Okay so I was suuuuper intrigued so I bought it. I'm on chapter 31 which is a bit over halfway, and I got it yesterday so that should let you know how quick of a read it is.
So here's my thoughts on it so far, if anyone was interested:
The book is most definitely aimed towards younger audiences probably around middle schoolers and that's reflected in the characters and the language. And speaking of language: there is A LOT of new terminology made for the book. I'm not a huuuuge fan of fantasy books with heaps of made-up terminology but I'm forgiving it because unlike a land-based fantasy world, the underwater world is just possibly that more alien compared to ours. That said, it's hard to forgive the heaps of ocean puns they use. It kind of reminds me of My Little Pony with the use of words like "merlfriend" or how their money is called "currensea." It also gets a bit transparently heavy handed with the ocean pollution angle and major info dumps left and right. Within the first two chapters alone we went from learning about the setup of the story's plot to a discussion of Merowmaran politics and history and hierarchy and culture. It's a lot to take in at once but I think that'll let up in the following books as the author trusts readers to be used to the world. It seems like she's really trying to set up this idea of a grand adventure and make the whole thing seem like a wild ride but I think too much happens at once. I wish she'd given us some time to get used to Serafina and her world before flipping it upside down.
That aside, I'm a fan of the main character's departure from the standard "skin white as snow" european character model. Serafina is described as having olive skin, dark copper hair and dark green eyes and based on the location of her kingdom/the names of the characters/other descriptions she's of roman or greek descent. (Mermaids in this story are descended from the Atlantians as their city sank.) I mentioned earlier in the forum that it looked like they were going to try to knock out their PoC quota in one fell swoop and they do. The main girls are each from a different realm of mer but with each realm is supposedly a different culture so there's something for everyone. One of the main characters is an Indian-Ocean mermaid named Neela who has a "passion for fashion" and a huge sweet tooth and this endeared her to me pretty quickly (passion for fashion meaning more clothing design rather than just buying clothes.) Also through Neela as well as many other characters, we see the author is trying to depart from the standard "human on top, fish on bottom" design that we're used to. Characters are described as bioluminescent or having the bottom halves of crustaceans and cephalopods and I find that really cool. It's not fully described how high up their tails go which I only care about because I kind of want to make Serafina's tail now (copper and pink) and it's starting to seem like a full body tail. Either way, I like the attempt to embrace all sorts of aquatic life as mermaid inspiration.
I'm still not done. I'll probably post a good review when I do finish the book. If possible I'd move this thread but I have no idea how to do that. Or whether there's even a book forum for this thread to go to.
tl;dr: I'm intrigued so far. There's a HUGE world Donnelly's come up with but she tends to dump a bit too much info at once. Definitely for YA
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Originally Posted by Fun123joker
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