Bats

I received a free ebook copy of this book via Netgalley in exchange for a review.

There are definitely stories here I quite liked, though some of them were just kinda meh. Not bad, just not great. A good few stories slot neatly into either the “scary mermaid kills people” category or the “mermaid is wronged woman who gets revenge” category without much extra to make them more interesting. This isn't really a big problem, I do love Fish(Woman) Violence, however it is possible my love for spooky mermaids has overexposed me to the concept & I'm a bit more critical of the subgenre than others may be.

Something that did bother me though was the content warnings section. I appreciate its inclusion but its execution is flawed. Rather than listing warnings for each story, they're all lumped together, so if there was a specific trigger you wanted to avoid you have no easy way of just skipping/preparing yourself for the specific story that includes it, which is kinda the whole point of content warnings? It also doesn't mention pregnancy, which is a specific thing I avoid; I get that this is maybe not a common thing to warn for and I probably shouldn't expect warnings for it for but it was still really annoying to go into thinking I would be generally fine with the entire collection only to be caught off-guard by Jellies and Ona Dolzhna Yest.

Some standout stories:

Coral, Again by E.M. Linden was easily my favorite of the collection, and home to my favorite quote of the book. It's so good.

Five Words Scribbled on a Gift Card by Christine Lucas is a fairly standard “trapped mermaid gets her return-to-the-ocean-item back and fucks up shitty husband” story but it was the first story in the anthology to really compel me. Best of Both Worlds by Dawn Vogel also used this trope but it had an added level of intrigue with the tattoo magic, plus the ending was kinda cute.

The Wall Women by Ann Wuehler had a very interesting concept, as did The Specter of Pearlhall by Cassandra Taylor; while neither story was my favorite I do appreciate that they did something weird and different that I wasn't expecting.

I would love to see Into the Water by Megan E. Hart and Tomokazuki by Marshall J. Moore as movies. They both have this compelling cinematic quality to them.

I'm not sure why Effigy by Victoria Nations was included in this collection. It seemingly has nothing to do with mermaids or water? It's fine as a story; it just feels really out of place?

The anthology also includes poetry, if you're into that. If not, it's easy to skip. Most of the poems were fine.

Overall, this is absolutely worth your time, but it is a bit of a grab bag. That just kinda comes with the territory for anthologies though; it's impossible to please everyone.

I received a free ebook copy of this book via Netgalley in exchange for a review.

Positives first: the plot itself is mostly fine, the characters are mostly fine. I really liked the subversion with the ravens. The book has content warnings listed at the back, which I appreciate.

But the pacing is just so painfully slow. You know how in like monster/slasher movies you have the opening bits that are a bit slower, when they're trying to investigate it like a normal crime and they don't really know what's going on yet? Then people figure things out and the pacing cranks up? This book is permanently locked into the pace of those opening bits. Any time action happens and you expect the book to finally ramp up, it pulls back. Even over thirty chapters in to this forty-chapter book, the pace is still throttled. It's agonizing.

There's also this constant question of “should we move here?” which I quite frankly do not understand. Like, by the characters own admission they have been having a terrible vacation. Drownings, near-drownings, assaulted by hostile locals, people going missing, but hey should we stay here forever? It's even more frustrating because it contributes to the pacing problems. Things will actually be happening but we have to stop and have the same conversation we keep having over and over again that goes nowhere and I don't even know why we're having this conversation in the first place.

If you like or don't mind slow books, sure, go for it. It just wasn't for me.