Review: Drowning Mermaids

Drowning Mermaids (Sacred Breath, Book 1) by Nadia Scrieva

This is not your typical mermaid novel. For one thing, the mermaids have legs instead of fishtails. Als, it is written for a more mature audience - not that it contains adult subject matter, it just has content that will interest adults.

The aging captain of a fishing boat takes his crew to a stipper bar to unwind after losing a crew member. There he becomes entranced with a young stripper and invites her to be his house guest along with her two sisters.

Actually, she is over six hundred years old and ruler of an undersea kingdom. Even her youngest sister is 90 but looks 10. They are on the surface to raise money in order to buy weapons to defend their kingdom from aggressors.

This is a very well-written book. All of the plot twists were thought out in advance. The characters are well-developed and each has a distinctive way of speaking.

This book avoids one of the big traps of mermaid books - the undersea world is fully integrated with the modern world. Too often the undersea parts seem dreamy and indistinct compared with the modern world but not here.

Also, the writing itself is compelling enough to keep up interest even though very little actually happens in the first half.

One warning - while this is novel-length, it breaks off abruptly and is continued in the next novel. The first one is free (as an e-book) just to get you hooked. I've already bought the sequel.