I just finished reading Songs From The Drowned Lands by Eileen Kernaghan. It is a fantasy novel about a race of doomed people whose island home is destined to be swallowed by the sea. Apparently, though fictional, the author borrowed from some celtic myths, and stories of the destrution of Atlantis.
The book is written in five parts, and each part follows a different member of a prominent family of the Grey Isles; how they accept their doom, flee before the oncoming destruction, or choose to battle the chaos. It was a fun read.
Here's the kicker. It's a little jarring when you read a book, grow to care about the characters and their plight, hope against hope for a miracle and then - nothing. No pay off. No triumphant moment. It was all for naught. The book ends with a wall of water bearing down on the isle as a group of sorcerers and the like try to combine their wills to halt the inevitable. They fail. That's it. There is a little bit about the bloodline continuing due to those few who had fled and would prosper in distant lands. The last paragraph of the book is the sea swallowing the land.
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