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Skin of the Sea, by Natasha Bowen
Sep. 16th, 2022 08:28 pmAfter a slow start, this turns into an excellent book within the genre of modern YA. It is unfortunate that I'm not personally into the current trends of the genre, but inside that set of tropes and expectations this book is doing wonderful things and I recommend it to any YA fan!
This book is loosely inspired by The Little Mermaid, but drawing instead on West African religions and folk traditions, and featuring a black girl as the little mermaid. The author does a reasonably good job of taking only what works for this new story from the original Little Mermaid instead of trying too hard to follow it beat for beat. And I love that the antagonist of the story, Esu, is made clear in the narrative to be a being with importance and value within the balance of powers, despite occupying a narrative role that in a more westernized story would be played by an unambiguously evil character.
I liked the main character, and I liked the world-building, and I liked the overall tone of the book, that things may suck but people try hard to do good things and there are powers in the world that love you.
I think my two biggest frustrations would be these:
First, why does there need to be an external element keeping our main character and her love interest apart? We're told she cannot love a human or she'll stop existing, because she's a being of the sea, but honestly this barrier wasn't actually needed to allow the relationship and story to progress and to end as they did, so it just felt like an artificial barrier put into the story for no reason.
Second, why does there need to be world-ending stakes? The reasons why the two of them want to find their respective macguffins are already compelling enough, we didn't need to add "oh and the world as you know it will end if you fail," because the personal stakes were already high for both of them, and personal stakes honestly often feel more pressing (both to reader and to character) anyway!
But overall, though the book is only a 3 star book for me as a reader, for someone who likes YA I'd bump it up to a 4 star rating. Lots to be impressed with, especially as the author's debut.
This book is loosely inspired by The Little Mermaid, but drawing instead on West African religions and folk traditions, and featuring a black girl as the little mermaid. The author does a reasonably good job of taking only what works for this new story from the original Little Mermaid instead of trying too hard to follow it beat for beat. And I love that the antagonist of the story, Esu, is made clear in the narrative to be a being with importance and value within the balance of powers, despite occupying a narrative role that in a more westernized story would be played by an unambiguously evil character.
I liked the main character, and I liked the world-building, and I liked the overall tone of the book, that things may suck but people try hard to do good things and there are powers in the world that love you.
I think my two biggest frustrations would be these:
First, why does there need to be an external element keeping our main character and her love interest apart? We're told she cannot love a human or she'll stop existing, because she's a being of the sea, but honestly this barrier wasn't actually needed to allow the relationship and story to progress and to end as they did, so it just felt like an artificial barrier put into the story for no reason.
Second, why does there need to be world-ending stakes? The reasons why the two of them want to find their respective macguffins are already compelling enough, we didn't need to add "oh and the world as you know it will end if you fail," because the personal stakes were already high for both of them, and personal stakes honestly often feel more pressing (both to reader and to character) anyway!
But overall, though the book is only a 3 star book for me as a reader, for someone who likes YA I'd bump it up to a 4 star rating. Lots to be impressed with, especially as the author's debut.
