Elevator Pitch: Mermicide is the story of a queer romance between an innocent, psychologically damaged young woman, and a seemingly ageless, predatory mermaid. Also featuring wicked science, brutal violence, and piratical smugglers.
Content Warnings: Mental, physical, and sexual abuse. Eating human flesh. Mind control and brainwashing through drugs.
The Review
Something is rotten in the state of Illyria. The bridges, for a start. The whole island is rundown and decaying, neglected by its ruler, Mayor Jasper Vanguard. It’s also plagued by state-encouraged paranoia and hatred towards the island’s non-human inhabitants—mermaids. Which is not to say that Illyrian mermaids are innocent or harmless. They are powerful, flesh-eating hunters who can turn other beings to their will. They aren’t depicted as routinely hunting humans, but they’re not above the idea, and they certainly wouldn’t turn down a free meal if a human corpse happened by.
One such mermaid is Astrid. She is hundreds of years old and has taken an interest in a young human woman—Piper Tourneau.
Piper is an orphan, she lives with her alcoholic cousin, Falké, and her abusive, controlling aunt, Elvira. Piper must endure beatings and verbal abuse every time she does something her aunt deems wrong. Which is often.
The inhumanly exquisite Astrid is a revelation to Piper, offering an escape from her painful existence and the chance to experience something that feels like love. A deeply anxious character with very low esteem, Piper is well drawn and believable as a person who has been taught to consider herself worthless and is now poorly equipped to cope with the angst of first love.
Astrid, in contrast, is a picture of confidence. All but immortal, shining, powerful, ruthless, possessed of androgynous beauty, with a taste for human blood, she could almost be a vampire. She has a very calm and matter of fact way of speaking, which makes her seem detached from the human dramas going on around her.
In fact, the Illyrian mermaids are a unique selling point of the novel. Their biology is explored throughout. They are not the half-human, half-fish, chimeric beings of myth. Instead, they are similar to dolphins, mixed with some human and a dash of shark; carnivorous, cold-blooded, sharp-toothed mammals that have humanoid arms, torsos and faces but lack external mammary glands. (No clamshell bras here.) Their beauty is of a sleek, alien sort, razor-hipped and slender, all the better for cutting through the water. They have hypnotic abilities and can painfully split their tails into human-like legs upon leaving the sea. (Unlike the Little Mermaid, they can regain their tails at will when returning to the water.)
The author clearly delights in her cold-blooded, glittering creations. Both in their savage power and their pearlescent beauty.
“…hair like ‘moonbeams on a splashing spring’”
“…her blue skin glows like a dying galaxy. Nova colours, solar flares…”
The author’s love of the mermaids’ undersea home really shines through too—she writes of spiny crabs, black sea urchins and megalodon sharks. And of the sea itself, “The shredded silver waves fold and turn over each other in the rain.”
Rose is also clearly interested in troubled romances and broken relationships. The novel is rounded out by—a secondary romance between Falké and a mermaid called Esther; the horrific abuse and gaslighting which Jasper subjects his kindly wife Scarlett to; and hints of an antagonistic romance between a spoiled prince and a piratical smuggler captain.
Notably, both of the primary villains, Jasper and Elvira, are abusers. Elvira is drawn a shade more sympathetically, with some focus on the tragic events that helped shape her into the cruel, hateful person she is now. Jasper is a dyed-in-the-wool abusive, megalomaniacal, mass-murdering sociopath, never taking responsibility for his own failings and constantly railing at the world’s refusal to shape itself to his whims.
Illyria itself is an interesting setting, in that it makes almost no concessions to the traditional fantasy fiction quasi-historical aesthetic. Illyria is pretty modern, with newspapers, cameras, antibiotics, and electricity all being standard. Even Illyrian cuisine feels modern, e.g., pasta with pesto. There are no computers or advanced communications technology, so it could be compared to 1950’s Britain. (The Illyrians’ scientific but rather repressive attitude to those perceived to be mentally ill certainly fits that era.)
I don’t recall any mention of guns either. Swords appear to be the standard weapon, though these are of little help against rampaging mermaids.
There appear to be no fantastical elements to the setting, besides the existence of shapeshifting mermaids. (Unless you count the megalodon sharks.) Future books may reveal more strange creatures or phenomena, of course.
Mermicide has few of the traditional trappings of gothic literature either—no crumbling castles, decaying crypts, ghosts, wolves, bats, dissolute aristocrats, or ancient forests. However, this tale has gothic bones.
- The innocent maiden who is courted by a demon lover with hidden motives.
- The dark legacy of the past blighting new generations (albeit in the form of trauma, mental illness, and dark secrets, rather than supernatural curses).
- The constant rain and the oppressive sense of decay and dissolution.
- The sudden explosions of murderous violence as characters give in to the worst sides of their nature.
(Not to mention that one of the key characters is named Elvira.)
The novel is written in the present tense. I’m aware that this can bother some people, but I found I soon fell into the rhythm of the narrative and stopped noticing it. As for the writing style in general. Some of the novel’s sentences are baggy, and some of the word choices felt awkward or misplaced to me. The author has a lot of information to convey about Illyrian mermaids and tends to drop it into Piper’s inner monologue, rather than let it come out through story and action.
However, the depiction of physical and emotional suffering in the novel is raw and sometimes beautiful.
“Every movement is like glass for a second or two; sharp-edged.”
“Astrid’s singsong voice twists through the air like a smooth blade. Its tip grazes Piper’s back as she runs down the crumbling jetty nearest to her house.”
And I’ve already mentioned the joyously poetic descriptions of the sea and its denizens.
The plot takes an unusual trajectory. Astrid and Piper don’t really go out and resolve the plot, rather they set off a series of events that causes the plot to resolve itself, with extreme prejudice.
The novel ends on an ominous note, promising future revelations and adventures but absolutely not promising a ‘happily ever after’.
If you enjoy queer paranormal romance with a dark, vicious twist, Mermicide is a good choice. Its central creature is original, intriguing, and hard to fathom. Its heroine is appealing and believable. Its setting is both accessible to a modern reader and refreshing to a jaded fantasy buff. And it has all the savagery and suffering your little gothic heart could want.
Jennie Ivins
JC Kang