Novel takes readers to new depths

"On Such a Full Sea" is a uniquely realistic dystopian tale that will stick with the engaged reader far beyond cover's close

“It is known where we come from, but no one much cares about things like that anymore.”

Thus begins celebrated author Chang-

Rae Lee’s dive into a dystopian future that honestly comes a little too close for comfort. Calling it dystopian prepares you for Hunger Games-level spectacle, Orwellian repression or Gilead-like depravity. However, Lee’s vision of a world in slow collapse amidst climate change and class division comes across less like a caricature and more as a wellgrounded prediction in reality. As the story itself points out, though: nothing is inevitable. A single choice can change everything.

Can you feel the beat? Even if you can, it might not help you play this rhythm game.

Musynx is a rhythm game for $3.99 that is similar to all of the rhythm games that came before it: difficult and containing high-speed charts and almost midi-accurate mappings of notes to the music. But there are a few things that make Musynx inferior to other rhythm game options on PC right now, and that might come from its PS Vita origin. Its leniency with notes and the way it punishes missing notes makes it feel weird in comparison to the clear and difficult osu! or Clone Hero (the PC Guitar Hero emulation).

Musynx, in presentation and song selection, looks like it’s trying to be similar to osu! Most of the music is Japanese, with the main offerings being high-speed EDM beats to burn your fingers. However, the $25 DLC requirement for additional songs when osu! and Clone Hero are free leaves a sour taste in the mouth. The presentation is sleek, with the four lanes and rectangle notes evoking the feel of a Japanese rhythm arcade machine. However, there are a few things that make Musynx miss the mark.

To the uninitiated, rhythm games like Musynx and Guitar Hero work off a basic premise: “notes” will come down across the screen in multiple lanes that correspond with keys or buttons. Pressing the respective key or button will hit the note, and failing to do so counts as a miss. The goal is to hit as many notes as possible, and the notes are supposed to line up to the beat and melody of the music being played. Musynx, however, fails to fulfill the satisfaction of hitting the notes to the beat.

There is a ridiculously large window in which to hit the notes in Musynx compared to osu! and Clone Hero.

When just mashing on the keyboard during fast segments, I’d hit all of the notes out of order, but the game would go on as if nothing weird had happened. This hinders the skill-building inherent to most other rhythm games, since normally in order to improve the player has to learn to hit the notes in rhythm.

In Musynx, however, a player could go on for some time spamming the keys as much as possible and ace a song while not really learning the game.

When the player misses a note, the game handles it in a weird way audiowise. Missed notes will not play in the song, and if the player presses the wrong key a different note will play, adding to the confusion while trying to keep up with a fast-paced EDM song. Even if the notes are played correctly, if they are out of order, the sounds will play out of order. For example, when playing the Canon in D map, the classic melody can be completely butchered at a higher difficulty but still be passed – at the cost of your ears.

Osu! and Clone Hero don’t have this issue. Missing notes doesn’t completely butcher the audio, so the player can listen to the music and get back on track. Musynx’s failure to do this makes the learning curve unnecessarily higher than it should be while also worsening an already mediocre experience.

Perhaps Musynx is better on the PS Vita or Nintendo Switch, but as a Steam game, it misses the mark against other options that are completely free. If you want to try Musynx, you can be my guest, but in comparison to osu! and Clone Hero, it’s not quite my tempo.

Rating: 1/5

In a post-climate-catastrophe U.S., refugees make a living in middle-class labor colonies, supplying upper-crust Charter villages with goods and the occasional gifted kid, all surrounded by the violent and lawless Open Counties.

“Full Sea” and its protagonist—begin in a resettled Baltimore (“B-Mor”) after decades of extensive flooding. Before any characters come in, the story takes the perspective of a community, the collective “we,” looking back on the events that will make up the rest of the novel. That kind of framing device could be slow in the hands of a less skilled author, but Lee’s style of increasing tension and dropping reveals at perfect times is incredible. By the time the book’s protagonist, Fan, rebels against the status quo, you can’t put it down.

Literally: this is one of the few novels I’ve pulled an all-nighter to finish.

After the disappearance of her boyfriend, Reg, a wall of red tape comes up that blocks any news of him, so Fan decides to leave the only world she’s ever known and find him. She journeys through the poverty-stricken counties outside B-Mor’s walls, traveling all the way up to the Charters that sent him away. She meets countless obstacles and crosses every starkly drawn line in their world, uncovering questions of identity, community and the true nature of progress itself. All the while, we hear from the community she left behind, shattered in the wake of her unprecedented departure.

It’s worth noting here that Fan herself isn’t extraordinary. Before she leaves, B-Mor is one of many struggling colonies. Common. She develops no superhuman abilities, no ruling hand over the world she lives in, no sudden miracle—what sparks this whole story, this unremarkable hero’s journey, is her choice to simply not give up. That’s the quiet revolution that shakes her society and compels the reader to follow her every move. This parallels the nature of the book, which makes for an absolutely fascinating dystopian drama. It doesn’t go out of its way to shock you; refreshingly, the twists, while stunning in the moment, fall right into place as natural consequences of individual choices. Think “Knives Out,” not “Game of Thrones.” Even the dystopian disaster doesn’t come from too far afield, presented instead as the logical outcome of climate change and socioeconomic division.

That’s where the real power of this novel comes from, in my opinion. It feels incredibly real, from individual characters’ motivations and choices to their lasting impact on the story as a whole. Lee has gotten writing human beings and communities down to a science. The “we” perspective of B-Mor’s chapters between Fan’s journey gives you the feeling of being told an old story, passed through who knows how many hands before reaching you—but with none of the hazy edges that folklore tends to fade into over time. Lee’s prose is as clear as day.