A dark retelling of the Little Mermaid, this book follows Lira, a siren and future sea queen, and Elian the siren killer. Lira is known as the Princes’ Bane, as she only goes after royalty when she hunts and takes the heart of humans. Following multiple incidents where she angers her mother (the Sea Queen), Lira is punished by being made human, being tasked with taking the heart of the Siren Hunter Prince Elian before time runs out. If she fails she will be cast out from her kingdom forever. Meanwhile, Elian learns about the death of his friend, which causes him to go on the trial of Lira, getting side-tracked by the promise of a magical gem that will allow him to destroy the sirens once and for all (or at least their Queen).
I honestly thought that this would be a dark story, with both main characters being against each other from the start, with the ending being similar to the original Hans Christian Anderson story. I was expecting a Game of Thrones style ending, instead we effectively get the Grinch. I expected to read that her heart had doubled in size, although getting her humanity is sort of the same thing. Needless to say, once she got on the ship after being turned into a human, I knew where this was going and I was disappointed and hoping for a twist. This was because the dark start of the book, with both characters being as bad as each other, I was hopeful that this would not be a bow at the end story.
I still enjoyed this story however, finding Lira to be one of my favourite aspects of the story, although she got her humanity far too quickly. Elian was ok, although he was not my favourite. I loved the rest of the character list, and thought that the Sea Queen was easily the most interesting and think there needs to be a prequel that explains how she became the way she is. She was a perfect bad guy and I feel that she was dispatched with far to easily.
No comments:
Post a Comment