#rebecca enzor

[robocatfan]

An angry summary of Speak the Ocean by Rebecca Enzor -Part 2

Part 1 , Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7

Chapter 2- Erie

This chapter introduces us to Erie, our magenta- haired mermaid protagonist and the youngest daughter of the king of the underwater Seadom - yes that’s its name. At least it doesn't go by Atlantis like many other stories do.

As stated before, she’s the youngest of seven siblings (only two of which we see in the story and learn the names of. The other five meanwhile don’t even get a mention) - just like Ariel - and also the one who’s been neglected the most due to resembling their disappeared mother, Queen Manistique. We learn that she was the first mer captured by humans - which the mers and dolphins call “landfolk” - and that her dad’s still wallowing about his dead wife. Just like Ariel’s dad.

Erie’s been trying to find a pattern and reason for the abductions of her people, each one represented by a shell which she’s tasked to stain with squid ink when they get taken, with the most recent victim being one of her older siblings, Clair. However, the events are so irregular that she’s unable to find any answers.

As she ponders her sister’s shell, she’s visited by a blue-haired mer called Huron, who’d just snuck past a surfacing Niku - her dolphin guard - and immediately suggests they go out hunting despite the danger of the landfolk. Also it’s pretty apparent by the way he’s interacting with her that he wants to do way more than just get food.

While Erie is tempted to go out, especially since none of them have been hunting much due to the fear of boats, she has doubts about it… for just a brief moment since of course, it doesn’t take long for her to agree to come with him.

In the next two paragraphs as they sneak away, the text gives us a look (or rather, a sort of broad description- and the only one we ever get at that!) of their home, which is essentially a big underwater city surrounded by a dead sunken forest that is somehow enough to hide them from modern human technology, because none of the human characters have any idea of its existence.

There are also other sea creatures living within it like fish and crabs, but Erie notes that they are illegal to eat… Even though it’s also noted that everyone is starving due to being unable to hunt as frequently as they used to, so why prevent them from consuming these very accessible meals? It’s like placing a bowl of food just out of the reach of a chained dog!

Anyway instead of doing… Whatever they are intending to do, in a hidden corner of their home, these two fools decide to go past the dead forest to do it in what’s essentially a danger zone just so they can have their “fun”. Brilliant!

After getting to the open ocean (aka the danger zone), Erie feels a sense of freedom due to the vastness of her surroundings, something she hasn’t really felt since her sister got snatched.

When she thinks about her fate however, she starts having second thoughts about venturing this far due to the danger… which are immediately dispelled when Huron brushes his tail fin against her stomach and it becomes very apparent that they are both thinking with their second head.

But just as they are making out and in the middle of justifying why this book has an adult age rating (again, while in a danger zone. Oh and its also noted that female mer have breasts) they are interrupted when they both notice the rumbling of an approaching boat. We don’t get to have a moment where it dawns on them that one of the main tools the landfolk use to capture them is coming in their direction, or even get a glimpse of its shape. Erie just hears it, and bolts.

A literal sentence later, a net is thrown and hits Erie’s tail, bearing her down against the ocean floor. Which makes me wonder just how shallow their part of the ocean is for the net to get there so quickly. Actually, how long are those nets to be able to do that in the first place?

In any case, her trapped state only lasts two sentences before she “easily” (due to the text barely showing her struggle) gets free - ripping her tail fin in the process. Which should be painful af, but the text barely dwells into how it affects her mobility and later presents it more like a minor inconvenience later on.

Huron on the other hand, isn’t so lucky as he ends up getting - surprisingly easily - trapped in the net, and his companion’s attempts to free him last for about ten words before it becomes apparent that there’s nothing she can do to free him. Like, girl, you and the rest of your kind are human sized, and while these nets are strong, they are for fish way smaller than you. And since it’s your boyfriend that’s trapped, at least try a little harder!

So Huron tells her to get help, and even though she knows she won't be able to find aid in time, Erie still tries. A sentence later, the narration destroys any tension by telling us that he’s essentially a lost cause now.

(I still can’t believe all of this happened because these two idiots wanted to have mermaid se-)

And it becomes very apparent in moments like these that the writing style is one of the greatest weaknesses of the book - as well as the reason that just reading it feels like an exhausting chore to me. Because what’s supposed to be a tense and terrifying scene for both the readers and the characters….

Ends up falling very flat due to how quickly everything happens (seriously this scene takes just one page to finish) and due to how matter of factly everything is written.

When Erie reaches the dead forest, she has a miniscule flare of hope upon noticing the shadow of a dolphin before she sees its back scars and realizes that said dolphin is a rightfully pissed Niku.

Still, she tells him where Huron got captured and that she has yet to find a pattern for the boat’s appearances - and Niku oh so helpfully tells her that “perhaps staining the next shell may enlighten her”. So much for a scolding or comfort.

Two days later, Erie feels guilt for causing her boyfriend’s abduction, even though he was the one who suggested they go out in the first place. And what does her father do about this recent kidnapping? NOTHING.

We are not told if he punished her for going out, nor if he has increased security because one of his remaining children nearly got taken. He just doesn’t do - and hasn’t done for these past six years - anything to help his subjects even though they and his very own family are being constantly kidnapped. And you would think his inaction as well as their current situation would cause civil unrest or make them more eager to fight back against the landfolk (like that unseen mer who attacked a tourist in the previous chapter), but nope. Everything goes on as usual I guess.

While she stares at her ink stained fingers so she doesn't stare at Huron’s and Clair’s shells, her grandmother Dowager (which is the name used for widows who hold the titles or properties derived from their deceased partners), comes to visit her, and Erie notes that her scale colors have dissipated with age and that she has a few string of sea glass around her neck which her sister declared would never be hers due to being the youngest.

Anyway, the grandma isn’t that important to the story.

And instead of coming to comfort her granddaughter, she warns her that she may have to stain another shell soon since there have been recent sightings of boats.

When Erie asks her why they are still out there - since normally they just take one mer at a time - she responds that according to the king’s landfolk advisor ( who doesn’t seem to do his job well because six years have passed and nothing to help improve their situation has been done. Oh and he’s gonna be important - for one chapter only.), it might be for research, and none of them have any clue as to what it means.

To seemingly provide some sort of levity though, her grandmother tells her that her father has declared a hunt to restock their fish pens in spite of the danger, and that the dolphins and all able bodied merfolk (which doesn’t include her because rip her tail fin - but doesn’t amount to anything as you will see a few chapters later) participate.

Erie then asks her if she knows if there will be any boats nearby since she’s one of the wisest mers she’s known. and she replies that while that is impossible to tell, the area they are planning to hunt in has clear waters as of now.

And as she reassures her that Niku will keep her safe during the trip (pretty much saying that her dad’s restrictions mean shit even though her grandkid is injured), Erie grabs one of the few clear shells and swears that she will do whatever it takes to figure out the schedule of the boats and the reason for the kidnappings.

…. Don’t expect her to take the route most characters go through after making such a bow.

Chapter 3- Finn

We are back to Finn’s perspective as he immediately enters Delmara’s office to proclaim himself the trainer of the new mer - aka Huron - who was caught while he and Serge were disobeying the doctor’s orders in chapter one.

When he enters, Delmara introduces him to a red-haired woman called Jennifer/Jen, who’s been recently hired as a new employee in Oceanica and who greets him warmly but also warily, and is also notable for being the sanest character in the story and the one that, frankly, should have been the human main character instead of Finn.

Speaking of him, while he happily shakes her hand, he’s caught off guard when his boss says that not only will he be her guide for the week, but they will also have to clean the tanks that used to belong to Bismuth and the twins.

When he asks why that’s the case, since she previously promised him that the next mer in line will be his to train, Delmara reminds him that the doctors have forbidden him from interacting with the mer until his next checkup, and that the new arrival will be placed under the care of Mia and Laz, the trainers of their current stars Radon/ Ray and Potassium/ K.

Speaking of her, according to Finn she’s probably going to kill the new mer (the reasons for that? we are never told about it), and it took weeks with the electroshocker™ to get her to behave. And as we later learn, she’s actually Clair, Erie’s sister.

However, and despite the fact that she’s essentially the murderous mermaid this book oh so claims to have, not only is she underutilized, but her tank companion and trainers matter so little to the story that they essentially vanish without reason later on (and you’ll later see that I’m not joking.)

Finn is aghast at her decision. But while he’s worried that the new boy won’t last more than a day thanks to K/Clair, he’s more pissed over the fact that he’s not allowed to interact with the same creatures who nearly sent him to the next life a few days ago for his own safety. As well as the fact that he has yet to train one in spite of his long time helping Delmara.

