Beachwalker



""My mother told me a story once. A story about a wave that washed up all the starfish and left them on the shore, in a place where starfish can’t survive." She crept through the building on wary, silent feet. The earthquake had moved like a wave through the earth, leaving people stranded like starfish in its wake. The firefight that drove her inside had fallen deathly still, but she knew that she wasn't alone. Two soldiers. One prisoner. Two dead, one dying, with fresh blood on his hands. The only one she could even try to save. "My mother told me a story once. A story about a man who found a beach full of starfish, washed up by the sea. She never told me what he’d do if one of those starfish was a shark.""

- From the official product page

A novella just over 30,000 words long, Beachwalker follows the struggles of a cast of nameless characters as they work to survive in a war-torn and earthquake-rattled country. Deliberately ambiguous and surreal, the novella focuses mostly on the inner struggles of the protagonist as she fights for her patient's life, though external, physical danger is never far away.

Beachwalker is Stephanie O'Brien's first published work, having been made available on Amazon's Kindle in 2012.


 * All First-Person Narrators Write Like Novelists
 * Badass in Distress: The Sea Monster/Starfish starts the book tied to a chair, half-starved, horribly injured, and with a freshly killed opponent at his feet.
 * Badass Long Hair: The Sea Monster has long, black hair, and his very first act in the book is to kill a trained soldier. While tied to a chair. With only one forearm free. Also, he was so badly injured at the time that he couldn't make it out of the building on his own even once he was untied.
 * Batman in My Basement: The central premise of the story.
 * Beneath the Mask: The Beachwalker has a slightly softer core than she thought.
 * Comforting Comforter: Since There Is Only One Bed, the Beachwalker decides to sleep on the floor so her bedridden patient won't have to. This works until it gets too cold and he decides that she should have the blanket. And he won't take no for an answer. They work it out.
 * Defrosting Ice Queen: The Beachwalker, while generally gentle with those around her, is very careful to keep them at arms' length. She does not need anyone to give her emotional support, to be there for her, or to comfort her in any way. Until she  and finds out she does.
 * Downer Ending:
 * Good Samaritan: Basically the Beachwalker's reason to live, and the primary source of her identity. The self-given title of "Beachwalker" refers to the star of a story in which a man finds a beach full of stranded starfish and starts throwing them into the sea.
 * Grey and Gray Morality: The soldiers treated Sea monster/Starfish horribly, but they also help the Beachwalker and the Shopkeeper to set their shop back in order after the earthquake, and their medic is shown to have objected to their harsh interrogation methods. On the rebels' side, the Starfish himself does his best to look out for the Beachwalker despite his wounded state, and  All in all, the story avoids lionizing or demonizing either side of the conflict.
 * Heroic BSOD: The, combined with  , leave   barely functional by the end of the book.
 * Heroic Fatigue: The Beachwalker's tendency to give unreservedly and refuse to receive anything in return begins to catch up with her partway through the book, especially after.
 * Innocent Cohabitation: While she has her initial doubts about the Starfish's intentions when he protests against her sleeping on the floor, there turns out to be little or no sexual tension despite the situation.
 * My Greatest Failure: At some point in the backstory,, and she's determined not to let it happen again.
 * Nameless Narrative: All of the characters are referred to by their roles or their relationship to the protagonist. "My mother", "The shopkeeper", "The sea monster", "My starfish", etc. Several of these titles refer to her favorite childhood story.
 * Not So Stoic: After, the Beachwalker's stoicism starts to fray badly.
 * Promotion to Parent: Part of the reason why the Beachwalker is so driven to take care of those who have no one else is because her father abandoned her at a young age, leaving her to take care of everything while her mother drank herself into oblivion.
 * Samaritan Syndrome: The Beachwalker’s modus operandi.
 * The Speechless:
 * There Is Only One Bed
 * Together in Death:
 * Urban Warfare: The Beachwalker has to dodge this several times.