Review of North Sun, or the Voyage of the Whaleship Esther by Ethan Rutherford

The thimbleful of faithful Speculiction readers will be aware we love and hate taxonomizing fiction. It's a fun exercise and can be helpful for a certain type of reader, but overall fiction is fiction, and when you get down to brass tacks, there is a lot of subjectivity what is what (Derrida, cough, cough). Ethan Rutherford's North Sun, or the Voyage of the Whaleship Esther (2024) is a bucket of brass tacks.

North Sun is split in two parts. (Technically it's split in three, but the third acts more as an epilogue.) The first part will have readers breaking out comparisons to Moby Dick. A wealthy magnate, in the twilight of New England's whaling industry, equips the Esther with captain and crew, and sends them out to the seas to reap whales. Day to day life aboard the ship, from crewmen to first mate, captain to steerer, deckhands to cook, are portrayed in brief scene after brief scene, giving readers a glimpse into life aboard such a ship. (Astute readers will note the extreme brevity compared to Melville.)

In the second half, North Sun makes a transition. I won't spoil it here, but I will say that, for readers who thought this was a “fantasy novel” but hadn't yet experienced anything beyond reality, that shoe drops. The seeds were planted, and in Part II they start to grow. (My mixing of metaphors is appropriate, but more later.) It's here that Rutherford reveals, or perhaps more precisely, confirms his novel's agenda. Hints and signs exist of it in Part I, but it was still possible to be misdirection or coincidence. Part II jabs the harpoon of theme to the bone.

North Sun is, technically, a work of cli-fi. (The term 'Dark Lorax' kept springing to mind while reading...) Nowhere on the tin is this phrase written, however, nor does Rutherford's story address any of the most common points of environmental contention. But it is. Rutherford slowly makes it clear his portrayal of whaling is intended to be commentary on resource extraction, and greed in general. This type of fiction typically goes in one of two directions. One is acceptance of the inevitable, commentary on the human condition. The other is a wake-up call, a call to action. North Sun uses the malaise of the former to carry the message of the latter. Subdued is the overarching tone.

The cynical side of me would say that Rutherford took a love of 19th century whaling and stuffed a modern environmental theme into it, with fantasy devices being the hands doing the stuffing. The scenes presenting quotidian life aboard ship are superb. Rutherford effectively uses a sparse tone to present the details, bringing things to life in the reader's mind, all while keeping pace brisk. It's when Rutherford chooses to take the story off rails (lower the sails? row sideways?) that the waves get choppy. My notes start by saying: metaphor? Then: magic-realism? And toward the end: symbolism spaghetti? The reader can intuit the themes and ideas the novel is driving at, but it's despite Rutherford's attempts at generating additional meaning through fantastical devices and motifs. Not to say Rutherford couldn't generate an effective method of proffering theme to the reader, only that the method used is convoluted, a touchy messy.

The optimistic, non-cynical side of me would agree that Rutherford gives readers an excellent portrayal of whaling life in the late 19^th century, then adds narrative flavor through layers of the fantastic—layers that complement and enhance the issues bubbling to the surface in the realist sections. For certain readers, this will be true.

In the end, it's difficult to pin down North Sun to a particular audience. It's impossible to say readers of historical fiction or fantasy will enjoy the novel. The reality is, there are niches within each of those two categories that will appreciate it. Rutherford's prose is sublime, individual scenes are captured in simple yet visceral detail, and there is a clear arc and relatively clear message. It's difficult to wholly dislike. And there are niches who won't. The closer the novel gets to the end, the more tangled the metaphors and presentation become, not to mention Rutherford's commentary on the environment can be polarizing—a cheap shot, at worst, abstractly illuminating at best. But as a whole, the conflicting nature of the novel can be and should be a complement. Rutherford has written a challenging novel that, regardless your final opinion of, will not be a waste of time. Substance is there.