October 20, 2012

The Vicious Deep - Zoraida Córdova

Title: The Vicious Deep
Author:  


For Tristan Hart, everything changes with one crashing wave. 
He was gone for three days. Sucked out to sea in a tidal wave and spit back ashore at Coney Island with no memory of what happened. Now his dreams are haunted by a terrifying silver mermaid with razor-sharp teeth.
His best friend Layla is convinced something is wrong. But how can he explain he can sense emotion like never before? How can he explain he's heir to a kingdom he never knew existed? That he's suddenly a pawn in a battle as ancient as the gods. 
Something happened to him in those three days. He was claimed by the sea...and now it wants him back.


I have never in my life felt the need to read a mermaid book.  My mermaid quotient has always and forever been filled by The Little Mermaid and I am okay with that.

Seriously, does it get any better than this?  I think not.

The description of this book got me though.  Having it from a boy's point of view (a soon-to-be, but doesn't yet know it merman) was intriguing to me.  Also, the best friend love story angle which, if you haven't realized it yet, is one of my favorite romance stories to explore.

The whole time I was reading this, I had the feeling that I was missing something.  It almost felt like I was skipping whole passages.  I wasn't, but there was something about the writing - it was like I wanted things to be spelled out more than they were.  The descriptions of the action scenes were vague, characters that should have been fleshed out in the beginning were merely mentioned and then given personality traits two thirds of the way through the book.

I wanted more about Tristan and Layla's relationship.  I felt like his feelings towards her kept jumping around in terms of when they started.  Was it in middle school, when she kicked the kids that were bullying him and he's been carrying around this torch for years?  Was it only recently that his feelings started to change?  It was another unclear piece of the puzzle.

Once you get down to it, Tristan is set on an epic quest in order to rightfully claim his grandfather's throne.  I felt it took WAY too long to get to this quest.  After Tristan leaves his grandfather's world he goes home.  He approaches this great journey with no sense of urgency, he just goes back to school like everything's normal.  If my grandfather asked me to go on a quest to keep the kingdom in our family, I wouldn't go back to sit in English class and bum around at lunch.  No, I would do what he freaking asked me to and try to save our legacy.

Overall I thought the vagueness and pacing issues really took away from my enjoyment of the storyline.  I may still check out the sequels, but they won't be at the top of my list.

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