is this chicken, what I have, or is it Goddess?

Grade: B

I don’t like to cry. It’s not because I view it as a weakness or anything like that, but because I am an ugly crier. We’re talking puffy cheeks, snotty nose, crack ho eyes, and piteous whining. For making me cry, I should throw this book into the fireplace and set fire to it, cackling with glee while the flames consumed its pages. But I won’t do that. Instead, this book will go to my keeper shelf and stay there. In fact, this book is a keeper for three reasons: 1) it made my cold dead heart feel again 2) I dug the ancient mythology angle and 3) BIG-TITTIED MERMAIDS FUCKING BIG-COCKED MERMEN!* I’m serious, dude, this book does not shy away from mer-people sex.

But I’ll get to that later. The heroine, Christine Canady (an alliterative heroine!), is an Air Force sergeant, but not like a butchy Air Force sergeant with unfashionably short hair and a chip on her shoulder. In fact, she’s kind of a wimp. And girly. On her twenty-fifth birthday, CC finds herself alone with two bottles of champagne and a bucket of KFC (heeeey… that’s how I celebrated my twenty-fifth birthday. Awesome!), because she has no boyfriend, no social life, and her parents, who didn’t remember her birthday till the last minute, are off on another cruise. In short, CC is a Nelly No Mates who spends her birthday ALL BY HER LONESOME with two bottles of champagne, a bucket of KFC, and the Witches of Eastwick on VHS (change the movie to the original Dawn of the Dead and that’s exactly how I celebrated my 25th birthday). Inspired by the movie, CC decides that she can use a little magic in her life. Armed by an old mythology book, ingredients for a summoning spell that she just happens to have on hand, and her big gaping hole of loneliness (not that gaping hole, you pervs), CC heads out to her patio, performs the spell with all the sincerity and desperation she can drunkenly muster, and dances like a crazy lady under the moonlight. Awesome. Afterwards, she strips off her clothes, masturbates, and goes to bed.

When she wakes up the next morning, CC feels like a new woman. As she dashes all over the place, preparing for a 3-month deployment to Saudi Arabia, she notices that men are nicer to her, complimenting her on her good looks (they never have before, natch!). At the marketplace, a beautiful gypsy woman gives her an amber necklace, and tells her to wear it at all times because she’ll need its magic during her journey. CC assumes she means her journey to Saudi Arabia, puts it on, and goes home to finish packing. During her flight to Saudi Arabia, she encounters a handsome Air Force pilot named Sean who insists they switch seats because he notices how CC—who is afraid of flying—looks petrified sitting next to the propeller. While over the Mediterranean , the propellers fail, the plane crashes into the sea, and Sean is mortally injured (it would have been CC had she stayed in that seat). As the plane is about to explode, CC and the crew are ordered to swim as far away from the plane as they could, but CC’s ankle is snagged by a piece of the wreckage and she is unable to move. She begins to drown, but a pretty blonde mermaid pulls her out of the water, and gives her a deep kiss. With tongue. And thus begins our story.

The kiss magically switches their bodies and CC ends up with the big-tittied mermaid’s hot body, while Undine, the mermaid, ends up with CC’s skinny, boobless body. Sucker. When CC comes to, she’s a fucking mermaid. At this point, I would have been like “Jesus Holy Goddamn Jumpin’ Christmas, I’m a big-tittied mermaid!” and proceeded to totally lose my shit for the next two weeks. After a minor freak-out, CC totally takes it in stride, escapes a raping from Undine’s brother—ugh—and swims into a cove where she meets Gaea, the Earth Mother, and Undine’s mom. Gaea gives CC a.k.a Undine the Little Mermaid (with a little dash of Splash) spiel about going to land to find true love—she’ll be given temporary legs—but CC must return to the sea every three days to transform into a mermaid or she’ll die. Unfortunately, before she sets off to meet a big, strong knight who will love and worship her forever, she meets a studly hot stuff merman whom she falls in love with, instead. A merman named Dylan.

