The Sea of Always

After defeating the Memory Thief, Rosie Oaks has become a target for the other witches—especially the Time Witch. Angered by the loss of her friend and bored after an eternity in the shadows, the Time Witch vows to destroy Rosie and her long-lost brother, Wolf. There’s just one problem: Wolf is trapped in 1855 San Francisco. 

Determined to rescue him, Rosie and her best friend Germ recruit Chompy, a magical time-traveling whale. But Chompy takes them to the future instead, where they meet Aria, a young witch-hunter who offers to help. Aria warns them that their real challenge isn’t finding Wolf or the Time Witch—it’s staying ahead of someone who can see the future. With no clear plan, the three friends board Chompy again, hoping to buy themselves time to figure out their next move. 

Their hopes are dashed when time pirates working for the Time Witch board their ship. The pirates take them to a city beyond time to await the Time Witch’s arrival. Before she can get there, the pirate king comes to meet them. Rosie and Germ are shocked to discover that the pirate king is none other than their ghost friend, Ebb, who was kidnapped by the Time Witch before they left on their quest. Determined to escape captivity as the Time Witch’s servant, Ebb joins their crew and reveals the only way to defeat the Time Witch: they must defeat all the remaining witches at once. The witches keep their hearts separate from their bodies, and with Chompy’s help, the four heroes can track down the witches throughout time, steal their hearts, and meet the Time Witch in 1855 to destroy them all simultaneously.  

Along the way, all four kids learn what it means to grow up. Rosie especially learns to be independent, responsible, and braver than she’s ever needed to be. 

The Sea of Always brings the Thirteen Witches series to another level, incorporating time travel, magical animals, and even more supernatural elements. The amalgam of all these creative elements is a little overwhelming and feels overdone. Additionally, the story has a few plot points that could be simplified. However, Rosie and her friends are inspiring and well-developed characters. The language is easy to follow, and the book walks the reader through the complicated magic system so that it’s understandable, even if it’s a bit much.  

Readers who enjoy time-travel shenanigans, wicked witches, and small bands of mighty heroes will love the complex magic, clever tricks, and witty banter in The Sea of Always. This book is filled with supernatural creatures—from time-stealing hummingbirds to soul menders to ghosts—that all complicate matters for Rosie as she tries to fix what the Time Witch is intent on breaking.  

Best of all, Rosie is an empathetic and kind protagonist who befriends everyone she meets and is determined to save everyone from the witches. Rosie is a powerful tween protagonist who stands up for what’s right and for her friends, no matter how much danger lies ahead. Overall, this is a sweet story with a fierce message: never give up, even in the face of certain doom. 

Sexual Content  

• None 

Violence  

• On their time-traveling journey, Rosie and her friends encounter the Time Witch for the first time. Rosie sends her bird, Little One, to fight the Time Witch. However, the witch sends hummingbirds to fight Little One. Rosie thinks, “And even as Little One grows in size—she’s now as big as an elephant—taking more and more hummingbirds out with each bite, they surround her. Over my shoulder, as we run, I see her struggle. And then, with a terrible screech, she tumbles out of the air. She plummets to the ground, and is engulfed. I stumble too, the flashlight dropping from my hands.” Rosie’s new friend, Aria, manages to hit some of the hummingbirds with a slingshot, and everybody makes it out unscathed.  
• While time-traveling, Rosie and her friends land in Salem during a witch trial. A judge is sentencing a woman to death. He says, “Martha Parker, you hereby stand convicted of witchcraft. You shall now face trial by water. If you drown, you will die the death of the innocent. If you float, we will know for certain that you’re a witch.” They don’t see the trial, but it is implied that someone saves the woman from the water. 
• During another encounter with the Time Witch and a different witch, Rosie and her friends are attacked by hummingbirds, bats, and hyenas. “Above, the hummingbirds and bats rise high enough to block out the stars. Below them, thousands of tiny beetle feet tap across the dry ground, but it’s the hyenas that reach us first, leaping out of the night toward us. Screaming, Germ falls back under the weight of one, defenseless, but Aria holds her slingshot aloft and aims at them as they struggle. . . Her shot goes crooked and crazy, missing Germ and the hyena completely and slamming into a boulder that breaks apart.” They manage to outrun the creatures, and nobody is injured.  
• When Rosie and her friends face all the witches to save Rosie’s brother, the Time Witch captures them and traps them in hallucinations. Rosie’s mother appears from the water and shoots the Time Witch with a bow and arrow, releasing Rosie and her friends from the torture. “The Time Witch clutches her chest, and falls into the ground. It happens so fast, you can barely see it. One moment she is there, and the next, she is swallowed into nothing. As if she never existed at all.” The Time Witch dies.  