So he essentially throws a tantrum - in front of a new hire, no less! - and tries to throw Maddy under the bus by blaming her for the fact that he tripped (like a fool) and fell into the tank due to his own clumsiness and stating that due to this, she should be the one on cleaning duty instead of him.

Ultimately his boss makes him stand down and dismisses him and Jen, not before telling them that she will be sending the fishermen out to find another mer soon - which seems to be her only response to the financial loss that the death of their previous stars certainly caused.

Finn is far from happy about this, but knows her enough to know he won’t win this argument. So without having the decency to at least hide some of his current frustration, he goes to give Jen a tour of the place.

What could have been a way to also show the reader how the main setting of the story looks like only consists of a sentence where Finn points to the break and locker rooms before they arrive to the room where they hold the tanks, which the text does bother to describe.

It has four sets of double tanks - each one about thirty meters in diameter and connected by tubes to the point that Finn compares the place to a giant hamster room. All of them connect to the practice tank we saw in the first chapter, as well as the “arena” - an outdoor tank where they hold their shows and that is colored way more aesthetically than the room they are in.

Still bitter about being put in his place, he points to the empty tanks and explains that they’ll scrub them over with diluted bleach, fill them back and then let them cycle over a couple of days before putting a new mer in.

BUT according to a friend (and a quick google search) these sorts of tanks should be cycled for, at the very least , 2 or 8 weeks! Which means that either the author got information wrong, or they are intentionally cutting corners! Either way, Finn hopes that by the time the process ends he will be allowed to train a mer.

Jen is unsettled by the tank sizes, but he tells her that they are actually three times bigger than the previous ones, in which the creatures could barely stretch… It doesn’t help much.

And instead of thinking that maybe the new employee is concerned about the mers’ welfare, this guy assumes that she - like previous new employees- is disappointed by the fact that dealing with these creatures isn’t as glamorous as they first thought. And still, he admits that nothing would make him quit the job.

They walk up to the next set of tanks and Finn introduces her to Ray and K/ Clair, who are floating in the middle of the tank while their trainers check the water parameters with long poles - which is the only time we see those being used to keep the mandated distance from the creatures.

Huron meanwhile is huddled in the second tank, and while Ray is indifferent to everything (which is the only trait we learn about him), K/Clair glares at him - most likely due to recognizing him as her younger sister’s boyfriend, and Finn does admit that his blue accents will go well with the orange and bright red of the pair.

Jen is fascinated at first by K/Clair due to her colors reminding her of Ariel, but Finn stops her by telling her that K/Clair is a lethal predator. And due to feeling that she needs a healthy dose of fear to work with the mers, he tells her that the first thing she did on her first night in the tank was rip the gills out of her current tank companion -something that, as stated before, we never get an explanation for.

And just to hammer it further, he goes on to remind her in the most dramatic way ever that while “one can cage, shock, and teach the mer tricks, they are still clever as shit and will always look for a way out, a weakness they can exploit”, before warning her to not become said weakness.

Which is ominous and all, but-

It presents them as more dangerous than they actually are - regardless of him overdramatizing stuff.

To my utter disappointment, just like with the “perfect predator” statement, we never get any scenes that give credence to his words.

Later Finn, Serge, Maddy and Nat go to a place called The Porch, an establishment they frequent to drink and in this occasion, bet on how long Huron will survive being with K/ Clair. You would think they would take his potential fate more seriously considering they - again - recently lost two of their most important stars.

On their second round, Jen joins them, wearing an Oceanica polo and a dolphin- shaped sea glass necklace that will be important later. After everyone introduces themselves (we actually don’t get to see it), Finn takes her over to order a drink for her, but as they do he notices Maddy scowling at the two of them, which confuses him since the two are only friends with benefits.

Btw this jealousy and attempts to get closer to him are the only personality traits Maddy shows for most of the story, and the fact that she attempts to get closer to Finn - who constantly diminishes her feelings and who paragraphs before blamed her for his own clumsiness almost getting him killed - is presented as her being in the wrong for some reason.

And if his thoughts on her didn’t make him sus enough, when he calls one of the bartenders over to serve Jen and she gets flustered around him, his first thought is that of course she’s acting like this, since he thinks that the other guy looks more attractive than he is, and when Jen tries to tell him that he doesn’t have to pay the tab for her, he compares her to the mer and “gets the sense that she’s a predator hidden in sheep’s clothing, storing everything away to use against them later.”

… Dude. You two have interacted for a day! What on earth made you reach such conclusions?!

And as he’s amused at the fact that she’s also a lightweight, for some reason we get a scene where Maddy takes Jen’s phone (since when did she pull it out?!) and laughs at the fact that Finn looks like… Colin Morgan?

Finn is offended by this comparison and attempts to make a joke about guys with big ears but no one listens (as they should).

That and the fact that he recognizes a Merlin actor due to his sister watching the show ain’t important. What is somewhat important is him complaining to Serge about Aunt D not giving him a mer for the millionth time… before Maddy makes a joke about him using idk what to get a tourist to sleep with him, then Finn makes it clear that tonight he will get in bed with her, and Natalie calls them both “pity fucks” for it.

… deep sigh.

[aliteraryprincess]

Speak the Ocean by Rebecca Enzor

Speak the Ocean by Rebecca Enzor

Many thanks to REUTS Publications and NetGalley for the ARC! This book was published on July 9 and is now available for purchase.

My Rating: 4 stars

Speak the Oceanis a new adult contemporary fantasy that uses aspects of “The Little Mermaid” while still distinctly being it’s own story. After discovery mermaids, or the Mer, humans immediately built Oceanica, a Sea World-like park that captures…

[lianabrooks]

2019 Writing Stats

Words Written: 312,000  Words Edited (including freelance work): 1,935,000   Projects Finished: 3   Books Published: 1   Short Stories Published: 6  Best Writing Month: October Average Number of Writing Days per Month: 20 Average Number of Words Written per Writing Day: 1300

2019 Highlights: Attending Emerald City Comic Con and Atomacon Charleston as a guest. Signing with my new literary agent. Meeting Gini Koch and Rebecca Enzor in person. Hanging out with Anne Sowards and Jim Butcher (very briefly) at DragonCon.

Overall: Obviously, with three projects finished I would have love to have listed a sale in 2019, but there wasn’t one. One project went out to two editors and came back with, “Love it but I just bought something like it. Sorry. You’re talented. Send me your next book.” Which is lovely but not a sale. 

2019 was also not my best writing year ever, although it was my best editing year. Moving in June significantly impacted my writing time and I also dealt with some other personal setbacks throughout the year. But, still, three novels finished in the year and one long story published along with several short stories isn’t bad. 

One of the 2019 projects was already under contract and will come out in 2020, and I’m hoping to add a major sale to 2020. I’m also working with my agent to get foreign rights sales for my back list. Not a bad year, all in all. 

Here’s to a happy and bookish 2020!

[milvusrae-scribbles]

“I put my hand over hers, and very quietly whisper, “Tag!” (paraphrased) Erie, from Rebecca Enzor’s Speak the Ocean. She is the Very Best Mermaid, a sweetheart who I adore and wish only good things for (y’know, except for Plot, because storytelling).  I did my best to reconcile all the descriptions of her into one image; a tail that can curl around herself or someone else and also has enough muscle to let her jump out of the water, tailfins like a betta that can shred with stress, and “deep sea merfolk, with dark green scales, lighter on the ventral side”. I love thinking about plausible anatomy for fantasy creatures! <3

[lexacourtney]

Book Review: Speak the Ocean

Book Review: Speak the Ocean by #RebeccaEnzor 4⭐️'s // I inhaled this in a matter of hours and now I want more mermaid books. #bloggerswanted #bloggerstribe #bloggingcommunity #bookish #bookreview #bookpost #bookblog

Title: Speak the Ocean Author: Rebecca Enzor Pub. Date: July 9, 2019 Pages: 327 Pub: Reuts Genre: YA Fantasy Mythology Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ For Mer handler Finn Jarvis, the feral mermaid performers at Oceanica Marine Park are nothing more than ruthless aquatic predators, violent and unpredictable. That doesn’t stop the public from flocking to one of the world’s most popular tourist attractions. To…

[cinderlystyle]

Mermaids at SeaWorld? Speak the Ocean by Rebecca Enzor

[robocatfan]

An angry summary of Speak the Ocean by Rebecca Enzor -Part 3

Part 1, Part 2, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7

Chapter 4 - Finn (Again!)

This is one of the only two times where we get two consecutive chapters in this guy’s perspective. Why? Because the author couldn’t bother to make the last chapter longer? Or didn’t want to put the important contents of this chapter in the last one in place of the mostly plot-irrelevant stuff it has in its latter half? Who knows.

Anyway, we begin with him reminiscing about how he used to love cleaning tanks, testing water and cutting mers apart when he was younger just to please Aunt D and prove his father right.

