octopuses | Book Girl & Little Bear

The White Octopus Hotel by Alexandra Bell

Imagine visiting a luxury hotel in the Swiss alps, reached by ferry or, in winter, a sleigh. The hotel has a wonderful aquatic spa, numerous fountains, and is decorated with white octopuses and clocks. Also, the hotel is probably haunted. Add in time travel, and the scene is set.

Eve Shaw has a small, quiet life, ever since a family tragedy when she was a little girl. She feels haunted by rabbits and apples, with a nod to Alice in Wonderland. Eve is an art appraiser and loves music. She meets an elderly composer, then travels to the White Octopus Hotel in 2015. Her room is designated for time travelers, and she opens her door and steps into 1935 and 1918, still at the hotel, as well as the present. She meets some of the same people in each time, and participates in a treasure hunt which may give her a prize to change her past.

Eve meets Max, who is haunted by his friends who never made it home from World War I. They explore the hotel and its grounds together, and Eve even glimpses herself as a child, along with her mother. No money is collected from Eve for her stay; her payment is the memories of her time at the hotel. Octopuses are everywhere, including on a unusual tattoo on her leg. Her hotel room has a magical wardrobe, which opens to reveal just the right outfit she’ll need for the next adventure, which fits perfectly.

Magical, often melancholy, and luxurious, the White Octopus hotel is a wondrous setting for a compelling read.

Brenda

The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler

This near-future science fiction novel is about first contact, and artificial intelligence. Evrim is the first true android, and is exiled to Con Do, a remote Vietnamese island, whose population had been relocated earlier. Dr. Ha Nguyen is a marine biologist who’s arrived on Con Dao to study a colony of long-lived octopuses. Shapesinger is an octopus, who may be a tool user, and might even write symbols. The octopuses are not entirely benign, and can defend themselves.

Corporations seem to have a lot of control in this future Earth. Artificial intelligence of all types and sizes can pilot a fishing vessel as well as deliver poison darts. There are auto monks who help sea turtles on the beach, and artificial online friends. Eiko and Son are forced labor on one of the fishing vessels, and Son tells stories about creatures from the sea. In real life, octopuses show intelligence but have fairly short, mostly solitary lives. It’s fascinating to read about what might be different if they develop a culture.

This book was not at all a quick read, and rather dark in parts, but I was fascinated by the various characters, and gradually drawn into an immersive, compelling story.

Kim Stanley Robinson also writes cli-fi, or climate fiction, but isn’t as character-focused. There are a number of recent novels featuring octopuses, but I’d suggest the non-fiction The Soul of an Octopus by Sy Montgomery.

Brenda