Drugs and Alcohol  

• None 

Language    

• None 

Supernatural  

• This book is full of supernatural elements that appear on nearly every page. Rosie and her friends experience magical whale time-travel, witch battles, and encounters with creatures that live in the clouds. Rosie is also good friends with ghosts.  
• Magic primarily appears through special abilities and not spoken spells or with wands. Each witch can steal something from humans, such as memories, time, hopes, or motivations.  
• For example, while Rosie is gone, her mom describes what their house is like in her absence. “The room, which would look empty to almost anyone, is actually full of spirits. More and more have come every day since Rosie left, ghosts from nearby towns and counties trying to get a glance at the Oaks family home before drifting back to their graves by morning. The death of the Memory Thief has made this house more infamous than it already was.” 
• While time-traveling, Rosie describes their transportation. “Still, there are some indicators that we’re not in Kansas anymore. For one thing, there’s a giant glass ‘moonroof’ above that affords us a view of the blue ocean water above. There are travel brochures littering the room that offer guidance on trips to the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, specific eras like the Han dynasty, the Gupta empire, and so on. There’s also a full-color coffee-table book called Welcome to the Sea of Always that includes a primer on the magical creatures of the ocean of time, and a terrifying who’s who profile on someone called the pirate king and his army of bones.” 
• When Germ and Rosie travel to the future, they meet Aria, a girl near their age. She explains why the future appears to be a wasteland. “This used to be a tropical island; it’s not supposed to be frozen solid. The moon isn’t supposed to be so far away. All I know is that the witches have covered the world in so many curses, it’s propelled the moon away from us, and things are. . . frightening.” 
• As Rosie, Aria, and Germ leave to find the witches’ hearts, they encounter the Time Witch. She steals time from Rosie before Rosie and her friends escape. “’The hummingbirds stole time when they engulfed you,’ [Aria] explains [to Rosie]. ‘They sucked ten days away from you. You’ve been witch touched already.’” Rosie has time stolen from her at another point in the book as well.  
• While traveling inside the whale, Rosie and her friends find a book that defines the Sea of Always. “Time on Earth does not disappear as it passes, but rather, it sinks into the sea, becoming an invisible layer of history hidden within the ocean. Just as above there is surface reality and then the magical layer underneath, in the sea there is the real ocean and the invisible ocean of time. Still, the time ocean is very real in its own way, and any changes to time inside the sea will impact the course of history above.”  
• The book also describes and defines time whales like the one Rosie and her friends travel on. “Time whales are magical creatures adapted to swimming the magical sea. For most living things, swimming in the ocean won’t mean swimming through time. But time whales have an inner space-time compass that has evolved in them alone, which allows them to navigate time’s spiral.” 
• When discussing how they’ll defeat the Time Witch, Aria mentions another crueler witch, the Nothing King. “He’s more powerful than all of the rest combined. But he’s imprisoned in a black hole at the other end of the universe. He had a big fight with the Moon Goddess in ancient times, and she prevailed.” 
• During their adventures, Rosie, Germ, and Aria encounter the pirate king, a ghost, and a servant of the Time Witch. “[The pirate king] is dim. So dim that he’s nearly invisible. Frail. Withering. I can see at a glance, he is dying. . . the pirate king is as near to becoming nothing as a ghost can get.” Further inspection reveals that the pirate king is none other than Ebb, Rosie’s ghost friend, who had been kidnapped by the Time Witch.  
• While riding the whale, Rosie and her friends decide the only way they can defeat the witches is to steal and destroy the witches’ hearts. Ebb says, “I heard the rumors, but I’d never given them much thought until that night. A witch’s heart doesn’t pump her blood, but she still needs it to live. In other words, if you destroyed a witch’s heart, she’d die.” Along the way, they collect the hearts, but they aren’t anatomically correct hearts. The hearts take different shapes, such as a tattered book, an apple, or a trinket box. 