In the present however, since they have gathered enough knowledge on the mer - and he’s still salty about not getting to train one - he essentially stands around while having Jen do most of the work cleaning the tanks, since according to him the task is their version of hazing and no one will respect her until she’s done. All the while he’s “admiring the view” - aka, staring at her ass.

Then his friend Serge comes over to tell them that they are letting the new mer in with Ray and K/Clair, and invites them to “see the destruction.”

As stated in the last chapter, the group bet on how long it would take for K/Clair to kill the new mer, and Finn comments that Jen didn’t join in and (rightfully) looked at them like they were horrible people - because they are! Finn, confident that he will win, brings her over to watch.

When they get to the tanks there’s already a crowd of employees (who aren’t important. They barely even exist) present, and Mia is near the tubes connecting the tanks while Laz is holding the electroshocker ™. Once they are ready, Mia lifts the glass doors keeping the tubes closed and calls Huron - who they named Argon - over.

Despite Ray and K/Clair looking at him warily, he seems to relax and swims over. But the second he makes a sound - which the text makes painfully obvious it's a question by way of having Finn saying that he’d interpret it as one if he didn’t know any better (which, why would he even have that thought if he doesn’t think they are smart enough to have such capabilities?!) - Laz shocks them all.

Then K/Clair swims over to Argon/Huron - not enough to touch him, since apparently they aren’t allowed to do that - to shush him (which, again, the text makes obvious by having Finn nearly interpret it as that) and another shock goes off.

As shown by this scene and by Finn explaining it to Jen, they don’t allow the mers to vocalize (because according to Serge that would freak people out), and the louder they are, the stronger a shock they get. Which is shown when Argon/Huron cries in pain (“just like they all do when they are learning this lesson” wtf Finn?) and the next shock is so potent that all mers spam.

And then they wonder why they want to kill them.

Jen is rightfully disturbed by this and asks if Argon/Huron was simply confused about what was happening, and when Serge tries to dismiss her by saying that mers just make sounds and don’t have a language, she asks how he can be so sure about that if they don’t even let them talk.

Exasperated by what they refer to as “inane questions” and once again, not once thinking that perhaps, just perhaps -she’s concerned about how they are treating their wards (regardless if she’s “humanizing” them or not), Finn chastises her over still seeing the mer as Ariel (again) and tells her that they aren’t human - even tho as Jen points out, they kinda look pretty human to her.

While Serge points out their fish-like parts to counteract this mindset, Finn starts lecturing her as though she were a 5 year old about how just because two animals share similar features, that doesn’t mean they are anything alike, using spiders and octopuses as an example and claiming that people will be more afraid of the spider.

Which leads Mia to counteract this by reminding him that the blue ring octopus exists, and when Finn says he would rather take it over the black widow, Laz for some reason teases that one day something pretty will be the end of him. Which then leads Finn to declare that at least it won’t be him, and then to K/Clair using her trainers’ subsequent shock to slam Argon/Huron against the glass, startling everyone before they and Ray are shocked with such intensity that they end up floating belly up on the surface.

Mia then dismisses everyone, and as he relaxes - making the puncture wounds from Chloride’s attempt at his life (which is the second time they are brought up) ache - he reminds Jen that the mer will always find her weakness before leading her back to continue cleaning the tanks.

sigh

Alright idk where else to put this in my notes, so i’m gonna put it here.

I found this book because it marketed itself as having murderous killer mermaids and had the interesting concept of those same mermaids being put in a marine park. And as a fan of that portrayal of merfolk, I came in expecting to read about murderous killer mermaids. And I did NOT get murderous killer mermaids!

They don’t eat humans, they barely attack them in or outside the establishment (and even then it seems only a teeny tiny amount do so instead of being something that the general populace does) and instead of their captivity situation being presented as something as foolish as keeping a dangerous animal as a pet, they are only “dangerous” because they are lashing out at humans for what they are doing to their kind. Which is totally understandable, and there’s nothing wrong with portraying them like that… But if you are gonna market your book by saying that it has murderous killer mermaids, commit to it instead of misleading your readers about it!

ALSO

The story concept of having said murderous killer mermaids put on a Seaworld like place is cool af!

So HOW DID IT FUMBLE IT THIS HARD?!

Chapter 5- Erie

We return to Erie’s perspective (finally!), just after she wakes up from what seems to be a nightmare several days after Huron was taken. This startles Niku and some of the other dolphin guards, but they are quick to recover from the fright and she apologizes to them.

Her guard then notes that it’s nearly time to hunt, though the sun has yet to rise and there are nocturnal predators (too small to be a threat to them) about, and Erie says that they will wait until it's the first sprays of sun rise since her kind are diurnal hunters and can’t see well in the dark. What are those big ol’ eyes for, then?

In just a sentence and without specifying if this is before or after the sun has come out, Niku joins the dolphin pod to talk with the king and his advisors (neither of which we ever get to see), and returns to tell Erie their plan.

Which, since the are they are going to be hunting it is large and has several school of fish in it, involves the mer breaking into groups and letting the dolphins corral their prey with bubble rings before they go and catch them, (something that real-life dolphins do, and Erie remarks it’s effective since she’s hunted with Niku before.)

Then Niku reminds her to keep her wits about since the commotion will attract sharks - understandable since they could go on a feeding frenzy and attack her, but given the fact that mers dissolve when they kick the bucket, I highly doubt they would see her as a viable source of food - and tells her that the area they are going to is too far from land for any of the merfolk-catching boats to go throughout when she asks about them.

Satisfied, Erie grabs some bags from idk where, and remember when I said in chapter two that her dad’s restrictions about who gets to join the hunt essentially mean shit? Well, in spite of said orders, and the fact that her tail injury has yet to heal, her royal guard voices no objections and happily guides her to the group are gonna be hunting with.

Only now does the narration bother to clarify that all the mer in this book have green scales, with the only color variation being in their hair and fins. This kinda makes sense since a species can share a main coloration and have different individual traits, but the artist in me is in shambles trying to picture how bad some of those color combinations would look. Speaking of, Erie also tells us that most of the mer present have darker hair and fins to help them sneak up on fish which…unless those are somehow big enough to cover most of their body, I highly doubt they would have any meaningful effect.

Amongst the group is the landfolk advisor, who she only vaguely recognizes (even though his unique features like his dark hair, “fins” around his earlobes and strange “nostril protrusion” should make him stick out more amongst his peers), and is the only one who voices confusion about her presence in spite of, again, her injured tail.

But just like Niku, he isn't disapproving at all of her going out in such state, or ask how her dad would react if he saw her here. All she has to do is appear confident and he simply bows and wishes that the Tides (which is their kind’s only show of a possible religious/ mythological belief) be with her.

After that, instead of having at least a sentence to show them arriving at the hunting area (unless they were already there when Erie got to the group, but the text never clarifies it) it immediately cuts to three paragraphs talking about the hunt, where we see the mers let the dolphins corral the fish before striking at them. It isn’t noted what the other mer do with them aside from just attacking (and presumably catching them to bring back to their homes), but Erie makes a point of sucking the eyeballs out of her first catch before eating her favorite parts from it and noting that hunting makes her, if temporarily, forget about the troubles of her life.

This is supposedly a scene that is full of action and excitement due to way Erie says it’s exhilarating enough that her excitement about the hunt fades into bloodlust… but just like with the scene of Huron’s kidnapping, the briefness of the events and the way the text presents them makes it feel less like an action scene and more like a character just describing stuff like they taking a casual stroll.

Some of the fish break away and Erie attempts to catch one, but her injured tail prevents her from reaching it and the advisor catches it first.

But just as he apologizes to it and tries to give his catch to her, they both hear a loud smack on the surface - which is an indication of, unsurprisingly, another boat. Although the net that was thrown was what actually caused such sound, but the text attributes it to the ship instead.

In any case, Erie drops her heavy bags to flee (and also as a convenient way for the story to not have the humans see it and thus the proof that this supposedly non sapient creatures may be more intelligent than they first assumed), but notices that the advisor has frozen in place- which causes her to compare him to a “stupid minnow too terrified to move.”

However, the fear of having yet another darkened shell added to the tally and having to taint one so soon causes her to lunge and push him out of the way before one of the net’s weights hits her wrist.

Niku shouts her name in a panic as the net falls before her, and instead of trying to swim out or against its descent, Erie spends one short sentence just yanking it with her good hand. Predictably this does nothing, and in the subsequent sentence Niku reaches her side just before the net hits the ground in a surprisingly fast amount of time, trapping them both.

Niku bites at it and the advisor uses a coral knife to try and free her, but only manages to unravel one section before instantly giving up when the net cinches together, despite the fact that he still has enough time to continue his attempts to cut it.

