RIPPLES & WAVES: A Queer Retelling of Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid

RIPPLES & WAVES: A Queer Retelling of Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid
L.A. WITT
self-published
$3.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: Colin Everroad should be dead, but after his lobster boat founders during a violent storm off the Maine coast, he wakes up on a beach. He’s cold, but unscathed… with strange memories of a face he can’t conjure and a voice he doesn’t recognize.

No one can explain it, but a friend suggests Colin was saved by one of the mer. Except the mer don’t exist. Do they? But… that face. That voice. Someone was in the water with him. Someone saved him. If not a mer, then who? And whoever it was, Colin wants to see his face.

Lir broke protocol by rescuing a land person, but he couldn’t just let the man drown. When he disobediently resurfaces to see his beautiful land man, he knows it’s only a matter of time before he’s forbidden to leave the depths again.

One clandestine visit turns into more. Soon, Colin and Lir are meeting at the shore as often as possible, and the connection between them deepens. The only problem is that neither can live in the other’s world. Or can they?

Then Lir finds a way for them to be together, but only for a little while… and at a cost. As time grows short, they have to choose: does Lir return to the sea and never see Colin again, or stay forever with the man he loves in a world that will never love them?

Ripples & Waves is a modern, queer retelling of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid.

I RECEIVED THIS BOOK FROM THE GOODREADS M/M GIFT EXCHANGE. THANKS!

My Review: A world in which merfolk are real is clearly not our reality. It's a fairy tale, a story HC Andersen invented to explain what love between dissimilar-background and -culture people would cost them...and how that cost was exacted on the partner who did the moving.

I'm glad someone thought to make this over into a queer retelling. It applies more thoroughly to queer couples than even straight ones. Colin regaling Lir with the awfulness of humans to same-sex couples wasn't exaggerating too much.

Why Colin needed rescuing in the middle of a storm at sea isn't interrogated at all until practically halfway through the text. It's a funny choice to wait so long. Once Lir saves Colin in defiance of all the rules set by his people, he appears not to suffer much in the way of consequences. Well, the sea is *immense* so it would be tough to effectively track him...but there are eyes everywhere and a merman meeting on the regular with a landman wouldn't strike any observer as ordinary.

The desire to, shall we say, be with one's love object is a powerful imperative indeed. In the source tale, the Sea Witch offers the little mermaid the same choice as Lir receives from her in this version: a potion that lasts three days, but costs you your voice. A more perfect metaphor for cross-cultural love matches I've never heard of or read: you lose your native language, your familiar cultural references, and your automatic responses make no sense whatever in the new world. It's like being queer in straight spaces. You'll never ever be one of them; they'll know it, you'll know it, so no one's ever really at ease.

These real-world subtexts are largely absent from Author Witt's retelling. It bears down hard on the sweet, loving, needy side of the story. Lir and Colin are required to make changes with life-defining consequences, seemingly very much without angst. I'm not going to criticize that heavily because this is a fantasy novel. If it were set in a realistic world, I'd have some scathing comments to make on that storytelling lacuna.

On the count of holiday escapism informed with enheartening vibes of love conquering all, this novel gets my hearty endorsement. On the count of repurposing an old heteronormative tale to be queer, it gets croons and warbles of delight. It's Yuletide...ditch reality for a world where men come out of the deep ocean to find you for true love.

THE WITCHES AT THE END OF THE WORLD, supernatural novel set in wintry, beautiful Norway

THE WITCHES AT THE END OF THE WORLD
CHELSEA IVERSEN
Sourcebooks Landmark
$16.99 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Rage burns brighter than any spellfire...Deep in the birchwoods of Norway, magic courses through the veins of two sisters. For years they've been alone, but sweet-tempered Kaija is tired of living in shadows and longs for a life filled with community, even if it means stifling her magic. But Minna is a witch through and through, with wrath always simmering just below the surface.

Different as they may be, both will never forget the day they were driven from their village. The day their mother burned. When Kaija leaves to pursue a new life, Minna is left alone in the darkness of the forest.

Devastated and outraged at the betrayal, Minna casts a curse to punish those who took everything from her. What she doesn't realize is that this act will incite a deadly chain of events. Soon it will destroy everything, including the life Kaija has lovingly built. But once a witch's rage boils, regret means nothing—she can't take back what's already done.

Someone will have to burn.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: The nicest surprise of Deathtober's reading. I hadn't read anything by Author Iversen before this, and was expecting a more horror-tinged read...what I got was a revenge story, featuring sisters whose lives were upended by small-minded christian hatemongers. There is definitely a supernatural element to the story. It isn't, however, the kind of all-in horror that ends up with your psyche splattered in gore.

A big part of the reason for that is this is a story that unspools slowly, and in a very interior way. It is almost a récit à deux, a double recit, though such a beast doesn't exist (that I know of). Minna is angry, bitter, and filled with the inexhaustable fuel of contempt for those not as smart as she is. Kaija, on the other hand, is genuinely kind if extremely Other by virtue of who she is and whom she knows best. She is the sister whose path is always set by her desire to see, and be, the best it's possible to, in herself and others. Her decision to return to their home village where their mother was burned alive as a witch causes Minna to react violently She casts a curse on the whole village. Her rage can never be extinguished, but can be thrust outward to burn others.

The reason the book appealed to me is probably the reason some found it frustrating. I liked the slower pace that the author chose, as it left more time for me to get to feel the sisters' differences of character. The third-person narration, told in short chapters alternating between the sisters, was spangled with lovely sentences that use Norwegian terms, that unfold into images of the birch woods and the village, in three mental dimensions. Shadows and light are lovely almost characters.

