"The Little Book of the Sea" by Lorenz Schroter, translated by Alan Bance and David Reeve; MacAdam/Cage, 233 pages, $15

The enigmatic rhythms of the sea have entranced legions, but those wary of embarking on watery adventures can instead explore Lorenz Schroter's charming, nearly pocket-sized primer of the sea. A travel journalist based in Berlin, Schroter skips any introduction and instead forces readers to jump right in with a list of the total volume of water on Earth (ground humidity accounts for 0.001 per cent, in case you're wondering).

But it's not just lists of whats and how manys and whys that populate the book, though these are refreshing breaths of salt air amidst longer, mini essays that delve deeper into myriad aquatic issues. Amongst them are why the British coastline is so long, who the channel swimmers are, how to prepare sharkskin for a drum, or, bizarrely, how to artificially inseminate a sea urchin (among the needed tools are potassium chloride and a coffee filter).

As there is no overt rhyme or reason to the order of lore, recipes, facts and figures, with such trivia as "coins with sea turtles on them" washing this way and that like ocean billows, it's best to dive into the book at random and go fishing for an unexpected sea fact. Otherwise, there's an alphabetized index to help get that burning question answered, or simply navigate directly to "Hawai'i."

"Mahu Surfer: A Hawaiian Mystery" by Neil S. Plakcy; Alyson Books, 314 pages, $14.95

The message is "out" from the title of Plakcy's second novel, which follows 32-year-old Kimo Kanapa'aka, a recently outed homosexual Honolulu Police Department detective, as he goes undercover to solve the murder of three North Shore surfers. A Florida resident with an abiding interest in Hawai'i, Plakcy undertakes a significant risk not only in writing about the Islands, but via a first-person, Native Hawaiian voice — one that in this case was better left alone.

For while the mystery has spotless pace, intriguing plots twists, and an earnest depiction of the real challenges faced by people transitioning out of the closet, Kimo narrates like he's explaining Hawai'i to unknowing readers, and it's impossible to ignore the myriad errors that threaten to overwhelm the story. There are small spelling mistakes, such as Hawaiian spelled "Hawai'ian" and every 'okina rendered as an apostrophe, and medium characterization flaws such as Kimo's affinity for Teva footgear, the mark of tourists. Worse are glaring mistakes, such as a large landowner character, conspicuously named Bishop, owning a stretch of beach, or painting the North Shore and Honolulu as distant communities, with North Shore residents unable to see Honolulu newscasts.

Had the protagonist been a malihini, errors could be built into the plot and add depth to the story of a likeable, altruistic detective, showing off Plakcy's capable storytelling skills instead of his lack of thorough research about setting and culture.

"Vaka Moana: Voyages of the Ancestors: The Discovery and Settlement of the Pacific" edited by K.R. Howe; UH Press, 360 pages, $59

Much the same way crew members work together to sail a voyaging canoe, 14 authors worked with Massey University professor and editor K.R. Howe to form the five-pound tome "Vaka Moana," a compilation of scholarly but accessible essays on the epic history of Pacific settlement. Swollen with 400 color and black-and-white illustrations, including beautiful photographs, maps, and charts, each storyteller's prose conveys the most current knowledge about voyaging past and present.

Pacific voyagers left the sight of land thousands of years before any other explorers, and settled the last places on Earth. Thus the authors appropriately cover a broad range of topics — human evolution, Polynesian traditions, voyaging (including a subsection on Nainoa Thompson), life and trade after exploration, and Western ideas about origins — amounting to an encyclopedic examination of our Pacific ancestors' daring journey, and mirroring the prominence of indigenous nationalism today.

As the book notes, "Pacific people know their stories. But the world does not." This complete and thorough work aims to change that, and any misperceptions about the world's first maritime people. It's sure to become a staple on local shelves, as much as "Shoal of Time" or the "Loyal to the Land" series.

Read more of Christine Thomas's reviews at www.literarylotus.com.