Content Warnings: Ocean’s Echo

SPOILERS AHEAD

Ocean’s Echo deals with consent, boundaries and self-esteem in a science-fiction world where mind control and mind merges are possible. Major content warnings include mind-control/sharing, coercion, and mental health struggles including self-neglect and prominent self-destructive thoughts. Minor warnings include chaotic eating habits, and some drug and alcohol use.

Scroll down for much more detailed content warnings - please be aware these contain extensive spoilers.

Detailed content warnings:

Mind merging/control: In Ocean’s Echo, some people (‘architects’) have the power to temporarily control minds. In the first third of the book, the two main characters are ordered to ‘sync’: a permanent mind merge which will leave one of them, the architect, totally in control. Both characters try desperately to get out of this and fix on a plan to fake it. Much later in the book, in an emergency, they sync with each other’s consent. Both their senses of self start to merge in an unsustainable way that includes accidentally taking over each other’s bodies. This is eventually resolved.

Mental health: The main character of Ocean’s Echo struggles with his mental health and makes self-destructive decisions. He regularly expresses a desire to ‘not be in his own head’ which leads him to use a mind merge to literally try and subsume himself in someone else’s personality. One scene involves him throwing his mind into space in a conscious attempt to self-destruct/become something else. The ending is hopeful but his challenges are not fully managed or resolved

Coercion: One of the main characters signed up for the military voluntarily and one was conscripted, essentially by a family member. The military imprisons them and forces them into a mind-merge.

Chaotic eating habits (minor CW): One aspect of the main character’s unmanaged mental health challenges manifests as a lack of attention to regular eating.

Drug and alcohol use (minor CW): The main character uses alcohol and low-level drugs in the early parts of the book. Although not a major plot point, he uses these for boredom/distraction/as part of his early lifestyle slightly more frequently than healthy. Descriptions are not graphic.