที่ถูกสลับตัว กับหญิงสาวชาวบ้านคนหนึ่ง

เพริสูญเสียพ่อของเธอให้กับทะเล มันไม่เพียงพรากชีวิตของพ่อ แต่มันพรากเอาจิตวิญญาณของแม่เธอไปด้วย

ด้วยความโกรธแค้น คืนหนึ่งเพริจึงปาของสาปแช่งลงไปในทะเล สิ่งที่ย้อนกลับมาไม่ใช่ความกราดเกรี้ยวจากผืนน้ำ แต่เป็นมังกรทะเลตัวใหญ่ที่มีโซ่ทองเส้นยักษ์ล่ามอยู่

เมื่อข่าวเรื่องมังกรแพร่สะพัดออกไป ชาวบ้านเกิดอยากได้ทองจำนวนมหาศาลที่พันธนาการมังกรเอาไว้ จึงได้จ้างพ่อมดเพื่อมาทำลายมนตราที่อยู่บนโซ่

หลังจากปลดปล่อยมังกรแล้ว เพริก็ต้องพบกับเรื่องราวประหลาดจากทะเลที่มาพบกับเธอทุกค่ำคืน

เขียนย่อมาอยากกับเรื่องสยองขวัญ แต่ที่จริงแล้วบรรยากาศเรื่องมันใสๆ เหมือนกับปกนั่นแหละค่ะ ไม่มีผีหลอกแน่นอน

อ่านได้เแป๊บเดียวจบ แต่บางจุดจะงงๆ หน่อย คิดว่าเป็นเพราะสำนวนแปล

Goodreads ให้ 4 เราให้ 3.8
March 17,2025
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คุณ McKillip เขียนฉากกุ๊กกิ๊กได้น่ารักดีจังเลยแฮะ ชอบตั้งแต่เล่ม The Forgotten Beasts of Eld แล้วน่ะ แกเขียนได้มีเสน่ห์แบบซอฟท์ ๆ ใสๆ ดี --- เล่มนี้พออ่านได้เพลิน ๆ เลย เสียดายที่เนื้อหาสั้นไปหน่อย (ไม่ถึงสองร้อยหน้า) เรื่องราวจึงไม่ได้เข้มข้นลึกซึ้งมากนัก
March 17,2025
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Wonderfully sweet little story. Great things happen in even the smallest of sleepy fishing villages where the locals have nothing better to do than hang out in the local bar after a hard day’s work and dream of catching the silly sea monster. It loves to watch them work, and they want the gold chain around its neck.
March 17,2025
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I think I need to devote a shelf primarily to books that stir that old magpie instinct within me.

This is definitely one of them. There are spools and strands of words underlined in my Kindle. I feel beautiful words and fantastic images down to my very bones.

Mini-review will be coming up soon on my Flights of Fantasy progress post.
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