And I guess that the other hunting groups are too far away, Erie swam too far or everyone swam for their lives and left them behind, because no one else goes to try and save them - a member of the royal family and her guard, mind you - from getting taken.

So Niku orders Erie to get below him so that the landfolk only see him and thus may let them go. The advisor meanwhile apologizes over and over again instead of doing anything useful. Niku continues, telling her to stay calm, hold her breath and cover her gills if she has to.

This reveals to us that much like most fish species, mers are unable to breathe outside of the water. Which makes me wonder how Bismuth didn’t instantly start to suffocate when he was taken out of the tank.

Erie is terrified, but while at first she doesn’t listen and hugs her guard, eventually she follows his orders and grabs the advisor’s hand through the net as it rises.

It stops once Niku crests and Erie sags in relief… for just a sentence, because in the next one it starts rising again and she goes on a full on panic, screaming and somehow, in spite of her current position, pounding on the side of the boat.

Her guard stops her panicking - by smacking her with a flipper - and tells her that the most important thing now is that they aren’t separated, and that she grab his dorsal fin and hold her breath as long as she’s able to.

She hugs him, gasping and whimpering as she feels air for the first time in her life, and the advisor reminds her to take a deep breath just before he lets go of her hand and she completely surfaces.

Also this is the last time we ever see the advisor in the story.

Erie shudders and she feels the burn of the wind and sun on her body. Once the net finally stops, she squints one eye open and sees landfolk for the very first time too, remarking that they look like mermen except they are brown instead of green, have bumps in the middle of their faces and “ear-fins” (just like the advisor) and… “strange legs that don’t end in tails” ?? Shouldn’t it be “arms” since her kind doesn’t have legs?

Anyway, she closes her eyes again when she sees one of them speak and say something, not wanting to see what might happen next.

The net starts moving again and she holds herself from screaming and releasing her last breath even as her gills burn from the lack of water. That is until it stops, and they are suddenly dropped, causing her to scream and water to rush out of her gills.

Thankfully they were being placed in what I presume to be the boat’s water tank, so Erie is quick to breath again. Just then, Niku warns her that there’s something in the water and that she needs to breathe shallowly - which was the exact opposite of what she was doing. So the warning comes too late and Erie begins to feel sleepy and sluggish, to the point that when her guard tells her that she can’t let the landfolk separate them, the only thing she is able to do is think about how she doesn’t know how to do that in such state, and nod at his words.

[robocatfan]

An angry summary of Speak the Ocean by Rebecca Enzor -Part 1

Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7

(well more of a combination of a summary, a rant, a critique/review and nitpicking, but you get the idea)

Because in my eternal search for more books about dangerous mermaids, I found this little book with such an interesting premise (it’s essentially mermaids in Seaworld) that i just had to read it. And since those sorts of stories don’t tend to be pretty good, I had high hopes for this story.

However, not only did it waste such a cool concept, but it disappointed and pissed me off so much that I decided “you know what? If I had to contend with this thing, I will bring everyone else down with me!”

… and also to spare anyone who doesn’t want to read it, but it’s curious about it , from suffering the same (not good!) brain rot I have thanks to this.

I’ll be doing this two or three chapters at a time because I noticed that my summaries… ended up a bit long.

Anyway. Lets begin.

Preface 1

The book starts by showing us an in-universe training manual for employees about interacting with the mer, as well as what to do if someone falls into the tank with them.

It tells us that unless they are doing a certain task (like using an electroshocker- yes, that’s its name), personnel must remain at least 3 feet from the water - which contradicts what we see a few chapters later, but we’ll get to that eventually - and if they need to work near the water, 4 personnel must be present and the water must be cooled and spiked with sedatives if necessary.

It follows up by saying that if someone falls into the tank with a mer inside, the person closest to the electroshocker ™ should place it in the water, and if the mer doesn’t react to it, they should shock them… while the person is still in the water. Yeah sure, that will help a lot with keeping them alive!

Meanwhile two people should use a net to separate the mer from the person while a third (the one with the shocker or the one in the water? Idk) keeps an eye on them. If they can’t trap the mer however, they are allowed to use the electroshocker ™ liberally- while again, the person they are trying to save is still in the water!

I get it’s a quick life or death situation, but come on! Tranquilizer guns and darts exist for a reason!

Chapter 1- Finn

This chapter introduces us to Finnegan Jarvis aka Finn, our human protagonist and a worker in Oceanica, the only mermaid marine park in the world. Also as you will see from this point forward… I hate his absolute, bigass di-

The story starts with Finn’s narration telling us that contrary to what Corporate - aka Delmara/ Aunt D, the owner of the place - tells the public, the mer they work with are very dangerous. which is proven by the fact that one of them killed Craig, one of the trainers, just the night prior. Which is why they are now preparing to euthanize it.

His friend Serge notices he’s nervous about it and tries to reassure him by telling him that Bismuth the mer (they name them after the elements of the periodic table) and his companions, the twins Fluorine and Chlorine, were already chilled. It doesn’t help much.

In his narration he says that six years have passed since humans have discovered merfolk, and in four of those years he’s been forced to kill six mers after they killed an equal number of his companions. Though in spite of his nervousness and current sadness for Craig, the fact that he can bring up the death of people he knew about so casually means that he’s pretty desensitized to it.

They both go to the room where their practice tank is stored and meet with two of their coworkers Madison and Natalie (Maddy is the only important one here, trust me). And since the mers have already been placed there, they get to work.

Btw all that i have summarized so far takes place within 8 paragraphs (one of which is just for one of the character´s dialogue), none of which give us a clear idea of how the characters or most of their surroundings look like.

And as expected, this chapter also shows us the mer for the first time, with barely, if any build up to their first appearance. And much like the humans, there are no noteworthy descriptions that could help us visualize how they look like save for specific details that apply to just one individual, with those being Bismuth’s dark green scales and the twins’ icy blue eyes and hair.

Speaking of the twins, apparently they are part of Oceanica’s second most famous show, and are only here to watch their companion die so they’ll be discouraged from misbehaving like he did. According to Finn that strategy worked on previous mers… although sometimes it just backfires completely.

As they prepare the net and electroshocker ™ (the process being described in just one paragraph btw), Finn says that euthanizing a mer isn’t easy since they are huge, they are many regulations with dealing with them and, according to him, they are the perfect predator… although there are no scenes in the story to support that idea, nor at the very least shows us why he has come to such conclusion.

Anyway, in the span of just four paragraphs that look more like a draft listing actions rather than a proper final scene, Serge electrocutes the trio, allowing the other three to trap Bismuth in a net and lift him from the water while his tank companions swim around and do nothing to help him.

And after snapping at Maddy for not moving with him by reminding her to pay attention or she’ll end up like her recently deceased companion — Finn injects Bismuth with a liquid that kills him instantly, which also causes him to dissolve into foam.

However, as he’s dissolving faster than my initial hopes for this book, one of the lines holding the nets unravels, and in the chaos Finn slips in a puddle of the mer’s remains , hits his knee, and falls into the tank with the twins. Like he deserves.

He tries to flee, but the mers hold him down with their claws. But instead of immediately going for that soft, vulnerable throat, Chlorine, this supposed “perfect predator”, just pierces his shoulders, giving Finn the opportunity to reach for her gills and fucking rip them off. And before her sister can retaliate, Serge electrocutes them both.

Unsurprisingly, this has consequences.

Finn ends up comatose for two days, and even though his mother is worried sick - since she has lost her husband who disappeared while in a trip to find the merfolk, and is justifyingly worried that her son also works with them - and the doctors told him to not swim while he still had the stitches from his shoulder wound, this guy insists on going out for a swim in a reef in spite of Serge’s protests.

Oh and he also says that “he can’t let his sister make fun of him for getting his ass kicked by girls.”

… oh and those living family members he has have almost no importance in the story. They are just. There.

As they are traveling in the fishing boat that used to belong to his dad, Finn asks Serge what became of the twins. And he casually, very casually, reveals that the stars of their second most popular show are now fucking dead.

There’s no talk about how the public is gonna react to this, nor how this very huge loss will affect their finances, not even if they held a funeral for their recently deceased coworker. Just that they gotta pull more mers out of the ocean to replace the twins and they’ll need a new trainer for them. Which Finn, in spite of his current medical orders, plans to become.

Though he does bristle at the memory of killing Chlorine… And also says that this isn’t the worst way in which he has killed a mer.

…WHAT-

Oh and also it’s revealed to us that Delmara used to be his father’s teaching assistant, and Finn has been working for her since he was fifteen years old after helping her document the existence of the first mer they’d found.

