Title: Las Sirenas
Author: Bell Ellis
Cover Artist: Anne Cain
Publisher: Dreamspinner
Amazon: n/a
Genre: Paranormal/Fantasy
Length: 44 pages
Rating: 4 stars out of 5
A Guest Review by Cryselle
Review Summary: A deep attachment across a deeper divide makes a bittersweet ending for this human and merman couple.
Blurb
Andrew’s lived all his nineteen years on the Pacific coast, working odd jobs and spending his free time in and on the water. Maybe he’s drifting through life, but it’s been enough, until the day a sudden surge knocks him off his friends’ boat and something—or someone—tosses him back. Now Andrew spends all his free time searching the water for a dream, and to keep it, he’s willing to give up everything.
A Bittersweet Dreams title: It’s an unfortunate truth: love doesn’t always conquer all. Regardless of its strength, sometimes fate intervenes, tragedy strikes, or forces conspire against it. These stories of romance do not offer a traditional happy ending, but the strong and enduring love will still touch your heart and maybe move you to tears.
Review
Bell Ellis sets this story, whose title means “the mermaids,” in a small coastal town on the Pacific shore, where the water is chilly enough to need a wetsuit at least part of the year. The locals depend on the ocean, whether to draw the tourists that are the mainstay of the economy, to provide a livelihood, or to go out and leave the rest of humanity behind. Andrew, the protagonist, has never known any life away from the water, but also knows that the sea doesn’t care if it kills you.
Andrew, who has no sense of purpose beyond showing up for work more or less on time, enjoys the few cigarettes per day he can afford, and going out on the water with his friends John and Shane, the only humans who actually care about him. He’s hard to like at first, living a drifting life, spouting half-baked philosophy, but grows more interesting when his attention is actually engaged. Ellis’ prose sets the atmosphere and characterization, which changes subtly once Andrew finds the being that threw him back into the boat. Kris, the young merman, meets him again in the water by the cliffs, singing in the ways described by legend.
He couldn’t understand the language, but the song was so beautiful that it had to be about something wonderful, something pure, something that had nothing to do with gritty, dirty beaches and old sandals left as trash along the surfside, something shining and true and meaningful.
Every possible moment after that Andrew spends with Kris or searching for him, and while Kris remains an enigma, Andrew gets glimpses of a hidden society with rules and rituals. His friends worry about him, fearing what those sea-cast eyes portend, but it’s Kris’ people who are truly enraged. Whether it’s the discovery or the relationship, or both, we cannot know, but their wrath falls on Kris. The two youths are both flotsam of their societies now, and have no one to turn to save each other.
HEA-requiring readers have probably left the building by now: this is a Bittersweet title, meaning the ending is perfect for what it has to be, but not happy in any traditional way. I happen to like stories of this sort very well, but not everyone shares this taste.
The whole tone of the story drives toward this ending, the ennui of Andrew’s life turning to interest in the mysterious Kris, and they find something that may be love. They are on opposite sides of a gap wide as the ocean, unable to truly communicate. The one sexual scene shows this beautifully: they find a tidal pool, because Andrew cannot stay long under the water, nor can Kris survive long out of it. The poetry of Ellis’ language made me accept the ending as inevitable, required, and it was only hours later that the enjoyment took a jolt, when the physical reality set in and I began to question Kris’ volition. Andrew’s actions make sense in a self-centered and somewhat emo way, but did Kris consent?
This story is a tragedy in the classical sense, in that the conflict arises from the heroes’ fatal flaws. In this case, the fatal flaw is daring to care for someone who cannot survive in the other’s natural element. But it is certainly a love story. 4
the fatal flaw is daring to care for someone who cannot survive in the other’s natural element
*sneaks out of the building*
Not that I need HEA 100%, but that particular sentence pushed my every NO button. Thanks for the warning and great first review!
What LadyM said :). You have such a way with words Cryselle, thank you so much for this review, but I am sneaking out too hehe.
I think I may have to clobber my old English teacher, because “fatal flaw” is right out of his class, it’s the one aspect of personality that makes the whole outcome inevitable. Usually it’s pride.
On the other hand, I can’t say your conclusion is wrong, either. HEA territory this is not.
Oh. I think I need to clarify. I cannot speak for LadyM, but I definitely remember very well what “fatal flaw” means from my literature classes, where we did greek tragedies (in russian language lol). I am sneaking out solely due to “cannot survive” part. I do not mind them parting the ways at the end, but to subject myself to death of one of the protagonists in romance? Let’s just say I only do it if the writing is the caliber of “at swim two boys” 🙂
Well I think I would like this story whether or not it has a HEA. I have read many love stories that didn’t end with a HEA and more often than not the stories resonated with me for a long time.
Thanks for a terrific first review Crys and I’ll definitely be reading Las Sirenas.
BTW I reviewed another story about a merman and a human that ended happily. It’s by Ariel Tachna and it’s called Why Nileas Loved the Sea. If you like stories about mermen you may wish to pick this one up
Crys, your first review! Very cool. And this sounds like an interesting story and very daring on the author’s part to do something so different from the norm.
Lovely first review Crys.
Sorry but I’m too old for anything less than a HFN, so this is not for me. 🙂
I can deal with the ending, I think. Like her use of language.
Congrats on starting to review here!
Great review Cryselle! we seem to have a shared preference cause I happen to like nontraditional endings, too. Since my reading experience with mermen characters was somewhat off-putting so far, I wasn’t going to read this one but now I think I will. Thank you!
@Sirius, that’s great about your English teacher — did you get big horrible assigned poetry readings too? That destroyed any love for poetry I might have had.
@Wave — sounds interesting, I’ll have to find Nileus. There’s a flash story on my blog that CT Piatt did for a merman picture prompt, both chars are mermen and it ends happily.
@All, thanks for reassuring me I didn’t put my foot in my mouth.
No, no that was my teacher of Russian and all foreign literature together :). And of course I did get assigned those readings hehe, there are some poems (not many though) that I can still quote 🙂