Sharks in the Time of Saviors is a groundbreaking debut novel that folds the legends of Hawai’ian gods into an engrossing family saga; a story of exile and the pursuit of salvation from Kawai Strong Washburn. “Old myths clash with new realities ...

Everyone's take on this novel was middling. We pretty much all agreed that the setup of the book was good. Having Noa be a prophet and then seeing the rest of family deal with that was quite compelling. The book walked a fine line well of presenting a variety of perspectives in a family around this core, and the family relationships themselves were very well rendered. We believed every conversation between Noa and Dean (his brother) and Kaui (his sister). The depiction of the jealousy and rivalries in the family were vivid and detailed, and we made a lot of how a faith in a Hawai'ian destiny lead the whole family into a set of wild expectations. An interesting point we raised was whether there were any destiny at all -- the novel could as much be about how a family's expectations of a belief are destructive as it could be about the effects of an actual magically real moment on a family that responded with all the confusion and pettiness real people would. But the novel goes wrongly halfway through with Noa is killed on his return to the Big Island. While that move itself isn't bad -- it's quite unexpected and promises to be an interesting twist -- the book goes straight downhill at that point. The continued stories of the family veer directly into one-note and dubious tragedy. There are just so many bad choices in the storytelling. If Dean is so good at and so passionate about basketball, why do we only get like three lines on how he lost his position on the team? Why does Kaui choose to steal the car? What is going on with that irrigation solution? There was nothing interesting about the way Washburn makes the characters suffer - it was forced and obvious. At a certain point, it just felt like this was very much a first novel by a talented author -- scenes and conversations were good, but the big plot movements were forced and unbelievable, and the book just became a drag near the end. At the same time, we weren't sure what to make of the specifically Hawai'ian references. Washburn is clearly bringing a lot of detail about Hawai'ian life and experience, but none of it is framed for an outsider. There are a lot of lines we didn't know how to read or understand. I don't think there's anything wrong with Washburn speaking to an inside audience, but it left us unsure whether we were supposed to understand about Hawai'i as people not already familiar with it. These two issues came together in the very end when the ghost parade appears. Were we supposed to think the dad joining the ghost parade good? Was IS the ghost parade anyway? Was that the sign that the magic was real, and the Kaui is carrying it forward? The end just didn't answer any of the issues of the novel. We certainly think Washburn knows how to write and has the potential to make great work, but this novel missteps in the middle and never recovers.