Of Poseidon
Emma is an ordinary girl, expect for her very extraordinary violet eyes, and with her friend Chloe she spends summer vacation in Florida. It’s the summer before her last year in high school – and the summer when everything changes. It all starts when she meets Galen, a really, really hot, yet quite weird, guy on the beach. Their encounter doesn’t last very long but Emma feels an odd connection with him that she tries, but fails, to understand. After that day Galen keeps popping up everywhere Emma goes. And as the story unravels it turns out that Galen isn’t just your ordinary hot guy, that he too felt the connection Emma did and that he carries more than one life-changing secret.
What Emma doesn’t know is that Galen is actually a Syrena, which something like a mermaid. And not only does he live in the sea and have, you know, a fin, but he’s also a prince. A prince on the mission of finding a very specific girl who’s supposed to be able to talk to fish. A girl who can save his people from extinction. A girl who just happens to be Emma.
My feelings for this novel are divided. I want to say that the plot was good, though far from something new, but at the same time I felt it was a little dull. Nothing major happened, not really, but this being the first of three books, well… this might just be a foundation for something more action-packed. One thing it did have, though, was humor. Not every novel is funny and far from all should be, many are intense and serious, but it is fun to read something that makes you laugh once in a while. Of Poseidon certainly did that. And it wasn’t “I’m-laughing-because-this-is-so-awkward” or “I’m-laughing-because-you’re-so-stupid” or “I’m-laughing-because-that’s-the-only-thing-I-can-do”. It wasn’t jokes, it was genuine hilarious writing. I’ve only every read books by one author like this before and it was the Ruby Red trilogy, so hats off to Anna Banks for this. I loved it!
When it comes to the writing then I don’t have very much to say at all. It was not bad, light and easy, which made it fast-paced (I read the whole thing in two days which says a lot about both the writing and the plot). But there wasn’t anything extraordinary about it, it wasn’t flowy and beautiful and poetic. It wasn’t something that bothered me, though. Something that did annoy me was the fact that the novel was written out of both Emma and Galen’s perspective, in alternate chapters. But while Emma’s chapters was written from first person, Galen’s was in third and that wasn’t something I was a fan of. I want to believe that it would’ve been better to write both views the same way.
In the character department we find Emma and Galen, our two main characters. They’re different, yet quite alike. Emma is shy and almost invisible behind her very outgoing friend Chloe, while Galen, as a prince, has been taught not to be shy at all. They live in two different worlds but they’re connected and despite the fact that Emma hates water and Galen hates land, they still form a bond that grows stronger for each passing day. They both have something that makes them them and I like that.
Other characters come and go and while some takes up quite a lot of space, none get screen time like Emma and Galen. A character whose personality I really did like was Galen’s friend, Toraf. He seemed to bring in a fresh breath of air to the story, thought I won’t lie, some of his choices made me feel a little uncomfortable. Galen’s sister, Rayna, reminded me of an angry cat but softened a bit while the story wore on. She, like Toraf, did some things that made me raise an eyebrow, though. Emma’s mother was extremely overprotective, in a very odd way, but she was never around long enough to actually get to know her. She also seemed mysterious, as did the rest of Galen’s family.
Something that can be spoken about in lengths (which I won’t) is some moral points of the story. Like the fact that Rayna was set up to mate (Syrena equivalent to marry) against her will, in a ceremony that she didn’t even attend herself. Or that she said no to her mate time and time again just to change her mind about him when she saw him kissing another girl, making it sound like whenever a girl says no she doesn’t mean it but rather wants you to “convince” her that you are the better choice. I did not like the message that sent out to the readers. And Emma goes through something horrific early on in the book, something that probably was supposed to shape her and make Galen realize who she was (and make her vulnerable in the eyes of the readers) but when the book wore on the memories of it, and the pain, disappeared. Thought it plagues Emma in the beginning, she almost seems to… forget it when other things claim her attention. For me, what happened to her would not be something to forget. Not in a heartbeat, not in a week or a month. Not even in years. I didn’t mind that it happened (I really think you could’ve done the story a lot of good working more around that incident instead of sweeping it away) so much as to the poor follow-up.
Ultimately, this was a novel that I enjoyed reading, even though it was predictable. It is, like most stories nowadays, the first in a trilogy and I will certainly seek out the sequel to see what happens to Emma, Galen and the Syrena, in the hopes that the next book will be a bit better, in every aspect. From a feministic viewpoint, this isn’t a nice read. But for someone who just wants to have something to pass some time with, then this is perfect.