Tag Archives: Kraken

#WyrdAndWonder2025 Day 4 – Five Fantasy Favorites: Creatures from Nautical Myth and Folklore

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May the Fourth be with You!

(Does anyone else feel the need to say “And with you.” after hearing that? Like we’re all just a bunch of Catholic Jedi? lol)

Now I understand that everyone is probably having their feeds blown up with posts about Star Wars right now, but . . .

So naturally, I’m posting a listicle of five awesome sea creatures from nautical myth and folklore that feature in some of my favorite books. Why am I doing this? Well because it’s #WyrdAndWonder again and today’s prompt is Five Fantasy Favorites. I chose the theme of DAVY JONES, because . . . well because that’s the one I could scramble together for the first Sunday.

If you’re not familiar with #WyrdAndWonder, it’s essentially a blogging / social media event, in which folks around the internet celebrate their love of the Fantasy genre by posting different themed content around the subject (during the month of May). Leading this extraordinary charge are a few amazing folks at various places and blogs. In 2025 we have: Ariana over at The Book Nook, Annemieke of A Dance With Books, Jorie from Jorie Loves A Story, Lisa of Dear Geek Place and Imyril of There’s Always Room For One More.

I’ve been an on-again / off-again participant over the years, sometimes posting a lot, but usually only posting a little (and last year not at all). Looking back, it appears I first climbed aboard in 2021, and did some posting in 2022 and 2023. Much like #Blaugust, the event has prompted me (pushed me) to get a little more creative, often resulting in some of my favorite posts here on A&A.

Anyway, enough history, let’s bring out the sea creatures! Here are 5 of my favorite creatures from nautical myth and folklore (and of course some lit that features them!).

Mermaids

It’s kinda hard to know where to even start when it comes to mermaids (or where to stop either), but I don’t think any list of nautical themed myths would be complete without them. I don’t have a clear memory for it, but I’m assuming my first exposure to these person-fish hybrids was watching The Little Mermaid as a kid. Because my mind doesn’t hold on to anything actually useful, and only collects silliness, I think the next most impressionistic mermaid in my head-canon is likely from Zoolander.

But in 2023, I read (listened to) The Deep, by Rivers Solomon. THIS is probably my new favorite “mermaid story”. The way in which this story has moved from medium to medium over the years — from electronic music, to hip-hop, to novella — with each new adaptation adding passion, significance and meaning, is absolutely incredible. And the story itself reads like a rare pearl, with an incredibly interesting under-water-world, and gripping arc for the main character, Yetu.

For me, The Deep really elevated these classic nautical creatures from interesting mythic curiosity, to a prescient cultural symbol.

Rusalka

Not wholly unrelated to mermaids, is the myth and legend of the Rusalka. These watery women seem to have originally been a benevolent spirit which brought water to the fields in Slavic myth, but over time their legends increasingly became associated with evil. Interestingly, their name seems to come into Church Slavonic (рѹсалиѩ) from Byzantine Greek (rousalia) which comes from the Latin “Rosalia”.

I was first exposed to the Rusalka — like so many other Slavic myths and creatures — playing The Witcher III on the PS4. My memory is of course failing, but I’m sure they must feature in the show somewhere too.

Interestingly, in the sole Witcher book I’ve managed to read so far, The Sword of Destiny (a review I wrote for #WyrdAndWonder back in 2022), the story titled A Little Sacrifice seems to reference The Little Mermaid, which I felt a pretty western fairy tale. Without going back to read the story, I’m not quite sure how influenced it was by Rusalka myth and legend.

In any case, I sorta became obsessed with tracking where and how these creatures appear in different cultural contexts, mostly Russian music, art, and literature. Eventually, I even wrote my own little story, Farewell to Rusalka, as something of a nod to these fascinating spirits.

Rusalye

I’m pretty positive that the term “Rusalye” is unique to Leigh Bardugo’s novel Siege and Storm, but the type of massive water-serpent the term is used to name, should feel very familiar. The term “Leviathan” also comes to mind. I’ve never yet done much research into where stories about creatures like this come from (it seems like every culture has one), but I’m sure it would make for some fascinating reading.

As it appears in Seige and Storm, I was fascinated and enthralled, and honestly perhaps a little cheated that the Rusalye did not have a larger role in the story. Maybe we’ll get to see another book featuring this incredible creature, or maybe some wholly different author will take up the mantle and write a Rusalye-like creature someday. Maybe that author should be me! hahahah.

Kraken

Moving away from Russian and Slavic inspired sea creatures, we come to perhaps one of the most famous sea creatures of them all: The Kraken.

Whether you’ve seen the original 1981 film Clash of the Titans, or the 2010 remake, or have just been alive in the last quarter century, somewhere along the line you’ve probably heard some reference to the god Zeus — angry with the king of Argos — ordering Poseidon to “Release the Kraken!”

What an epic moment.

And that is just one line from one movie. Krakens have appeared in all kinds of art, movies, music, and literature, and every time they’re just sublimely done. Beasts of all-consuming power and impossibility. Incredible in the most literal sense.

Two stories featuring Krakens — or Kraken-like monsters — which I’ve enjoyed (relatively) recently, are P. Djeli Clark’s How to Raise a Kraken in Your Bathtub, and Emily Jane’s Here Beside the Rising Tide. In Clark’s Hugo nominated short story, our approach is somewhat more whimsical than the epic moments I’ve referenced above. It does touch a variety of serious topics, like ambition, colonialism, racism and classism, but it is able to do so with humor, which seems to make it all a bit more palatable (and certainly more enjoyable).

