Full review at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books 
 Winter Tide is the first novel in the Innsmouth Legacy series (it was preceded by a novella, The Litany of Earth). It's one of a wave of recent books that re-imagines the legacy of H.P. Lovecraft in a feminist and otherwise inclusive and progressive light. 
 Winter Tide flips the script by making one of the inhabitants of Innsmouth the heroine of the story. In the world of Winter Tide, the Innsmouth population was indeed incarcerated in camps, some time around 1900. They were moved to deserts, where they were forbidden to read and write. Many were subject to medical experimentation and torture. They were denied the salt they loved and needed. 
 The pace of this book is very slow, but I loved the characters and atmosphere so much that I didn't care. The fogs of San Francisco and the mists of the Atlantic frame the story in a beautiful Lovecraftian symmetry. There are spells and tentacles, intrigue, and a suitably creepy library at Miskatonic University. Basically, the Lovecraftian tone, the feel of the thing, is dead on, no pun intended. 
 This book takes the great parts of Lovecraft's world building (general weirdness, a sense of our insignificance in the scale of the universe, tentacles, fogs, creeping horror, references to many Lovecraft stories) and uses it to work towards social justice. All of the main characters that are human have dealt directly with racism, mass incarceration, genocide, homophobia, cultural appropriation, sexism, or a combination. This makes it heavy read but also an exciting one, not because of the plot itself, although it has many exciting moments, but because there is a sense that people who have been downtrodden will rise again. Plus, at intervals there's food and companionship and jokes and flirtations. 
 I am very much looking forward to further books, but I'm honestly not that wrapped up in what actually happens. I just want to hang out more with Aphra and her found family, not to mention her family under the sea. It's a great story and a seamless subversion of Lovecraft's most repellent views while simultaneously being a tribute to his greatest accomplishments. 
 - Carrie S.