Entertaining the Alien

38. Diary of a Radical Mermaid, Deborah Smith

Wow. If there was ever a book to give me hope that I might publish a novel yet... this is that book. (And sentences like that one could be the reason I might not ever publish a novel.)

I say again, wow. I knew going in that this was a fluffy romance where the main characters were also mermaids, so I wasn't exactly expecting Pulitzer Prize-winning prose. However, I was also not expecting a novel written from three points of view, all of them in first person. This could be intriguing, if the transitions were clear. In a romance novel, it's just jarring, especially when we end up switching from female protagonist to male protagonist with only a paragraph break (no blank line, just an indent). I swear, it took about four readings before I could figure out why Molly suddenly had a Scottish accent.

Oh yes, the male protag narrates in a Scottish accent. Because naturally, everyone from somewhere other than the US thinks in such phrases as "I could no' yell at little Venus." (Yes, a character named Venus.) And did I mention that another main character keeps a weblog? And that some of her scenes are written as posts to it?

The abuses of the poor apostrophe are rampant, and spelling errors abound--although to be completely fair, I did read this as a uncorrected proof, so it's possible the errors were fixed in later editions. I will say, however, that I've never seen an uncorrected proof in such shape before.

So, on the whole, marginally entertaining fluff, but plenty horrifying as well--with some hope for this aspiring novelist tossed in on the side. It always sounds vaguely jealous and somewhat pathetic when someone in my position (i.e., with multiple unpublished novels under the belt) reviews a book by saying, "I can write better than that", but damn, it's hard not to at least think it in this case.