Oceanus by Hanna Delaney

A Rusalka Books Review

My New Year’s resolution (to read WAY more indie books - maybe even give over 2025 solely to indies) is going strong - I’m on book 6 already - and I’ve decided to keep a proper account of all the books I read. Hence this new publication - I’m going to write up reviews of everything-indie that I have enjoyed reading. And hopefully, it will convince you to read them too and get more eyes on independently published books!

My first review is Oceanus by Hanna Delaney. I have chosen her book because she is the first indie author I met on Substack whose writing immediately left me wanting more. I love a sci-fi. I also love Shakespeare. As an English tutor, it would be pretty blasphemous if I didn’t, and Hanna Delaney has married these two seemingly mismatched concepts together beautifully.

Delaney’s Oceanus grabs Shakespeare’s The Tempest by the balls and drags it crotch-first into a rich future where it is considered the norm, even slightly lowly, to inhabit Mars. Take note, Musk, take note! Living on Earth is something to envy and Balthazar Swaine is a thoroughly enjoyable character to discover these new-world nuances with.

Delaney makes Balthazar (who is definitely not main character material, but still manages to be a main character) into a really likeable, easy to relate to bridge between her world and ours. Balthazar is a great guy. As soon as I met him, right at the start, I just wanted to wrap him in a blanket, feed him soup and tell him that, ‘everything was going to be ok. Hanna will… probably get you out of this mess.’ But even though I wouldn’t describe him as the ‘main’ character, I still felt like his character arc was the most satisfying. I went from thinking, ‘Oh bless your cotton socks’ to, ‘Yes, Balth! You pull up those big boy pants!’ And this is just one of a myriad of well-rounded, kick-ass characters.

The storyline of The Tempest is completely thrown on its head with this futuristic setting and the existence of Atlantis in deep space (not a spoiler). It was completely unrecognisable, yet all the puzzle pieces were there for me to assemble. I must admit, I did not put the pieces together, so the ending was a HUGE twist for me. But when I re-read it, they were definitely all there. For me, this is a show of truly skilled writing, because the clues Delaney wrote into different scenes were memorable, but not quite stand-out-y enough to make you immediately draw a full picture in your mind. And I love being in the dark when reading. It makes the moment the author switches the lights on so much more delicious!

Following 3 different perspectives, we watch hapless but adorable Balthazar in his spaceship; Derrien, Thea and Jet, who live on the planet, Oceanus; and Anthony and his men who have been marooned on the other side of the same planet/island (that will make sense when you read it). Peppered throughout, we also see them at different times in their lives, helping us to piece together a very patchy and, in some cases, pernicious past.

I aggressively adored Thea, fatefully feared Derrien and furiously fancied the pants off Jet. He’s the strong, silent type and his brooding really knocked me for six - I seriously couldn’t get enough of him. I still think about him and come up with fan-fiction fantasies about what he might be doing now/hundreds of years in the future.

Derrien was a much more sympathetic version of Prospero, and I absolutely loved, no LOVED, the flashbacks to his past in Atlantis. I liked him, sympathised with him, and even understood him (I think… he’s complicated), but I still found myself fearing for the people around him. I doubted his every action, sentence and intention. I even doubted the reliability of his personal accounts. When you read it, I reckon you will too.

Oceanus seemed to suck me in and make me question absolutely everything, which I think is a really magical spell for a book to cast on a reader. I also feel really disappointed when this doesn’t happen, and Delaney did not disappoint. The themes she included, particularly that of honesty and deception, were explored in a fresh, futuristic way. When I finished the book, I had some serious moral questions floating around my head for quite a few weeks to come:

1. Can grief absolve an individual from moral accountability?

2. When does the desire to protect someone outweigh the importance of honesty?

3. Can self-deception provide genuine emotional well-being, or does it merely delay an inevitable confrontation with reality?

If somebody could weigh in here to stop me from arguing with myself, that would be ideal!

But if you don’t want to board the crazy question train with me, and would rather just read instead, grab your copy here: https://amzn.to/4h5KLAW