Anya from On Starships and Dragonwings is guest posting today with a wonderful review of, Of Poseidon by Anna Banks! I discovered her blog a few months ago and love her bullet-point reviewing style, so without further ado here is her review.
I’ve seen a lot of mixed reviews for Of Poseidon by Anna Banks and had actually decided not to read it. Then I joined in a Mermaid Summer Reading Challenge and there are surprisingly few mermaid books out there, so I borrowed everything I could find from the library. Of Poseidon was one of them, and it was just so tempting one evening when I decided to throw caution to the wind (haha). I’m so glad I did!
Title: Of Poseidon
Author: Anna Banks
Series: Of Poseidon #1
Published by: Feiwel & Friends on May 22nd, 2012
Genres: Fantasy, YA
Length: 324
Source: Borrowed
Goodreads
Rating: 4 Stars
Galen is the prince of the Syrena, sent to land to find a girl he’s heard can communicate with fish. Emma is on vacation at the beach. When she runs into Galen—literally, ouch!—both teens sense a connection. But it will take several encounters, including a deadly one with a shark, for Galen to be convinced of Emma’s gifts. Now, if he can only convince Emma that she holds the key to his kingdom…
Strengths:
- I’m biased by my current love of all things mermaid, but I really enjoyed the world in Of Poseidon, especially the incorporation of sea god mythology. It’s always interesting to see how an author is going to deal with the fact that mermaids don’t actually make that much anatomical sense. I appreciated how Banks dealt with how mermaid breed and how their society functions.
- Besides dragons, my biggest book weakness (ie LOVE) is a heroine with guts and strength. Emma took this a bit literally by pounding faces when certain people pissed her off, and it was great to see a teen girl who dealt with her temper so directly ;-). Perhaps not a model for good behavior, but certainly feisty!
- Rayna and Toraf were two of my favorite secondary characters completely separate from their relationship. Rayna was even more of a tough and short-tempered heroine, while Toraf was the lovable dork and reminded me of the computer geek from Dollhouse. Remember that show??
- It is an impressive book that can surprise me so thoroughly while still making sense with its plot twist, congratulations Of Poseidon 😀 *throws streamers*
Weaknesses:
- Of Poseidon switches between first person present tense and third person present tense and omg was that annoying and confusing! My brain still struggles with reading present tense at all and I almost put down the book because I just hated the switches so much.
- Galen (main love interest) is kind of a jerk, which can be explained by mermaid culture or whatever, but still. Stop ordering Emma around! Also please try to be less creepy.
- On a similar mermaid culture note: mermaid marriage laws suck. If these don’t get explored and hopefully fixed by the end of the trilogy I’m going to be mad.
- There were a few times in Of Poseidon where the phrasing was awkward such that I had to go re-read a sentence to understand what it was trying to say. This wasn’t just because I was tired, I swear!
Summary:
I personally have seen a fairly mixed reaction to Of Poseidon, but I am so glad I joined in this summer reading challenge and gave it a shot! Of Poseidon certainly has some annoying aspects, but I found that the underlying story was just too much fun to put down. There are too few mermaid books out there (untapped market people!), but Of Poseidon is a great one to read. Now don’t mind me while I go read Of Triton ;-).
I should read more mermaid books, I def like the genre! 🙂
I love Anya! So I had to stop by and read this! I saw her post about how she changed her reviews to bullets instead of paragraphs and I like how she is doing that. I need to read this book. I have it on audio!
Thanks 😀 Did you get the audio from Sync? I am swimming in audiobooks now and realized I had this one on audio after I had finished reading a physical copy, haha