On their way, the pair come across a beach that has been vacated due to a recent mer attack the night prior. The reasons as to why it happened, nor the attack itself are ever explained or brought up again. Not even in the chapters with the mer pov, where we see where their kind - which should include the attacker - lives.

Finally they arrive on the reef, and as he swims through it, Finn muses that if the stories about people becoming mer were true, he’d stay in the water forever. But as it stands, working with them is the closest he’ll ever be to being a part of the ocean … even though he recently killed and constantly tortures the same creatures he says he wants to become.

[robocatfan]

An angry summary of Speak the Ocean by Rebecca Enzor -Part 5

Because the holidays ain’t stopping me from some good old roasting.

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 6, Part 7

Chapter 8- Finn

Finn, after having just traumatized a poor mer forever, immediately wants to go for a drink to celebrate this successful procedure, since unlike with previous arrivals who fought more, the only noteworthy thing the mer did was make “noise”(aka screaming in terror), so the separation of the mer and dolphin went ”smoothly”.

Serge is just as happy as him, but Jen is unsettled to the point that “she stares at the tank like she just witnessed a brutal murder of her childhood” and whispers that she’d never known that mer could scream.

Serge (son of a bitch!) dismisses it by saying that they don’t, and that that all that “noise” the mer made was merely something they do, like the screech of a hawk (which, wrong! Hawks don’t screech for no reason - and she didn’t make that “noise” for no reason either!) and reassures her that she’ll learn not to do it soon enough.

Still, Jen says that they can’t just leave them alone after all of that, so Finn then attempts to be reassuring by telling her that the drugs are still in the mer system, and they are leaving to get her to calm down and adjust to her new surroundings so that she’ll be easier to work with the next day.

Maddy then comes back (in chapter 4 she wasn’t present because she was in concessions, forgot about that because it isn’t important), surprised that they already placed the new arrival in before she could help, and when Finn asks if she’s back to scrubbing tanks, she responds that she’s actually going to help him train the new mer.

Finn grimaces because he knows she’ll be pissed when she learns that he’s working with Jen instead, especially since he’d previously told her she’ll be his co-trainer when he got a mer.

In actuality she’s more hurt than angry at this, but even that doesn’t stop him from dismissing her because not only does he still blame her for his own clumsiness almost making him mermaid food, but he feels that Jen’s inexperience will keep him on his toes since he’s gotten indifferent to the mer.

Regardless, he tries to offer her a drink as a form of amends, but she (understandably) declines and leaves.

The next morning Finn arrives early to examine a still curled up Io/Erie, noting how close she is to the dolphin, her ink stained fingers (which he thinks it’s the result of her trying to hunt an octopus) and only now finally fully acknowledging her shredded tail fin, assuming it’s the reason she was caught.

He then startles her by tapping the glass, causing her to bolt and look up, making him realize she hasn’t eaten the fish they left for her.

So he goes to get more, and when he returns he finds her “making noises” at the dolphin before she retreats due to his presence. He thinks nothing of this, and simply “reassures” her by saying he won’t hurt her unless she tries to kill him while he reaches the platform to reach her.

Remember the first training manual when it said that one should keep at least 3 feet away from the water? Yeah nah! Man strolls up and casually stands near the border with a fish at hand so she can take it - in other words, putting himself at risk of getting snatched as well due to the proximity! - and when she doesn’t come, he decides to kneel down - which he does acknowledge is dangerous and stupid (but he still does it anyway!) - but still, the mer doesn’t move even as he grumbles about how she won’t make money if she starves.

So deciding that she’s still too drugged to eat, he leaves her the fish and goes to feed Cadmium/Niku instead. He’s immediately unnerved by the way it stares at him like the older mer do (trying to find a weakness to exploit and I’m already tired of this sh-) and considers that maybe giving him to the inexperienced Jen wasn’t a good idea.

Still, he tries to feed him, but he only glares at him, so just like with “Iodine” he leaves him the fish and backs up.

He complains about his lack of success to Jen when she arrives and also warns her about the dolphin.

Jen then approaches Iodine/Erie’s tank, which has Finn remark that he keeps forgetting that she’s seen the mer up close (even tho he’d previously shown her Ray and K/Clair and she surely had opportunities to see them in the days that followed), and when she notes how strange the mer looks, this causes him to remember how his father acted when he first told everyone about his discovery.

Oh and you can tell he has a favorite parent, because he says that he believed him simply “because why would he lie?” while he has nothing to day about how his mother disagreed and argued with her husband because of it.

I guess that got him sentimental, because due to not wanting Jen to think their boss was the one who discovered merfolk, he starts telling her about how it was actually his father Dr Cale Jarvis, how he lost his job and was mocked for his claims before he eventually he disappeared without a trace in his pursuit of the truth, causing Delmara - who remember, was his student- to make it her mission to prove him right. Which, according to Finn, didn’t take long.

This is shown in a two short paragraph flashback (which is written just like the rest of the text, making it indistinguishable from the paragraphs surrounding it unless you really look at it) , in which she stormed into Serge’s family restaurant to show everyone the mer she found and kept in a tank, and Finn was so entranced by this that he decided to work for her ever since.

Jen then hopes that the mer’s tail will heal and he reassures her that she will (as long as they get her to eat) and that she’ll be their biggest star, while at the same time unnerving the mer by grinning creepily at her.

In the afternoon, while Finn’s sure the quinaldine has worn off by then, neither mer or dolphin have eaten, instead swimming away from any fish that are thrown at them “as though it’s a grenade and not food”. Also he’s irritated by the fact that the mer keeps curling up “as if she can hide”.

As he checks the water parameters (with a pole - why don’t you use those to feed the mers too?) Delmara comes in to check his progress. He tells her that so far he’d only had to shock the mer to separate her from the dolphin and that neither have eaten, which he assumes is the result of the sedatives.

However his boss points out that the dolphin isn’t sedated, and wants him to eat so she doesn’t lose the money she paid for it if it dies. And after failing to get Io’s attention and cursing out the fishermen for presumably putting extra quinaldine for the dolphin in spite of mammals not being affected by it, she orders Finn to shock her to wake her up before she calls in the vet.

He hesitates a little due to recalling the pain of the shock… and when I say “a little” I mean it, because that doesn’t stop him from picking the electroshocker ™ up and using it in literally the next sentence - in the same paragraph no less! “I hesitate” my a-

Anyway, he does as Delmara orders, and once he shocks her twice and she swims in a panic- confirming that she’s healthy enough to move - Delmara says she’ll get the vet (something that could show us more about the medical procedures used for the creatures - but just like many other things, we never get to see it) and takes her leave, not before warning him and Jen that he wants the mer to be performing by July, less than two months.

Finn notes that while it is a tight schedule for a new show it’s doable as long as they can get the mer to eat… which they don’t manage to do even after two days have passed.

And even though he should feel grateful that his ward isn’t actively trying to send him to the next life, Finn says he “likes the ones that fight” ( even though once again, this makes her easier to handle than if she actively planning to murder him) and calls Io/Erie boring for just curling up with the dolphin.

Weren’t you just happy two chapters ago that her cowardly nature meant she would be easier to work with?!

He’s so frustrated by this that he kicks the tank and after Jen gets the dolphin to eat (which is said by her and not shown) he makes her clean the dead fish in the tank while he sets out to see if Mia and Laz (which we don’t see) have any advise on how to handle the mer.

Yes, you heard that right: this fucking idiot decided to leave Jen -someone who he constantly says is inexperienced -alone with a creature he sees as dangerous, when the rules say that there should be more than one person in the room while working with them.

Unsurprisingly, literally a sentence later he hears her scream five words after he’d left the room. Idiot.

So he rushes back in (but wait if his fellow trainers were nearby why didn’t they come in as well?) and calls himself a dumbass for his action - because he is one - when he finds a shivering Jen on the platform and attempts to console her.

Though at the same time he appears more concerned about the fact he might have to foam his mer for attacking his assistant.

Thankfully however, Jen is fine, and remember that dolphin necklace she has that I previously said will be important? Well, after she calms down enough to speak, she explains that while she was caught off guard by Io/Erie’s speed, the mer only took her necklace instead of harming her.

Finn then peers into the tank and, sure enough, the mer is holding the necklace.

So in spite of still thinking of mers as instinctual predators who aren’t smart enough as humans, he notes that “my girl is motivated by pretty things, not food.” ( just like with his thoughts on K/Clair’s and Argon/Huron’s interactions , why would he think that if, again, he doesn’t think mers are smart enough to have conversations or appreciate objects?! Why constantly contradict yourself, narration?)

So with that in mind, he decides to clean the fish himself and orders Jen - who btw, is still reeling from experiencing what was a near death experience from her perspective - to get fish from the market and also get some more cheap seaglass necklaces. Jen grumbles that hers wasn’t cheap but does as he says anyway… Pretty casually actually, for someone who nearly had a heart attack and straight up cried a few paragraphs earlier.

