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emtees's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
funny
hopeful
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
I really enjoyed this book, mostly because I love these characters so much I am getting emotional just thinking about them.
This book was very different from what I was expecting. Based on the summary, I assumed it would be an action-adventure type story with sea creatures fighting pirates. Instead, it was something softer, quieter and more emotional. There is an evil pirate in Captain Kian, as well as good pirates in Dejean, Simone and their crew, and there is eventually a battle of humans and sirens, but most of this book is taken up with the story of Pearl, a siren captured by Kian, as they recover from their captivity, accept that they are now disabled, find love and a found family, and adjust to happiness in a very different life than the one they expected.
What makes this book so good? Let’s start with the protagonist, Pearl, a snarky, acerbic, often hilarious and extremely loyal siren. Sirens in this world are basically merpeople who also have the ability to hypnotize humans with their songs, and Bryn manages to make Pearl both extremely lovable and distinctly alien. (They express affection with statements like “if someone hurts you, I will eat them.”). At the start of the story, Pearl has spent a long time as the prisoner of the cruel and terrifying Captain Kian, a pirate with a grudge against sirens, who has found a way to overcome the power of their songs. Pearl is rescued when Kian’s ship is taken by a crew led by Dejean who is… also a pirate, but a nice one. Dejean is a pretty perfect love interest: handsome, sweet, a fighter and a pirate captain but still a compassionate person. He immediately decides that he’s going to take care of Pearl as they recover from their injuries, and once it becomes clear that some of those injuries won’t ever heal, Dejean and Pearl are set on a path to building a new life together.
The majority of the book is taken up with the development of this relationship, as well as the building of a found family that includes Dejean’s sister, Murielle, a hilariously quirky inventor, and her fiancé, Dejean’s second-in-command Simone. The main plot of defeating Kian only comes back near the end. Instead, we get a lot of time devoted to Pearl adjusting to life as a disabled person…er, well, siren… and figuring out how much of their old life beneath the sea they will be able to recover - and how much of it they really want back, considering how attached they are getting to these humans.
If you wanted to, you could maybe criticize the book for how easy all this is. There are conflicts and misunderstandings, but compared to most romances (and this definitely has the structure of a romance, though the actual relationship that results felt more to me like a queerplatonic partnership) there isn’t real tension to this. There are some major obstacles in the way of Dejean and Pearl being together - not just that they are members of enemy species, literally evolved to survive in different environments, but that Pearl has for all their life considered humans food - but rather than drama and angst, we get adults talking things through like adults, with compassion and open-mindedness. It is very refreshing.
So much of this book feels like that. The diversity is beautifully done and not at all token. Most of the (human) major characters are POC. Queerness is widespread and universally accepted - not only are all the major characters queer, but things like offering pronouns are a norm in this world. I liked that while the author did some interesting things with gender and sexuality in the fictional species - sirens appear to be all genderfluid and nonbinary, and a bit bewildered by human gender - they didn’t restrict those things just to the nonhumans. And the disability representation was beautiful. A lot of the book focused on Pearl’s acceptance of their disability, but it avoided a lot of the tropes that those stories sometimes fall into. Pearl had to deal with new restrictions and challenges but they never feel helpless or out of control of their own life once they are freed from captivity, and on several occasions we see them defending their human companions. My favorite thing may have been the magic-powered mobility devices that Pearl ends up with, and the fact that they don’t just take what is provided to them, but find a way to adapt that works for them.
The world of this book is a really cool one, full of different species and magic-fueled technology. I’m excited to see that there are more stories set there.
This book was very different from what I was expecting. Based on the summary, I assumed it would be an action-adventure type story with sea creatures fighting pirates. Instead, it was something softer, quieter and more emotional. There is an evil pirate in Captain Kian, as well as good pirates in Dejean, Simone and their crew, and there is eventually a battle of humans and sirens, but most of this book is taken up with the story of Pearl, a siren captured by Kian, as they recover from their captivity, accept that they are now disabled, find love and a found family, and adjust to happiness in a very different life than the one they expected.
What makes this book so good? Let’s start with the protagonist, Pearl, a snarky, acerbic, often hilarious and extremely loyal siren. Sirens in this world are basically merpeople who also have the ability to hypnotize humans with their songs, and Bryn manages to make Pearl both extremely lovable and distinctly alien. (They express affection with statements like “if someone hurts you, I will eat them.”). At the start of the story, Pearl has spent a long time as the prisoner of the cruel and terrifying Captain Kian, a pirate with a grudge against sirens, who has found a way to overcome the power of their songs. Pearl is rescued when Kian’s ship is taken by a crew led by Dejean who is… also a pirate, but a nice one. Dejean is a pretty perfect love interest: handsome, sweet, a fighter and a pirate captain but still a compassionate person. He immediately decides that he’s going to take care of Pearl as they recover from their injuries, and once it becomes clear that some of those injuries won’t ever heal, Dejean and Pearl are set on a path to building a new life together.
The majority of the book is taken up with the development of this relationship, as well as the building of a found family that includes Dejean’s sister, Murielle, a hilariously quirky inventor, and her fiancé, Dejean’s second-in-command Simone. The main plot of defeating Kian only comes back near the end. Instead, we get a lot of time devoted to Pearl adjusting to life as a disabled person…er, well, siren… and figuring out how much of their old life beneath the sea they will be able to recover - and how much of it they really want back, considering how attached they are getting to these humans.
If you wanted to, you could maybe criticize the book for how easy all this is. There are conflicts and misunderstandings, but compared to most romances (and this definitely has the structure of a romance, though the actual relationship that results felt more to me like a queerplatonic partnership) there isn’t real tension to this. There are some major obstacles in the way of Dejean and Pearl being together - not just that they are members of enemy species, literally evolved to survive in different environments, but that Pearl has for all their life considered humans food - but rather than drama and angst, we get adults talking things through like adults, with compassion and open-mindedness. It is very refreshing.
So much of this book feels like that. The diversity is beautifully done and not at all token. Most of the (human) major characters are POC. Queerness is widespread and universally accepted - not only are all the major characters queer, but things like offering pronouns are a norm in this world. I liked that while the author did some interesting things with gender and sexuality in the fictional species - sirens appear to be all genderfluid and nonbinary, and a bit bewildered by human gender - they didn’t restrict those things just to the nonhumans. And the disability representation was beautiful. A lot of the book focused on Pearl’s acceptance of their disability, but it avoided a lot of the tropes that those stories sometimes fall into. Pearl had to deal with new restrictions and challenges but they never feel helpless or out of control of their own life once they are freed from captivity, and on several occasions we see them defending their human companions. My favorite thing may have been the magic-powered mobility devices that Pearl ends up with, and the fact that they don’t just take what is provided to them, but find a way to adapt that works for them.
The world of this book is a really cool one, full of different species and magic-fueled technology. I’m excited to see that there are more stories set there.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Violence, Ableism, and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Xenophobia
Minor: Rape
Major themes of injury, recovery and disability; internalized ableism in a character adjusting to new disability; one brief, non-graphic discussion of rape in a character’s backstory
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