This book was very disappointing to me. This might have been due to the cover, which is absolutely gorgeous. I know the cliche about judging books and all, but I really wanted to read the book when I saw that.
The blurb was also great, about a city where humans are the ruling class and all sorts of aquatic beings - sirens, kelpies, selkies, merfolk, water dragons, every aquatic myth you can think of really - toil in tenements and under the surface of the sea. That’s a great place to start from.
But I was disappointed in nearly every way once I actually started reading the book. There was so much potential and so much imagination here, and so little was done with it.
The plot was poorly developed. Momentous events with huge consequences would happen with little or no buildup. Interesting minor plotlines were abandoned with no explanation. The characters were, in many ways, cliched; where they weren’t cliched, they broke the mold by making stupid decisions in new and exciting ways. The writing wasn’t anything special. It got the job done, but it also felt very blunt - one chapter ended on a threatening note by having one of the villains think to herself, quote, “no one messed with her family and got away with it.” And it felt very young adult. I quite enjoy young adult books, but there was a tonal mismatch between the YA-ish writing and the events described. In many ways, it didn’t work.
Harder to define, but I felt like the author didn’t really take advantage of having all her fathomfolk characters. The two protagonists were a dragon and a half human, half siren. They basically just felt like ordinary humans with a few extra bits added on, not these other cultures we are told they are.
It was, as I said at the beginning, a very imaginative setting. I just wish the author had done more with it.