Chapter 9- Erie

Erie excitedly shows her guard the necklace she just snatched, and while she casually notes that her actions caused the landfolk to scream, it was worth it due to the seaglass reminding her of home, and that compared to it the water here doesn’t feel right.

She then sees a loop with a net enter the water, and briefly fears that it might take the necklace. But to her relief it only scoops up the dead fish, so she goes back to talking to Niku in spite of the fact that he can’t hear her, but it’s the only thing keeping her sane (which only consists of two sentences in which the “talk” is told instead of shown) until the other landfolk (Finn) steps between then once more while holding a container full of fish, and she once again retreats while clutching the necklace.

The landfolk then tips the container before talking to her and… ok let me clear this up first:

As shown previously, Erie does not understand human language (which she calls “air words”) and so has no idea what the human characters are saying, and her thoughts clearly show that. However from now onwards, despite said lack of understanding, the text itself shows us most of the time precisely what the humans are saying, completely ruining the immersion of her limited pov, since the reader very clearly understands what they are saying (since all of the text- including said dialogues in her pov - are written in the same language and way) but she doesn’t, making some of her discoveries and statements feel redundant. Which didn’t happen in chapter 7 and helped the human characters have a mysterious and creepy vibe from her perspective, so idk why the author decided to change that.

Like in this instance; we are clearly shown that he’s telling her that she needs to eat; but as stated before, she doesn’t understand shit!

However, she does pick out that he keeps repeating “eat” and “Iodine” constantly, and while there’s a sentence of her pondering the connection between “eat” and the fish, for some reason there’s no similar questioning when it comes to “Iodine”.

In fact, she instantly realizes that it’s a name meant for her, which makes her wonder if she and the others were brought here to be kept as landfolk pets.

The idea offends her so much (at least I presume it does, cause after that observation the text doesn’t really show her doing anything that indicates she’s mad - just wrapping her fingers around the seaglass and that’s that) that when she hears the name again, she snaps at the landfolk by telling him her actual name and demanding that he take her home.

While at first this only causes the landfolk to go straight for the “painful loop” - since remember, they don’t allow the mers to make noise -, she persists and eventually gets him to realize she’s actually saying her name, much to his utter bafflement and shock.

Ok so… if her language (which her kind share with dolphins) is different enough from the one of humans, to the point that our usual alphabet is very unlikely to apply to it and people don’t register their sounds (which considering they share it with dolphins, it’s implied they communicate primarily with squeaks and clicks) as words at first… how was Finn able to correctly understand and say her name after she indicated that the sound she was making was one?

(Like it would have made a little more sense if Erie tried to imitate the way humans speak while saying her name so that he understood it better.)

In any case, the landfolk takes just two sentences to recover from what is essentially a world shattering revelation - because wow, who would have thought that these human looking creatures that they constantly dismissed as mere animals actually had proof of complex vocalizations right in front of their fucking faces, but they never discovered this because they kept shocking them into silence?! - before he immediately goes up to tell her that he’s named Finn.

After he jumps back when Erie presses her hands against the glass- - which puzzles her since she has no idea what she could possibly do to him in her current state - she excitedly relays her findings to Niku (who can’t still hear her) before telling his name to Finn.

Again, I wonder how he’s perfectly able to pronounce and discern all of this.

In any case, while Niku is glaring at Finn, Erie wonders if she would be able to ask the landfolk about what they want with her kind if she could just “speak air”, since while she’s sure they won’t eat her - considering how kind foams when they die, though, why would she think anything would consider them a viable food source? - , she’s confused about the fact that the only things her captors have done is harmless stuff (didn’t she see them being the ones who shocked her?) like speak, watch her and throw dead fish. She’s especially confused about the dead fish.

Just then, the landfolk she took the seaglass from (Jen) returns, and Finn instantly rushes up to introduce them to one another, much to Jen’s shock. Also Erie notes as she’s saying her name that it’s a strange one, while she likes Finn’s name.

Because of course she’s gonna be more fond of the guy who’s gonna be her love inte- I-I mean, the guy who’s name feels good in her tongue. Yeah yeah … let’s just get back on track.

The two landfolk start to talk to one another (which is one of the few things we don’t get to understand with her), before Finn pulls out a fish from the bag Jen was carrying, much to Erie’s dismay. And it’s only when Finn mimes biting at it that she finally realizes that she’s supposed to eat the fish…. which she finds gross cause they are dead.

But like… isn’t her kind predators? Isn’t eating dead stuff supposed to be something they should be used to and have to do to survive? Sure, they live in the ocean, where one can’t just leave their prey lying around after catching it, but I’m sure eating them alive isn’t always an option all the time!

Anyway, the idea of eating a dead fish that was caught in a net like her causes Erie to hesitate in spite of her present hunger… until Finn pulls out another seaglass necklace, and she reluctantly agrees to eat it in exchange for the object.

Satisfied that his plan (which only now makes sense than it had before due to him now knowing this mer is smart enough to speak and thus be swayed by something like this) has worked, Finn guides her to the platform and greets her - another example where we clearly see what he’s babbling about but Erie’s narration says she doesn’t understand what he means) before he repeats his dumbass move of crouching down in front of the water from earlier. And then he has the gall to jump back when Erie does take the fish as if he’d expected to be pulled along with it (which she thinks she just might do if they don’t give her the necklace).

She sniffs the fish, and is surprised when not only it smells fine, but like the ocean, so much so that she ends up swallowing it all (except the eyeballs) and is left wanting more.

Finn is smiling smugly when she returns, but he’s caught off guard when she snatches the bag by his feet instead of the necklace he was holding. She doesn’t find more food, but it’s overjoyed upon finding that it’s full of necklaces, including a magenta colored one that she puts on, causing Jen to laugh (which surprises her since it sounds like merfolk laugher) while Finn flushes.

However, she’s still confused about the fact that they didn’t hurt her (how hasn’t she realized that they are the ones that shocked her and Niku? Shouldn’t seeing Finn walk towards the “loop” made her put two and two together?) and so she decides that she needs to learn to “speak air” in order to find out why they’re here.

[robocatfan]

An angry summary of Speak the Ocean by Rebecca Enzor -Part 7

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6

Fun fact: the more stuff I put between parenthesis, the more riled up by this goddamn story and characters I am :D

Chapter 12- Finn

As he and Jen walk away from the pair, Finn reminds his companion that they’ll get into trouble if someone sees Erie and Niku in the same tank. But when for some reason Jen - aka the person who suggested putting them together in the first place - asks if they should go back on their decision, Finn declines , since while he feels both like a dick for separating them in the first place and an idiot for letting them reunite, he doesn’t have the heart to do so at the moment.

So he tells her that they’ll come back early in order to separate them, and they both agree to go out for a drink, but in a different establishment since Finn feels they need to talk without their coworkers being present.

Two sentences later - and in the same page after 7 short paragraphs, 6 of which are composed of just short sentences of their dialogue, no less - it instantly cuts to them (well, at least Jen) already in the place, and Finn orders three drinks as soon as he sits.

Jen, who already has her own beer, says that “she doesn’t know about that” ( about what?) but concedes when Finn reminds her that a mermaid talked to her.

After they down their shots (where Finn notes that Jen can down them like a pro despite her lack of beer knowledge… do you need that in order to do the basic, instinctual action of drinking?),Jen asks just what they have to talk about that the other interns can’t hear.

As he downs more beer, Finn corrects her by saying they are trainers, not interns (does that even matter to the subject?), and for the millionth time reminds her that they are both fucked, and not just because they could get fired if Corporate (Delmara) or anyone else found out what they did.

When she first assumes that their actions may have broken the law, he then asks her if she imagines Erie as either Ariel (not again!-), a velociraptor?! (why that?! Sharks would be a more apt comparison!) or as a pet, which understandably baffles her. And when she responds that she sees her as a mermaid too depressed to eat, this mf claims that “predators don’t get depressed.”

Sure, some animals may not process emotions like us to the point of being capable of being “depressed”, but they sure as hell have emotions like that in some way!

But instead of saying otherwise like she should, the next sentence has Jen ask Finn what’s wrong. what is this about, covering his hand with hers, yada yada yada.

Does he look concerned? Is there even a hint in this half page exchange that indicates that he’s genuinely worried and concerned and subsequently justifies her reaction? Anything besides him drinking and comparing a mer, a sea creature, to a fucking Jurassic park raptor of all things?!

… NO!