When I read the merman’s name, I did a spit-take, then laughed uproariously for ten minutes because I suddenly got this image in my head of a merman with sideburns and a leather jacket. What the hell kind of name is Dylan for a merman? Ah, but then I look it up, and find out that Dylan is a Welsh name that means “born by the sea”. Huh. I still have the theme song of Beverly Hills, 90210 playing in my head, though.

Anyway, I’m not going to say anything more about the story because to do so would be an injustice to you, dear reader. You have to read this book on your own and savor it for yourself as I did. It’s a good, fairy tale type of story, and there is a fine romance that develops between Dylan and CC. Hot stuff, y’all. We get to find out how merfolks do it. It’s kind of gross, but it’s inventive. I can’t imagine doing it with a fish, but Dylan is so sweet and so romantic, that you kind of get over the whole fish thing… I have a “what’s that smell” joke in my head, but you know, it’s lame, so I’m not going to bother with it.

As much as I love the book, however, I do have a few quibbles about it. First of all, I can’t accept how quickly CC takes to the entire situation. She’s a modern woman, for God’s sake, but she readily accepts her new surroundings. She spares maybe two minutes at most thinking about her former life, but hey, I don’t really blame her because her old life kind of sucked balls. I would have liked to read about CC adjusting to her Dark Ages surroundings. She could have at least whined about the lack of toilet paper, Tivo, central air, and pizza, but she doesn’t do this, and I kind of felt cheated. I really enjoy fish out water—thank you, thank you, I’ll be here all week—stories, and just can’t accept that CC wouldn’t whine a little about the lack of modern conveniences.

I also have a bit of a problem with the jarring use of modern language and I’m not talking about CC. For example, on page 276, her lady’s maid Isabel tells her to “stroke his ego”. Now I don’t know a lot about psychology—I don’t really know a lot about anything—but I thought that the word “ego” was an invention of Freud in the nineteenth century. I mean, Isabel is a Dark Ages kind of gal, but she also has surprisingly modern attitude about things, and it kind of takes me out of the story a little. Dug the girl power angle, though, and I thought it rocked when CC earns the respect of the women servants in the monastery where she stays, and does the obligatory (for a romance novel) Waiting to Exhale thing with them.

My last “quibble” is with Dylan. I don’t really get much from him as a hero, but this is CC’s story, so I understand that. Still, I would have liked to read more about his feelings, his thoughts. I also kind of got annoyed about how perfect he is. He is just so sweet and so nice and so understanding and says things like “I’ll wait for you for an eternity” that he kind of reminded me of Wesley the Farm Boy before he turned into Dread Pirate Roberts. As it is, he’s really nothing more than a Ken Doll with fins. I hate to say this, but I wish he would have been more… Dread Pirate Roberts than the “as you wish” Farm Boy.

Other than that, I really liked this story. The Little Mermaid has always been my favorite Disney cartoon and I really like stories that has to do with mermaids. Especially mermaids who have sex. OUTSTANDING WORK! I like how Ms. Cast expertly weaves the ancient mythologies into this story, so that it is smooth and blends in quite well. I really enjoyed Ms. Cast’s prose and I will be looking for her other Goddess stuff. I have a bunch of Luna books that I haven’t read and know that she’s written a couple, so I may have to see if I have any of her stuff.

By the way, if you read this book and dig it, I recommend that you check out Sirena by Donna Jo Napoli. It’s Young Adult, but Ms. Napoli is really good with taking an old fairy tale story and putting her own spin on it. My favorite of hers is Zel, which is a story about Rapunzel. Good stuff.

*To the visitors who have accidentally stumbled upon my site when they typed “big-tittied mermaids fucking big-cocked mermen” into Google and ended up here: WELCOME! Serves you right, pervert.

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 23rd, 2005 at 11:01 am and is filed under Books. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.