Fathomless by Jackson Pearce
My rating: 4/5 cats
dear jackson pearce,
consistency may well be the last refuge of the unimaginative, but cover-consistency?? we are booknerds. we needs it.
i am not sure what fairy tale this is based on. yes, obviously, the little mermaid, doofus. and that works for half of the narrative, but what about the other half? three sisters with the powers to see the past, know the truth of the present, and see the future? whose parents were a woodsman and a wealthy woman? this seems to have fairy-tale trappings, but i do not know it. and don’t talk to me about the fates, because they don’t create the future, etc, they can just see it. and View Spoiler »??? what is this mishmash??
but for all my confusion and cover-disappointment, i really liked this book. mermaids without tails; what will they think of next?
this is a story of lo, a mermaid-like creature who is forgetting her human past living among her “sisters” in the water, and celia, one-third of a triplet unit with the aforementioned powers, her allotment being that she can see people’s pasts when she touches them. after the two of them meet while saving a boy from drowning, celia will finally come to appreciate her power, and use it to help lo remember. but lo’s got some secrets, and a bit of an agenda. and drowning boy only complicates things.
it is a fairy tale. there will be tests. and dilemmas. and nothing is quite what it seems.
pearce does a really good job blending the fairy-tale elements into a contemporary narrative. the “under the sea” bits are spooky and sorrowful with just enough danger to keep it interesting.
she also writes the sister-relationship very well. i assume. being sisterless myself, i can only comment on how it seems to be accurate, with the closeness and compassion and the infighting and the jealousy and the protectiveness and the insoluble bonds that wrap everything up together.plus, these are triplets, so…very close bonds, there.
the ending is pretty great. that’s about all i want to say on that. she does a clever little reversal, just a flash and a flip of a fin in the water, and it is unexpected and very neatly done. had the ending not been as strong as it was, this probably would have been a three, but color me impressed.
jackson pearce—three for three…
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