• Many of the witches have familiars—magical pets that do their bidding. As Rosie and her friends try to steal their first heart, they also see a familiar. Rosie describes the scene, “There’s a creature waddling across the road in front of us. It’s a chameleon, green and bright. . . and totally out of place in Massachusetts. The evening is just dark enough for us to see its ghostly glow. My heart thuds faster; there’s no mistaking the iridescent sparkle of a witch’s familiar.” 
• As a witch-hunter, Rosie also has a magical ability. She can summon a creature called Little One, which usually takes the shape of a bird that attacks witches.  
• While trying to steal their first heart, Rosie discovers her powers are more complicated than she thinks. Rosie describes the scene, “standing on the ground in front of me, Little One is not Little One anymore. Or at least, not the Little One I know. I only recognize her by her glow, and the bond between us that’s tied around my heart, but she is no longer a bluebird at all. She’s a cricket.” Rosie can imagine Little One in any form.  
• To escape the Time Witch during yet another encounter, Rosie imagines Little One into a doorway. Rosie and her friends end up on a cloud and meet the Brightweaver. “[The Brightweaver] points to a small sign over the doorway. BRIGHTWEAVER: MENDER OF SPIRITS, SOULS, AND HEARTS. FREE ALTERATIONS! ALL ORGANIC! ‘I’ve been called different things by different people over the years. Fairy, angel, muse. . . I can’t be fussed either way. I’m here to help; that’s all you need to worry about.’” The Brightweaver mends souls and demonstrates for Rosie and her friends by making Germ’s soul appear. “Instead of seeing the things you’d expect to see inside a person’s body—a heart, bones, blood—a luminous, tiny lion rises inside Germ’s rib cage, as filmy and bright as the music making bridges and wings.” The Brightweaver doesn’t entirely explain what she is, but she saves them and returns them to their whale. 
• In their final showdown with the witches, Rosie imagines a horde of aliens pouring down from the sky to attack them. Her imagination manifests them. “[Rosie] gasp[s] for air as even the familiars fall away from [her] to gape up at the sky at thousands upon thousands of purple eight-armed aliens.” 
• During the same showdown, Rosie and her friends are trapped in a hallucination by the Time Witch. Rosie thinks, “as the birds swirl around my face, batter my eyes, my cheeks, my arms, I catch glimpses. Germ’s face is getting plumper, her hair longer, her legs shorter. She’s getting smaller and smaller. She looks like the Germ I knew when she was eight. Then more like Germ at five—the Germ I met in kindergarten. And then she’s a baby, sitting in the sand and surrounded by hummingbirds, all reddish-blond curls, her freckles gone. She lets out a wail, tears running down her baby cheeks.” After Rosie’s mother kills the Time Witch, Rosie and her friends are released and return to their normal ages.  
• After the battle, Rosie and her friends return to the time whale. Aria sings, sad from the people she’s lost over the years. Her song summons her long-lost sister and other witch-hunters, free from the Time Witch’s prison. They were trapped in a snow globe Aria had found. “The tiny thread of Aria’s song wraps around the tiny knob of the door and pulls it open. And then. . . five very tiny figures come swimming out, unmistakably human, each the size of a pinky nail. That’s when Aria’s hands jerk in surprise, and she drops the globe.” Aria’s singing voice is her witch-hunter power, activated when the Time Witch died.  

Spiritual Content  

• There are mentions of “the Moon Goddess,” but they are minimal, and the book doesn’t explain the specific belief system it’s referencing, save that the Moon Goddess is the enemy of the witches.  
• While time-traveling, Germ whispers a small prayer before bed one night. “Germ kneels by her bed and does her nightly ritual: a Hail Mary and an Our Father. Then a prayer to the Moon Goddess for good measure. It’s not all that conventional for a Catholic to believe in a goddess who lives on the moon, but Germ is her own person.”

by Kate Schuyler