Lira and Elian are well-matched – in wits, in their sharp tongues, in their viciousness, but also in their struggles. There’s virtually no romance in the novel. They carry the story well.Īnd reading their dialogue is like watching a volley: they’re incredibly witty, evasive, and intelligent. Their conflicting desires about duty are painted so well, the burden of their respective kingdoms so real, it’s easy to root for them. We are rulers.īoth Lira and Elian, despite being quite murderous and despicable, are incredibly likeable. Lira and Elian: We are not naïve little heirs to be moulded as they wish. I dare you to not fall in love with this pirate-at-heart. It’s heartbreaking because Elian wants so much to be his own person and make his own adventures, but is hopelessly trapped by his crown and future. Always in charge of my own life and destiny. It’s a key part of my image: never upset or angry or deterred. I like what Christo offered as the truth behind the dashing vagabond trope: I grin and decide to keep the cheer on my face. Without the suffocating veil of romance – and with his own perspective – we get a closer look at what’s under Elian’s pirate mask. Of all the seas and oceans I’ve yet to visit and the men I’ve yet to recruit and the devils I’ve yet to slay.īut what makes Elian so great is that his character is more than just the dashing hero stereotype that pervades other books. Of all the places I have been and will be. I make shapes of them, and from those shapes I make stories. I’m alert, always, and so filled with anxious excitement that while the rest of my crew sleeps, I lie on the deck and count the stars. His thirst for adventure and freedom under the stars, upon the seas, instantly made me relate and made him likeable. I don’t think I’ve been one for a long time. But I do know as soon as I read this line from Elian’s POV, I was sold. What is it about a roguish, pirate bad boy that makes readers crazy? I don’t know. Never hesitant to show her claws, be ugly, and get what she wants. Lira is my favourite type of heroine: Strong but kind. It takes a true heroine to question all her beliefs and be merciful after being brought up in nothing but cruelty. Despite her mother’s cruelty and dominance, Lira fights back with her mind and thinks for herself. Her character growth is astounding – the more I learnt about her, the more I admired her. Her relationship with her younger cousin Kahlia was one of the highlights of the novel and, even in the beginning, showed the potential goodness in her. Lira may be wonderfully vicious, but she’s also so much more. This sounds terribly unpleasant to me, but I guess it’s a lovely feeling if you’re a mermaid. I ache for the ice of the sea, so sharp with cold that it feels like glorious knives in the slits between my bones. Rather than a harmless mermaid who wishes for nothing more than to be human, Lira is a bloodthirsty siren. Hearts are power, and if there’s one thing my kind craves more than the ocean, it’s power. I count each of them, so I can be sure none were stolen in the night. Every so often, I claw through the shingle, just to check they’re still there. There are seventeen hidden in the sand of my bedroom. I have a heart for every year I’ve been alive. It demands us to listen to Lira, to be complicit in her desires, her bloodlust, her unlikeability.įrom the first line, it’s clear we are being given an incredibly morally grey – pretty much villianous, actually – narrator. However, this retelling is still dark, gripping, and full of high enough stakes to make it an incredibly addictive read. What I mean to say is, the ending was completely unexpected in a sad, salt-and-disappointment-drenched way. This book was fantastic until the ending, when I was left floundering like a fish pulled onto deck – wondering where the hell the beauty and cutting ice and swirls of the ocean had gone. This is a The Little Mermaid retelling like you’ve never read before. What happens when circumstances collude to make these two meet on a world-altering quest? The treasure they’re both searching for could save humans and destroy all of sirenkind – or give ultimate power to the Sea Queen and her sirens, and destroy the human world. A human prince hell-bent on saving the world from the deadly threat of sirens. A disgraced siren princess who rips out the hearts of human princes every year on her birthday.
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