Sisters of the Reef by M. K. Aleja is a mythic fantasy rooted in CHamoru folklore, imagining the lost history behind a legend of a woman protected by sharks. The story follows Gåni, a makåna and healer on Tinian, whose bond with two reef sharks deepens after they save her from jellyfish and a dangerous current. What begins as an act of rescue becomes a sacred kinship between village and sea, until Spanish colonization ruptures that relationship and turns love, medicine, and memory into things that must survive in whispers.

I was most moved by the way the story treats the natural world not as scenery, but as family. The sharks are not cute companions or symbolic ornaments; they are beings with agency, dignity, and emotional presence. Their choice to keep the black and white markings on their fins feels mythic without feeling decorative. It carries the weight of a vow. Gåni’s reverence for them gives the story its strongest pulse, and the scenes where the village gathers to heal the injured sharks are tender in a way that feels almost ceremonial.

The second half struck me harder because the story refuses to let wonder remain untouched by history. The arrival of the Spanish soldiers changes the air of the book; the reef that once shimmered with reciprocity becomes a place of surveillance, fear, and blood. I appreciated that the violence is not included merely for shock. It shows how colonization does not only kill people; it severs knowledge, distorts language, and teaches later generations to distrust what once protected them. The final aquarium scene is quiet, but it lingers. It suggests that erased stories may not vanish completely, they wait for someone brave or old or ghostlike enough to tell them again.

Readers who enjoy mythic fantasy, folklore, Indigenous historical fantasy, eco-fantasy, and anti-colonial fiction will find a great deal to admire here. The book would appeal to readers of Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass, especially in its insistence that the world around us is not an object but a relative. Sisters of the Reef is a luminous reef-song about kinship, erasure, and the stubborn afterlife of memory.