Anyway, after contemplating her eyes and hair to distract himself for a moment, Finn tells her about Hannah Michaels (remember her, cause she’ll be brought up in later chapters and she’s somewhat important), who had eyes like her… and whom Jen immediately assumes he slept with, for some reason. He denies that due to being younger, and explains that she was an experienced orca trainer who’s been in Oceanica since its beginnings, and who used to claim that her assigned mer (named Carbon) was tame and that she’d made friends with him, to the point that Finn compares him to a pet… and then said “pet” ripped her face off in the middle of a show.

Something that should have made its way into the news considering it happened in front of a live audience, and to a lesser extent the other trainer deaths too, to the point that one would think that at least some of the public would see Oceanica with scrutiny due all of this… but, just like with everything else, we don’t get even a hint of that. To the point that Finn tells Jen this as though no one outside of Oceanica has even a sliver of knowledge about their deceased employees.

Maybe this would be more reasonable if they said that the establishment covers up the deaths of employees. But then again, nothing in the text indicates that they do, and even if it did, we get no idea how important or financially stable this place is, so we don’t know if they even would be able to pull up such a stunt or not.

Also he doesn’t even question why the mer did that to her. Idk, maybe because she may have treated him less like a person and more like a dog?! Who cares, am I right?!

In any case, after letting Jen process this for a full thirty seconds (he counted them, apparently) , he goes full dramatic queen mode and starts telling her that she’ll be dead as soon as she thinks of Erie as a friend, since “She’s a predator. A velociraptor.( SHARKS! Just call her a SHARK!! BABY SHARK didn’t become a trend for a good portion of 2016 just for you to forget those animals exist!!!) A killer.”

…

…Book. Book please. Could you please stop trying to hype up your mermaids as the most dangerous, murderous things in the world and then not even give us a hint, not even a scene in the present from the mer pov, that backs up that claim? That gives credence to this guy’s words, exaggerated as those are? That makes them feel like an actual danger?! Anything that isn’t just short scenes that are never brought up later or the characters telling us about events that happened in the past?!

And even after they’ve both just learned that Erie’s smart enough to speak, this guy keeps going on and on when Jen’s “trying to reconcile depressed, vain ( oh so we are calling anyone who just likes jewelry and to look pretty “vain”?! OK THEN) Erie with the idea of getting her face ripped off”, saying that no, she cannot do what Hannah did, that he almost died because Maddy , (fucking MADDY - he still blames her - WHY?!-) “forgot how dangerous the mer are” (can’t you even consider that maybe she just stood there frozen because she knew they were dangerous, FINNEGAN?!), that Jen needs to keep her wits about so that he, HE - not HER as well- doesn’t end up in a hospital again and omg-

SHUT UP

I DON’T EVEN CARE IF YOU ARE TRYING TO BE WELL MEANING OR NOT-

SHUT

THE FUCK

UUUUUUUUUUP!!!!

……. *sigh* Okay, let’s continue-

So even after he sees that he ruined Jen’s mood, Finn does not care at all since his warnings might keep them alive and asks her if she wants another shot and she obliges… probably because his incessant rants traumatized her more than all the yapping about “mers are the perfect predator and killer, you can’t befriend them blah blah”

The next morning, Finn finds Erie and Niku (whom he compares to a pit bull) still together, and goes to retrieve the bag of necklaces from Erie’s tank. Also remember the one that Erie’s been supposedly wearing since Chapter 9? Well it essentially disappears from existence and it’s never brought up again after this.

Jen comes in just after he’s finished, and as she briefly glances at the tank he notes that she isn’t seeing Erie as a velociraptor (uuuuuuuuuugh-)

He gives her back her dolphin pendant and advises her not to wear it in front of the mer, as well as refrain from calling her by her real name in front of the others.

Jen is still understandingly deflated, which he seems to feel bad for. Unfortunately, immediately after that sentence, he says that “it's time to destroy any remaining threads” because he’s sure that the separation will go as smoothly as the first one, only now they’ll know what Erie’s screaming.

Even with this knowledge however, he’s not less eager to do it.

Before they can begin, however, Jen asks the question I have been asking this whole time - aka how on earth has no one figured out that mer are capable of speech - and Finn responds by reminding her of the events of Chapter 4 - which, if you remember, shows us that the establishment silences its wards.

Still doesn't answer why no one outside of Oceanica has figured it out even after 6 years of the species’ discovery.

But when Jen (correctly!) concludes that they do this so that people don’t think the mers are human, this mf has the gall, the nerve, the audacity to still say that the mers aren’t human!

Sure, they aren’t.. physically. But how come even after you’ve seen this mermaid talk, have her own personal name, have a personal like for necklaces, and show a human level of emotion and intelligence, you still have the nerve to dismiss her and her kind as mere fish and keep dehumanizing them?!

If this were actually a story where merfolk were actually a dangerous predatory species and one had to genuinely be careful around them regardless if they were sapient, then maybe, just maybe, all of this talk and warnings, while exaggerated, could be somewhat justifiable.

But unfortunately, as much as it wants to portray itself as one, this book ain’t this sort of story and it’s “murderous mers” act just like normal people, so 80% of what Finn says is pure bullshit.

AND EVEN IF THEY AREN’T HUMANS, EVEN IF THEY ACTUALLY ACTED LIKE NORMAL ANIMALS, HOW IS THAT A VALID EXCUSE TO TREAT THEM THIS BADLY?!!

Anyway, after reminding Jen that dolphins also have their own language when she counters that the “non-human” mers have one - reminder; mers and dolphins in this universe share a language, and disregarding its weird communication logic, it renders this mf’s argument moot - Finn wakes up Erie and smiles when she says his name… which would be kinda cute if it weren’t for all that he said previously in this entire chapter and the fact that he’s still thinking about how fucked he is.

After talking with her a bit (and her correcting him when he keeps calling her “beautiful, sweet, yada yada” instead of her name), he tries using a necklace to convince her to go back into her tank. And the second that doesn’t work, in the next four words (all in the same sentence and paragraph, no less!) After he realizes this, he decides -with absolutely zero hesitation even after what he’d learned about Erie up until this point - that it’s “time to use threats”, aka the electroshocker ™.

How come this text keeps attempting to portray and insinuate that he feels “regret” about this and what he had to say to Jen and then make him casually do shit like this a sentence later?!

Seriously though, even when Jen tries to stop him and Erie panics and starts yelling when he places the shocker in the water (finally making her put two and two together and realize they were the ones shocking her), he doesn’t relent - with 3 paragraphs later confirming that he even had his finger in the start up button! - and orders his companion to tell Erie to get in the tube.

And instead of trying to stop him or wretch that electroshocker ™ out of his hands, Jen complies, and after exchanging some words with Niku, Erie reluctantly obliges. But just as Finn relaxes, a furious Niku easily (due to this guy standing near the water, like a fool) snatches the electroshocker™ from him and breaks it!!

YES KING!!

Finn’s startlement about it lasts for only a sentence, and despite what could have been a close call for him he shows no worry about it, much less thinks of the implications as to why Niku did what he did. All he’s thinking about as he orders Jen to open the other side of the tube is cursing out Niku and how his boss will be pissed about the loss of this expensive piece of equipment.

Oh but when two of their most popular mers die, no one brings it up and worries about the financial loss that must have caused. I see where your priorities are, then.

Chapter 13- Erie

After this whole ordeal Erie realizes that her guard was right about the landfolk, and she’s feeling spiteful and pissed.

So much in fact, that in that same paragraph she throws a fish back from the water when Finn tries to feed her (which is supposed to be funny but with the way everything’s written, the humor doesn’t land), paces, glares at them and tells Niku that she’ll drown them when she gets the chance (she does not. She doesn’t even try).

And speaking of Niku, it is not acknowledged that he broke the “loop” and any consequences for this action are never brought up despite having broken what Finn calls an expensive piece of equipment.

And apparently all of this paragraph took place in the span of the entire day, because in the first sentence of the next paragraph - the second one in this chapter, btw! - Erie tells us that it’s the end of the day and Finn are Jen are arguing, and by the former’s scowl she surmises that the latter has won, much to her pleasure since she hates Finn more.

Finn speaks some “nonsense air words” to her (which she doesn’t understand - one of the few times were we are also on the same page as her), and guides her to the tube, and while she’s cautious as though she hadn’t already gone through it and come out fine, in the same sentence she still goes through.

Both she and Niku are confused by the landfolk’s actions, and after Finn throws another fish at her (which she doesn’t eat out of spite in spite of her hunger), he and Jen leave.

The next two paragraphs are spent going over the next two days, in which nothing noteworthy occurs or is done - not even any attempts by Erie to learn landfolk language like she kept saying she would. It's just the repetition of the “letting Erie sleep with Niku before going back to her own tank in the morning” routine while Erie’s confused about it.

