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I don’t read many books that I would rate 1 star these days. I seem to have mas­tered my pref­er­ences and hit a stride of excel­lent books � or at least mostly read­able books.

Admit­tedly I only made it fifty-six pages into this book before I threw my hands up in dis­gust and tossed a pil­low at the wall � so I sug­gest you take that into account when decid­ing whether to buy this book.

Why did I stop reading?
First rea­son:

The death of a token character



We didn’t know her long enough, but I’m pretty sure she could play base.

Right off a POC char­ac­ter is killed and whilst that would be annoy­ing in its own right, since killing off POC char­ac­ters is a frus­trat­ing cliche in books, TV shows and films, this was even more annoy­ing. Firstly because her descrip­tion was extremely stereo­typ­i­cal � to the point that she was less of a char­ac­ter and more of a car­i­ca­ture. Per­haps even worse and more degrad­ing is that there was no real lament to her death. It was used as a story pro­gres­sion so that the male pro­tag­o­nist could wax lyri­cal about how beau­ti­ful and brave the female pro­tag­o­nist for try­ing to save the dying POC char­ac­ter. I kid you not. A girl is dying in a ter­ri­fy­ing, vio­lent, hor­ri­fy­ing way and this is what he’s thinking:

“It’s just that� she doesn’t look as though she needs help. Her pale face is con­torted with anger. Not fear. Not dis­tress. Just fury. Her white hair floats like an aura, jerk­ing in delayed reac­tion with each of her capa­ble movements.�



Like I said � a girl just died and he’s hav­ing a hard on for Emma. And even worse, we’re sup­posed to be hav­ing a hard on for how awe­some Emma is. The text is all about Emma.

In fact, Chloe’s death seems to be noth­ing but an agent for mak­ing us sym­pa­thetic for Emma. It felt cheap and dirty. Sure, tak­ing on a bull­shark is a seri­ously awe­some thing to do. Almost as awe­some as that time I wres­tled a croc­o­dile. But let’s not get off track here. When sit­ting down and plan­ning how to make a main char­ac­ter rock super hard, I could think of a hun­dred ways that didn’t involve cre­at­ing a token char­ac­ter, imme­di­ately killing her off and then using that death to wank about how awe­some the pro­tag­o­nist is.

I mean, first of all� gross from an imagery point of view. Sec­ond of all, holy flip­ping duck twat, Bat­man, way to be offensive!


Sec­ond reason:

The sex­ism.



There’s noth­ing wrong with cre­at­ing a sex­ist soci­ety. How­ever, there is some respon­si­bil­ity when doing so. That the writ­ing doesn’t actu­ally sup­port or roman­ti­cize or give tacit approval for the sex­ism is a good start. Of Posei­don fea­tures a heav­ily misog­y­nis­tic mer­maid soci­ety. And as such, the male char­ac­ters act like a bunch of misog­y­nis­tic dicks. Once again, com­pletely under­stand­able. But then it’s when every­one else just kind of goes along with that and doesn’t see a prob­lem that my eye started to twitch. And then when some pretty out­right pater­nal­is­tic bull­crap takes place, I started see­ing red. Like when a stalker mer­maid arrives for a female char­ac­ter, Rayna. They are mated against her will and her refusal and hatred of him is treated as a com­i­cal device in the story � just her being a fickle and child­ish girl � not actu­ally a woman rebelling against a sys­tem that doesn’t allow her to choose her mate or even requires her to be present for the cer­e­mony. She’s angry at him because they were child­hood friends and he’s always known that she never wanted to mate. He went behind her back, asked her Dad and orga­nized for them to be mated. She’s pissed at him. Nat­u­rally. Per­son­ally, I would have seduced him out onto an iso­lated locale and impaled him on a rock. Rayna’s anger and hatred toward him is just laughed off by every­one. Includ­ing her brother.

Excuse me? EXCUSE ME!? What the ever lov­ing fuck?! Oh, I see. Women in this world don’t know what they want until the smarter, bet­ter men come along and show them. Right. RIGHT.



