And the Ocean Was Our Sky

An interesting and somewhat trippy retelling of Moby Dick from the perspective of the whales.

The title here alludes to one of the more clever concept of the book, which is the perspective of up and down when you live in an underwater environment. Here buoyancy is generally greater than gravity for those of us that breath the air so the perspective of things may change. Also the idea that the air will be the abyss as opposed the deep ocean - a valid change of perspective for a sea dwelling creature.

The other ideas are more fantastical and strange, with whales building ships that travel the currents and hunt humans for products to be made from their body parts. An interesting flipping of the Moby Dick story - the whales are as much the monsters as man and that concept of what makes someone become a devil is central to the story.

The other thing to praise here is the artwork, which is also suitably dreamy and surreal.

This is a strange book: I appreciate its clever ideas but some of the direct fantasy on the whales jarred a bit with the source material. Nonetheless it was a well written and interesting book

What an interesting book! This is a retelling of Moby Dick from the whales perspective. It's very imaginative and a little strange but very creative.

More like 3.5

idk what to say about this story.
It was really weird but also a very good message.
also made me super sad lol

“Will the world end in darkness because it is foretold? Or because there will be those who believe it so strongly they will make it so?”

This book is sort of like a spin-off of Moby Dick. The story is told from the POV of a whale who is trying to keep its family safe from humans by hunting them. Humans hunt whales so whales hunt back. It is a short read that you can easily finish in a day.

The story revolves around a pod of whales who are hunting the one human responsible for killing whales. And during their journey, they meet other whales and humans. They see the horror caused by the killings and tell their own stories of how they became a part of this hunting pod. Yes, it gets serious.

The book has pretty illustrations of the oceans from the viewpoint of the whales. They draw you into the story and present a large scale view of the oceans.

This is a great book to give to kids as it has a moral in there regarding protecting Earth, the oceans and its creatures. Of how humans can be selfish and how a whale can teach you to be kind-hearted but headstrong.

This book is definitely recommended for people who liked the DCEU movie ‘Aquaman', and felt strongly when the villain (Orm) threw the trash out of the oceans back onto the lands at the beginning of the movie :D (Yeah, I kept remembering this for some reason while reading this book).

P.S. This book was bought and gifted to a non-reader friend for their birthday (because they kept asking me to let them borrow one of my books. Needless to say, they're probably never going to read it).

This book is like one of the concept albums that you're supposed to watch like a movie with all the music videos. It's absolutely doing something and I had a good time reading it but I think for maximum impact I needed to be at least familiar with Moby Dick.

I enjoyed the whales and the art! A gorgeous book.

Apparently this Patrick Ness guy is pretty big amongst readers of Young Adult books. This is the first time I've read any of his work. Ness, in an obvious attempt to hook me as a reader, decided to put a finely illustrated whale on the cover. Seriously, every well drawn whale cover ends up on my to-read pile. I'm a sucker for blubber. Here I must apologize to the other whale books on my to-read list that have been there far longer than And the Ocean Was Our Sky. (I'll get around to you all soon.)

If you haven't already heard, And the Ocean Was Our Sky is Moby Dick turned upside down. (Literally, as kids today might say.) Told by the whales, we quickly learn that the whales perceive their ocean as being above the sky, and they descend to reach the surface where the human ships are. Cool idea. I like it. Then it gets a tad hokey...

The whales, believers of prophecy, sail in ships of their own construction. They hunt humans, using “their bones for tallow and soaps, their skin for sails, their meat ... as bait for the vast shoals of prey...” They speak to one another and can, if taught, speak to humans in proper English. So basically the whales are human, the humans are human, up is down and down is up. Make sense? But you can breath a sigh of relief, because there isn't a whale in this book named Moby Dick. So who do the whales hunt? The illusive human with “a rump like he know nil,*” Toby Wick. Yes, Toby Wick, ladies and gentlemen. See what I'm saying, it's kind of hokey.

What saves And the Ocean Was Our Sky is a good overall concept, brevity, and the wonderful illustrations of Rovina Cai. They're simple drawings, but they work well to convey the mood of the piece. If only Ness had made more subtle allusions to Moby Dick and kept the whales whales, I probably would've loved this novel. After all, there's so much great writing in this morality about our eagerness to build devils. (Also, the author refrained from placing the whales in little sailor uniforms, so kudos for that.)


*Not an actual quote from this novel, but I couldn't refrain from including it.

Let me say first of all that I really enjoy Patrick Ness and his writing style, he has a beautifully descriptive style and (in my opinion) always makes interesting and complicated characters.

In And the Ocean Was Our Sky we follow Bathsheba who is a Whale starting her journey as a hunter, the twist is in this retelling of Moby Dick the Whale's hunt humans, Bathsheba is an interesting character but I wont lie its hard to make a cast full of Whales that interesting.

The story is fast (ish) paced and moves quickly so I didn't find the book hard to get through, I did most of it in an housr/hour and a half, i'm giving And the Ocean Was Our Sky four stars but thats mainly down to the illustrations, if this was a simple novel with no illustrations I would have scored it low, the artwork is beautiful and I would recommend it for that alone but done expect a classic.

I'll read anything written by Ness but this isn't one of my favourites.

I've seen the movie based on Patrick Ness's previous book, A Monster Calls, but I haven't actually read the book. I definitely see similarities in style between the two stories, though. The blurb calls it “lyrical” and “haunting” but I'd call them both trippy.

In And The Ocean Was Our Sky, the story is told from the viewpoint of Bathsheba, a whale. In her world, whales and humans have been at war as long as she can remember. Whales have learned the human language, and how to build ships and use harpoons. (Though how they actually DO these things with flippers is never explained. Just suspend disbelief and go with it.)

I think the hardest thing to wrap my mind around was the whales have an inverted view of gravity. To them, the human world of air is called the Abyss, and it lives below them. The ocean is, well, their sky, as the title says. Bathsheba mentions the dizzying moment when she breaches and the world turns on its axis as gravity changes around her. When the whales talk of swimming up, they mean deeper into the ocean, or down, to us.

It's a crazy, inverted, fantastical world, and you just have to go with it. The illustrations both help and confuse further, but I think the fever-dream feel of it is intentional.

Bathsheba and her pod are hunters of men, and they come across a sign from Toby Wick. (You know, instead of Moby Dick.) Toby Wick is a devil in the eyes of both men and whales, and Bathsheba's captain, Captain Alexandra, resolves to hunt him down once and for all and rid the oceans of his menace. On the way, Bathsheba talks to their human captive and learns not all men are hunters, and they have dreams and fears just like whales do. Disturbed, she begins to question her own morality, and what makes someone a devil.

The book is a quick read at 160 pages, probably half of which are full-page illustrations. But it is magical and surreal and well worth reading.

You can find all my reviews at Goddess in the Stacks.