Book Review: Quest for Atlantis, The Mermaid Chronicles Book 2, Marisa Noelle
Young Adult/Fantasy: Quest for Atlantis, The Mermaid Chronicles Book 2, Marisa Noelle
I will be honest with you, gentle readers. I am not the best audience for a fantasy young adult romance. Or, really, any romance. My wife can assure you, romance is not one of my gifts, and reading about the travails of young love would not be my first choice.
That out of the way, I think it is good to step out of one’s reading comfort zone, try something new, and possibly discover a book you would otherwise never have encountered. Quest for Atlantis is one of those books. It is an adventure. It is a romance. It is a fantasy. It is for young adults. And it fulfills those missions very well.
Cordelia Blue is a mermaid. One of the very last descended from the original line of mermaids, she can choose to have legs on land and a tail and gills below the water. On land, she is an ordinary high school senior, about to graduate. In the water, though, she is prophesied to be one of the two to bring mermaids and selachii together.
The other is her boyfriend, Wade Waters. He is a selachii, also one of the last of the royal line, also able to be an ordinary teenager on land but able to turn partially or fully into a shark underwater. For centuries, mermaids and selachii have been enemies. This was not always the case, though. In the lost city of Atlantis the two races lived together in harmony. Since Atlantis disappeared, they have been at odds with each other. Prophecy has foretold, though, that Cordelia and Wade together will find and free Atlantis.
Of course, it is not that easy. Enter Stephanie, Wade’s former girlfriend, also a selachii and the choice of Wade’s parents to be his consort. Although Wade and Cordelia still try to work together to find the missing keys to Atlantis, the journey is fraught with dangers and pitfalls, both physical and emotional.
Let’s just say that two people drinking an entire bottle of tequila in one sitting is likely to be a bad decision, regardless of the circumstances.
Choices get made, consequences result, and the prophecy often seems in real danger of failing completely. Marisa Noelle puts these all together in a nice package replete with hormones and poor decisions and petty jealousies (and not so petty jealousies) and the occasional wise guidance from an elder. Young people can be brilliant and bone-headed, sometimes in rapid sequence, and Noelle captures both of these traits with a realism that makes me think she has a close relationship with some teenagers herself. (I’ve had three of them, so I’ve seen my share of sense and senselessness packaged in bodies of hormones and sweat.)
Like I said, sometimes it’s good to get out of your comfort zone. Dive in. The water’s fine…and you may discover some mermaids waiting for you.
Our thanks to Zoe from Zooloos for our copy of Quest for Atlantis, provided so we could participate in this blog tour. The opinions here are solely those of Scintilla. For other perspectives on this novel check out the other bloggers on this tour.
Book Review: Quest for Atlantis, The Mermaid Chronicles Book 2, Marisa Noelle