Then there’s Gallen who is just sex­ist plain and sim­ple. He dis­misses his sis­ter, does not dis­cuss the infor­ma­tion he’s work­ing on with her � but will with her mate � another man. I am told that he takes over Emma’s life and treats her much like a bit of bag­gage in the name of tak­ing care of her. I didn’t see any pro­gres­sion toward a less sex­ist Galen hav­ing any kind of rev­e­la­tion that women weren’t all a bunch of objects to be ordered around like sheep.

You expect women to be unrea­son­able barn­yard ani­mals too busy mas­ti­cat­ing and going into heat to do any rea­son­able and log­i­cal thought, fine. But think like that and try to be a roman­tic inter­est in a YA novel I’m read­ing? No way. Sorry, Galen. You are the weak­est link. Goodbye.


Third rea­son:

The writ­ing.



I truly dis­liked the writ­ing. Not only was it incred­i­bly telling and flat but the story also jumped awk­wardly between the first per­son nar­ra­tive for Emma and the third per­son nar­ra­tive for Gallen. It did not feel pol­ished or fin­ished at all.

“Stop!� she yells.

Galen stops. But Emma’s not talk­ing to him. She’s talk­ing to the shark.

And the shark stops.

Emma wraps both arms around Chloe and hugs her to her chest, lean­ing her friend away from the attack. “You can’t have her! Leave her alone! Leave us both alone!�

The shark turns, saun­ters away as if sulking.

SHARKS CAN SAUNTER?! AND SULK!?

I know what she’s doing here and that’s being abrupt and edgy with a tense moment. But I just trip over those sen­tences every time I read them. And a lot of this book is like this. Part of me wants to take a red pen to it and just clean it up a bit. It’s not like Banks is nec­es­sar­ily a bad writer � but that her writ­ing isn’t smooth. There’s no poetry or rhythm to it. Just these jar­ring, awk­ward sen­tences that hurt my brain.

Fourth rea­son:

The char­ac­ter­i­za­tion



“Hi! My name is River Swan Desmonda Sparkle-Eyes!�

Emma was, in my opin­ion, a Mary Sue � and that is a term I don’t use often. Basi­cally, I felt she was an author insert. Rare com­pelling eyes, one of a kind in her species, ultra spe­cial, father AND friend died to cre­ate sym­pa­thy. Even Gallen, when not with Emma, only thinks about Emma. He can sense her on land when that’s sup­posed to be impos­si­ble. It’s always the same with Mary Sues. Impos­si­bil­ity sur­rounds them and they’re just so fuck­ing SPESHAL while being the most bor­ing, repet­i­tive, inof­fen­sive turds around. The prob­lem with Mary Sues is that, if you’ve read one you’ve read them all and the only thing that separates them is the degree to exactly HOW speshul and ewnique they are. And the more Mary Suish they are, the more the other char­ac­ters spend every fuck­ing moment talk­ing and think­ing about Mary Sue � which as far as I could see, was exactly what hap­pened in this book. The only char­ac­ter flaw the author has given her is that she’s clumsy. Clumsy is not a char­ac­ter flaw. I’m sorry, but it’s not. It’s a lazy way of try­ing to make a young, beau­ti­ful female char­ac­ter imme­di­ately adorable and relat­able to an audi­ence and writ­ers do it all the time. Stop. Just stop it, okay?

Even if the story telling explains the clum­si­ness (she’s not meant to be on land � she’s meant to be in the water) it still makes for a weaker char­ac­ter. Because if you can’t bare to give your MC a more intense flaw than ‘clumsy� then that becomes ALL you can say about her. “What’s Emma like?� “Oh, she’s just this really clumsy, inse­cure teenage girl.� Clumsy and inse­cure? No! Never. That only mar­gin­ally ties her to like 95% of the YA MC population!



Basi­cally, I can deal with bad writ­ing � to a degree. And bad char­ac­ter­i­za­tion � to a degree. And sex­ism � to a degree. But throw them all in with the death of a token char­ac­ter and smoosh it into a ter­ri­ble mess? Then I can’t deal. Then I throw my hands up in dis­gust, delete the book off my ereader and try to scrub my bloody brain free.