A review by diaryofthebookdragon
Deep Blue by Jennifer Donnelly
3.0
Even before Little Mermiad, Splash got me dreaming about being a mermaid and having fun.
Sadly, good novels about mermaids are hard to find. They tend to place the mermaids on the land with occasional swimming scenes. Boring!
Deep Blue is nothing like that. It has:
✸ Complex deep world-building.
✸ Fully developed mermaid culture and customs.
✸ Fun sea-related metaphors. For example: idle as a sponge. :D
✸ The whole novel happens underwater.
✸ The romance is not center of the plot.
Sadly, there were some things I disliked...
✸ My problem with fantasy authors who feel like they need to invent new words for everything could be best described in a veeery long rant. So let's just say that there was too much of words invented to describe perfectly ordinary things. (I know there is a dictionary at the end of the book, but I simply refuse to use them. Jumping to the end every paragraph or so kills the mood).
✸ Small plot holes. For example: mermaids can swim in sea water, river water and be above ground without difficulty.
✸ It felt very ya.
✸ Cliffhanger ending.
Even that cliffhanger at the end can't tempt me to continue with Waterfire Saga series. I admire what Jennifer Donnelly did, but her writing style didn't suit me.
Sadly, good novels about mermaids are hard to find. They tend to place the mermaids on the land with occasional swimming scenes. Boring!
Deep Blue is nothing like that. It has:
✸ Complex deep world-building.
✸ Fully developed mermaid culture and customs.
✸ Fun sea-related metaphors. For example: idle as a sponge. :D
✸ The whole novel happens underwater.
✸ The romance is not center of the plot.
Sadly, there were some things I disliked...
✸ My problem with fantasy authors who feel like they need to invent new words for everything could be best described in a veeery long rant. So let's just say that there was too much of words invented to describe perfectly ordinary things. (I know there is a dictionary at the end of the book, but I simply refuse to use them. Jumping to the end every paragraph or so kills the mood).
✸ Small plot holes. For example: mermaids can swim in sea water, river water and be above ground without difficulty.
✸ It felt very ya.
✸ Cliffhanger ending.
Even that cliffhanger at the end can't tempt me to continue with Waterfire Saga series. I admire what Jennifer Donnelly did, but her writing style didn't suit me.