The Norse "pagan" craft is wonderfully used, with figures from the Norse mythos making their presences known without coming across as intrusions into Reality by pagan gods...they feel like characters whose names we happen to know. The worldbuilding is thus made that much more enjoyable for a twenty-first century atheist. The way that Kaija, the elder sister, yearns for life in the village as a christian wife and a mother did not sit well with me...selling herself short and out to be average, when she could be a Power? Not the kind of message I'd choose to send. But Minna's rageful reponse to her sister's absconding, while understandable, skates perilously close to Evil. The author was very wise to be sure we know that Minna's curse is not the cause of Kaija's different life challenges. That made what could've been unpleasant horror into not-entirely-pleasant, deeply thought through, supernatural fiction.

Set at the crossroads where Norway had to choose between its old, established supernatural beliefs and the newfangled ways of the christian church in a lasting, final way, this story of sisters whose choices define the stakes, and the costs, of each course is one I think is ideal for anyone on your Yule list who loves immersive reads. Investing the time to be in this world with Kaija and Minna is easiest to make happen now that the nights are long and the winds are cold. It was a pleasure to meet Author Iversen. I would commend Minna, and Kaija (though less so), to your long nights of deep reading.

PYRE AT THE EYREHOLM TRUST, an Urban Fantasy set in Prohibition-like times

PYRE AT THE EYREHOLM TRUST
LIN DARROW
Less Than Three Press
PAY WHAT YOU WANT!, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: In Temperance City, the streets are ruled by spelled-up gangsters, whose magic turf wars serve as a constant backdrop to civilian life. With magic strictly regulated, Eli Coello—whip-smart jewelry salesman by day, sultry torch singer by night—has always found it advantageous to hide his magical affinity for ink.

All that goes up in smoke the day Eli is forced to use his magic to foil a jewelry heist, and in doing so unwittingly catches the eye of Duke Haven, leader of the fire-flinging Pyre gang. Seeing a useful asset, Duke promptly blackmails Eli into providing unregistered spellwork.

Duke needs Eli's ink-magic to help him pull a dangerous con against a rival gang. As the heist comes together, Eli finds himself drawn deeper and deeper into the Temperance underworld—and, perhaps most dangerously, to Duke himself.

GIFT OF MY SWEETIE'S FOR OUR MUTUAL PLEASURE. THANKS!

My Review: I won't say this lovely urban fantasy was rushed, but the pace was quick and the world-building was dense. The 1920s-era Prohibition-y setting of Temperance (haw) and its shabby speakeasy culture was different and very welcome. Duke, a small-time grifter with ambitions and self-discipline issues meets Eli, a jewelry salesman with secrets galore, in the course of business: He robs Eli's employer. Hijinks ensue.

The magic system of this world is material-centered, like Charlie Holmberg's in The Paper Magician et alii; Eli's an inkman, a manipulator of all inks whatever they rest on. You can imagine that the authorities of this world view Eli as a threat, since forgery can have no better friend than a magician who can make ink do their bidding. Duke, on the other hand, is a fireman, whose entire body is a conductor and creator of fire that can be molded and shaped and directed. Needless to say, the authorities are as scared of what Duke can do as of what Eli can do, only more so. Both characters are viewed as Other because of their powers, though not because they're gay or bi or trans. They're those things as well. They just aren't considered important. We're given this certainty in the very first scene of the book, and that was when Author Darrow grabbed me. You're gay? Mm, that's nice, pass the salt. You're an unregistered inkman?! WORKING IN A JEWELRY STORE?! ZOMG THE SKY IS FALLING!!

That's how I like it. Gay = uh huh, but magic = fraught. In other words, unlike the world I inhabit (for all I know you're reading this in a parallel universe), who you love isn't as interesting as with whom you're gettin' it on...gossip still rules and riles. And my long-standing animus towards the sheer silliness of Magjickq and its attendant random capitalizations of words to Indicate their new Uses is shown to be soothed by placing it in the hands of gay men.

I fear I am as bad as those I've criticized for refusing even to expose themselves to a gay male perspective on the world: I no longer want to hear from straight people. Shut the fuck up, you've monopolized the conversation long enough.

This is especially distressing to me in light of the fact that I called a former friend out on her use of the offensive and sexist term "mansplain" recently. My point to her, which she roundly rejected, was that fighting sexism in language wasn't a one-way street. Her response was the perfect, textbook mirroring of condescending maleness when our sexist assumptions are called out.

And here I am doing the same thing to the vast cishet community. I don't want to hear it. I don't want to know what y'all long for in a mate because it involves me not at all. I don't care.

Just like the vast majority of y'all don't.

So while I'm reveling in hearing my worldview represented and my concerns addressed, I'm staunchly ignoring a huge swath of the world. Oh the hypocrisy. Oh the humanity, too.

So while Eli hid secrets from his employers, hid himself from Duke as best he could, and set in motion a trainwreck of a plot climax, I was purring contentedly. When the moment came for the Big Reveal, I was deeply enmeshed in the emotional undercurrents and sussing out the relationship complexities that each man had. The ending was lovely in that it included each character's full self, known and accepted as is, and set the stage for further explorations of how those complex traits could intertwine and grow.

Good fiction, in other words. And good storytelling, too. Look at my notes and you'll see if Author Darrow is singing in your key if not precisely your song. For me, there can't be more of Eli and Duke's world soon enough.