Somewhere Beyond the Sea

Linus Baker is a former DICOMY inspector who is now Arthur Parnassus’s romantic partner and a father to the children on Marsyas Island. He has thinning hair and a round belly and can be self-conscious about his appearance. Before meeting Arthur, Linus was a closed-off and fearful person dependent on rules and regulations to guide his choices; his meeting with Arthur and his gradual transformation into a more confident and vibrant person due to Arthur’s and the Marsyas children’s influence is the subject of Klune’s previous novel The House in the Cerulean Sea. Now, Linus functions as the more straightlaced parental figure in their home. Much of the novel’s comedy comes from the contrast between Linus’s desire for order and decorum and the constant chaos and mischief created by the high-spirited magical children. Klune characterizes Linus as a good-hearted man who accepts the chaos around him with a minimum of protest, genuinely enjoying the idiosyncrasies of his eccentric family, reinforcing the novel’s thematic interest in The Importance of Living Authentically. Although the children can sometimes get a rise out of Linus with their teasing, Linus can also be charmingly self-deprecating, having learned through Arthur’s love that the things he is self-conscious about are not actually serious faults. He often makes gentle jokes about his own appearance and his love for order and decorum.

As a character, Linus evidences the reality of a changed worldview. Over the course of Klune’s first novel in The Cerulean Chronicles, Linus’s views on magical beings have wholly transformed and he now supports them unreservedly. His ideological shift demonstrates that change is possible, catalyzed by ordinary people. In Somewhere Beyond the Sea, Linus represents the model of a loving, supportive partner and parent who offers unconditional love and positive regard for Arthur and the children.

At the beginning of the novel, Zoe Chapelwhite is identified only as an unregistered island sprite who lives on and protects Marsyas Island. She has delicate wings and is often depicted with flowers in her white afro, and she lives in her own home deep in the island’s forest. Zoe is a proud and independent person who confidently stands up to Marblemaw’s attempts to intimidate her and offers Arthur honest advice even when it is not what he wants to hear. Although she is a somewhat mysterious figure to Arthur and the others, Zoe is also a kind and loving person. She often helps take care of the Baker-Parnassus children and is especially close with Phee, functioning as the young sprite’s mentor due to their mutual interest in plant life. Zoe’s partner is Helen, the town of Marsyas’s mayor, and the relationship between them is depicted as a warm and healthy one.

In the final section of the novel, Zoe reveals her true identity, clearing up the mystery that has surrounded her for much of the text. She is the Queen of Marsyas and an ocean sprite, the last of her family and community to survive a massacre at human hands many centuries ago. Like Arthur, Zoe has struggled with great anger. For a long time she coped by retreating from the human world. Arthur’s return to Marsyas Island and his devotion to creating a home for magical children inspires her to re-enter the world so that she, too, can protect magical people. The threat to the Baker-Parnassus family moves Zoe to reassert herself as Marsyas’s queen. This last-minute deus ex machina revelation of her identity and the truth about Marsyas’s geography is largely responsible for the novel’s happy ending.

Jeanine Rowder is the Minister of Education and acting head of DICOMY and DICOMA. She functions as the novel’s primary antagonist. Klune has said in several interviews that J. K. Rowling was the inspiration for Rowder’s character, and in the book’s “Acknowledgements,” he specifically says that he wants to be remembered as “the Anti-J.K. Rowling” because her “beliefs on trans people are abhorrent and have no place in a modern society” (401). In Somewhere Beyond the Sea, Rowder uses her public platform and power to promote both anti-magical and heteronormative beliefs analogous to Rowling’s anti-trans beliefs.

Like the real-life Rowling, Rowder has shoulder-length reddish-brown hair; she is also characterized as having perfect, somewhat rigid posture, and “something off about her […] that [chills] Arthur to the bone” (71). The hearings in Chapter 5 demonstrate that Rowder is a clever, manipulative, and well-organized opponent. Often sarcastic and condescending, she also attempts to hide her dark intentions behind claims of beneficence: She says that she simply wants to make sure that magical children are being cared for appropriately and that they do not present a danger to humans. Lucy calls her insides “empty” (352), and tells her that she is like a black hole, “all dark” inside and constantly consuming others’ light (358). Klune depicts her as a zealot who believes in her own absolute authority as a government official and is willing to use any means to achieve her desired ends: the oppression and weaponization of magical beings for her own ideological agenda. Lucy’s speech to her in Chapter 15 makes it clear that some of Rowder’s bigotry is motivated by her own sorrow and fear: Her father was killed by a magical being.