Jane’s take is definitely more whimsical, casually dropping terms like Squidoodle, and Tentaggedon (the kraken-like monster). But it is also just a lot of fun. If you’re into unabashed weirdness and child-like wonder, definitely check out Here Beside the Rising Tide.

Marid

These fascinating demons come to us from Islamic mythology. In Shannon Chakraborty’s Daevabad books (aka City of Brass etc.) the Marid are a kind of water elemental, and any sort of water — whether it be oceans or rivers (although not one particular river) — seem to be their domain, traveling on the “Currents” which allow them effectively teleport anywhere they wish.

Interestingly, the Marid wikipedia page does not use the term water even once, referring to them only as a class of demon in the Islamic netherworld. Unfortunately I know very little about Islamic myth and folklore so I can’t say if there was a particular tale Chakraborty considered when constructing her own version of these mysterious and powerful beings, but it would certainly be something to research.

We also see Marid occasionally in P. Djeli Clark’s A Dead Djinn in Cairo stories. They’re a bit different than the Daevabad versions, but I think that only makes them more interesting.

In any case, however they appear, it hasn’t taken long for the Marid to shoot to the top of my list of favorite mythological creatures. They seem inextricably linked with djinn so I’m hoping that as I make my way through this list of stories about djinn, I’ll uncover even more appearances of these fascinating and mythic figures.

Wrapping Up

That’s all I have for you this time! Let me know what you thought of these five creatures from nautical myth and folklore. Were there any you wished I would have included on the list? What are some of your favorites?

And while I have a few posts already scheduled for May which are not #WyrdAndWonder themed, still circle back for any more I might manage to write. My plan is to publish some nautical themed book reviews and posts under the different themes on:

We’ll see how I do. Roll out your parchment map, and start marking X’s all over it. There’s all kinds of treasure left in store this May!

See you next time. Happy #WyrdAndWonder.

Should ‘How to Raise a Kraken In Your Bathtub’ Win a Hugo?

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“Le Poulpe Colossal” by malacologist Pierre Dénys de Montfort, 1801

Well it’s Hugo Season again (and has been for a little while), which means I ought to start adding a few more reviews to the List of Hugo Nominees I’ve Reviewed. I’ll admit that after ANOTHER scandal with the Chengdu awards last year in 2023, my interest and enthusiasm for the awards have greatly diminished.

However, my love and adoration of all stories written by P. Djeli Clark has not, so I figured I’d at least check out his nomination. Starter Villain by John Scalzi, and The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty are both excellent and I’d already reviewed them on this blog independent of any Hugo nominations, so please check out those reviews if you’d like.

I’ll likely post a few more ‘hugo’ related reviews before August (I apparently post about video games now, and just so happen to be most the way through Chants of Sennaar), but my approach will definitely be a lot more relaxed than in years past.

Pointless housekeeping aside, let’s dive into this little gem shall we?

In last week’s review of Fonda Lee’s Untethered Sky, I observed that it’s easy to allow a story’s page length to bias our interpretation of it (and our description later on when reviewing). We can’t help but try to make it sound fun, or playful, even when its tone is more serious and nuanced. We enjoyed it, but saying “This piece destroyed me, but in a good way.” seems somewhat incongruous.

We don’t have to worry about this at all with How to Raise a Kraken in Your Bathtub. It is legit ‘a romp’.

Does it have serious commentary about ambition, colonialism, racism and (somewhat) classism? Yes. It is also about raising a baby Kraken.

You don’t need to read about it on the the author’s blog to sense a kind of giddiness about the story. It’s a goofy idea, and yet it’s also a significant one.

Some mechanics of the story were also interesting to me, whether it’s because I’m a writer, or for some other reason I’m not sure, but I couldn’t help but think that the choice of the main character was interesting.

Trevor Hemley is a pretty unlikable dude (the author also notes the risk of this on his blog). He’s self-centered, smug, and racist. Yet his eyes are the ones through which we see the story, and I would argue that it is essential to this story that this is true. On a practical level, we need his POV because Trevor’s ambitions and projects need to be kept secret in order to succeed and we could not be privy to them through another point of view, but more philosophically, this positioning means that all of the things we hate about him — which in many respects are the theme of the story — are reinforced by the story’s ending.

For (a somewhat random) example, consider A Christmas Story. As adults we know that those little puzzles on the back of cereal boxes (or hot chocolate) are BS, but the main character has yet to realize it. His reaction to this loss of innocence is hilarious, but also meaningful because it’s reaffirmed our own beliefs by the end of the scene.

Somewhat less analytical: this scene from A Christmas Story was in the back of my mind pretty much the whole time I was reading this. I was just waiting for some reveal to which Trevor would respond “Son of a B@ch!”. This was it’s own kind of fun.

Anyway, this post is starting to feel a bit long, so I’ll just mention one small criticism before wrapping up. The opening scene (in the bar) felt a bit needless to me, and I wondered if the story should have started with the delivery of the kraken egg to Trevor’s house. As it stands, the opening serves as this sort of weird overture which does express the themes of the story and introduces us to our characters, but I didn’t really feel engaged in the story until the kraken egg arrives. Perhaps this is just personal preference.

But Should it Win a Hugo?

Ultimately, hard to say. It is an excellent story, and a genuine joy to read but I haven’t yet read any of the other stories on the ballot yet. My feeling is that something with a slightly less comedic tone will take the award, but I also feel that post-pandemic, stories with this kind of absurdity are a bit more desirable.

I would certainly be happy if this story won, but only time will tell.

That’s all I have for this week. What are your thoughts? Would you try to raise a kraken in your bathtub? Which nominee do you think will win the Hugo? Let me know in the comments. I’m excited to talk more about this one!

See you next time.