Oh and on the second night she ends up breaking her nails when trying to open the entrance of the tube. Which, just like when her tail fin got ripped in chapter 2, is stated in the span of just a sentence and in the most casual, matter of fact way, like she’s telling us she managed to get a new dress instead of going through something that’s probably very painful.

Anyway after bemoaning the “routine“ of the last two days, Erie notes that Finn and Jen are constantly fighting (which is only told here, and would have been better stated if it had been placed somewhere in the previous paragraphs) until that day - the one after she broke her nails? In the morning or later? It’s never stated - Jen changes things up by showing her a black thing (a phone) and playing a video of one of K/Clair’s performances.

Though confused by what she’s seeing at first, Erie soon recognizes her sister and, not knowing this is just a recording of her - much less what that is - she thinks her sister has been put in the “rectangle” and tries to get her attention to no avail, simultaneously revealing her actual name to the landfolk.

And this is when the book flip flopping between making us understand what the human characters are saying while Erie doesn’t in some cases (thus sometimes making what she says redundant ), but then not doing that in some others comes at a detriment. Because when it does the former, we have scenes like this one that are supposed to have a serious tone… that gets ruined by also having a sentence like this in the middle of them.

Idk if the author is intending to be funny or not, but just like the “I throw the fish back” sentence, the humor doesn’t land, and if it does it doesn’t fit the mood of the scene.

Anyway, Erie is also unnerved by how “still and silent” her sister is when Finn shows her a photo of her (since she also does not know what those are).

Then Finn shows her various pictures of other mers - including Ray - none of which she recognizes (despite all of them being presumably fellow citizens of the Seadom - or at least mers living in the same territory - who got taken, since it’s not stated if Oceanica takes mers from other places, so it’s amazing how she’s unable to recognize even one of them.) until she sees Huron, and just like with her sister she tries to speak with him (with no exclamation points), but “he” doesn’t react.

When Finn takes the device (an thus “Huron”) away Erie, sad about him and assuming that she’ll end up like “him” (which she calls a “fate worse than turning into foam”… and yet this worry is never brought up again), sinks and once again curls up close to Niku.

[robocatfan]

An angry summary of Speak the Ocean by Rebecca Enzor -Part 6

Happy New years, let’s start with this

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 7

Chapter 10- Finn

Finn is mortified because

He can’t believe he got “outsmarted by a fish.”

Said “fish” can talk, in spite of him constantly swallowing everything Delmara said about mers not being intelligent enough for their “noises” to be a language (as if any noise an animal makes isn't made to communicate something, essentially making it their species’s “language”.)

This means that not only was the mer communicating with the dolphin while he was getting them fish, but that also means that she was actually screaming Niku’s name when they were getting separated (as though a non sapient animal isn’t capable of somewhat communicating with another and show distress when going through shit like that.)

Now that he knows Erie can speak and he’s now “thinking of her as Ariel” because of it (I swear if I hear these guys saying something like “seeing them as Ariel” one more time I’m gonna-), he’s now broken what it’s considered Oceanica’s number one rule: Never Humanize the Mer, and he knows from experience that anyone who does that and doesn’t view the Mer as the “perfect predator” that they are (which they aren’t), ends up injured or worse…

Which, if we ignore the fact that the Mer are as sapient as humans are, makes sense, since treating an animal like it were a person can lead to serious consequences.

HOWEVER, even before this point he’s spent most of the previous chapters constantly saying that the Mer are clever, almost seemed to be talking to one another, look for weaknesses to exploit, seem to have a preference for jewelry over food, all that stuff. In other words? humanizing them all this time.

In any case, he now feels guilty about the separation thing - but only the separation thing - I don’t see anything that says he feels bad about shocking her too - and realizes Jen has been right all along, and he tells her this when she first assumes his freaked out state is due to Erie snatching the bag with the necklaces (which he feels she deserves now that he knows what he’s done), essentially “condemning” her too.

Note that he’s feeling all of this just because of “his” mer, but thoughts about if the other mer in the establishment are also able to talk or previously expressed emotion, - much less how he and his coworkers treat them in spite of the implications of this revelation - has never cross his mind. Just to show how “important” the other characters are to this narrative :v.

Then Jen starts suggesting something which he knows is “dangerous” cause by this point he knows she won’t dismiss it by saying that Erie’s “just a fish.”

And he’s proven right, because Jen’s “dangerous” suggestion… turns out to be simply letting Erie and Niku be in the same tank for a while.

So he asks how she plans to place the mer back into her own tank before anyone notices, and he’s shocked when Jen grabs his arm - because for whatever reason he thought this was her way of hitting on him?! (you have just known her for a dozen days, you’ve said it yourself!) - and suggest bribing her with the necklace he’s still holding.

He thinks it won’t work… even though as Jen points out, that successfully managed to get Erie to eat. Not only that, but he was the one who came up with the bribery idea in the first place even before he knew Erie was intelligent enough to go along with it!

So he concedes (since he now definitely knows the mer likes pretty things. And you'll think they’ll use the necklace to bribe her, considering how the narration specifically gives attention to it… but no. Apparently Jen just referred to “bribery” in general terms, because even though Finn knows she can’t understand him - or at least enough to understand everything he’s saying - he tells Erie that he’ll let her see Niku but that she has to come back when he says so.

Actually, does that sort of deal fit the definition of bribery?

In any case, Erie then asks about Niku, and we get to see how her voice sounds from Finn’s perspective. Again, in spite of her language supposedly not sharon human grammatical conventions due to her kind sharing it with dolphins - who communicate with vocalizations mostly disconnected from any sound a human might make or understand, implying this also applies to mer - her words sound completely coherent, clear in the water, higher pitched than how old she appears… and it also reminds him of Chlorine’s scream after he performed the rip no jutsu on her gills.

All of this makes me wonder how on earth no one has noticed the complexity of mer sounds if they supposedly sound so clear and how like human sp- oh wait, the shocking thing. Right.

Then again, there must certainly be other groups of people (who we never hear about, like Oceanica is the only place in existence who deals with mer) out there who also capture mers but don’t shock them everytime they breathe, and thus may also have realized this way sooner. Considering 6 years have passed since merfolk were discovered, it’s strange how no news or papers making light of this aspect have been made so far.

Continuing with the plot, Finn shudders at the memory of his murder before he walks to the tube connecting the tanks and opens the glass door on Erie’s side. She’s cautious at first due to its small size, but rushes in as soon as he points and says the dolphin’s name.

Jen then closes the door behind her, and before she can panic Finn opens the door to Niku’s side, and Erie immediately rushes to hug him like he did on their first day there. Finn then notes that she’s making “mer noises” and catches himself before he can think that Niku looks relieved, “as if a dolphin can feel relief.”

… Considering their intelligence and the events happening right now, I wouldn’t put it past them to be able to do so.

Jen beams at this heartwarming display, but all that this guy can think about while seeing this is about how fucked he and his coworker are.

Chapter 11- Erie

Erie and Niku hug one another and the latter is glad that his princess is safe. She reassures him that, while hungry due to not knowing the landfolk wanted them to eat dead fish - again, I wonder why these supposed predators who mostly eat fish to survive don’t register dead prey as food, like that isn’t how they mainly get sustenance in the open waters. (Also remember: Jen somehow managed to get Niku to eat in spite of said dislike of dead stuff. How? We don’t get an answer) - she’s fine, before her guard notices the necklace she’s wearing and asks about it.

Erie fingers the jewel with her still ink-stained nails and pushes away the thought of her being no more than another blackened shell before telling Niku that Finn bribed her with it, then clarifying that he’s one of the two landfolk and since they kept calling her Io, she told them their names.

Niku gapes in a mixture of disbelief and annoyance - “basically a regular Niku look” - and asks when did she learn to “speak the air.”

And in case you are wondering, the book insists on constantly making Erie and Niku say “the” before “air” or “ocean” when talking about them (which I’m gonna mostly skip in the summaries), possibly to make those “languages” sound more mythical or foreign to both them and the reader. But imagine if you applied that to normal languages; imagine someone actually saying they “speak the English” or something like that.

Anyway, Erie’s narration clarifies that she can’t speak air (more like she doesn’t, really), she “speaks the ocean” - hence the name of this book - before explaining how she learned the landfolk’s names by way of summarizing what she did in Chapter 9 (aka pointing at herself and saying her name until Finn did the same, and then telling Niku that she does plan to learn to speak air to ask why they are here.

Niku stares at the landfolk (where Erie notes that Finn doesn’t look happy like Jen) and is rightfully skeptical of her plan and the landfolk’s supposed kindness - and in spite of Erie wondering otherwise, he’s absolutely certain that they are not going to take them back home. Not only that, but after she gathers the courage to ask the question, he affirms that this is also the fate that befell Huron, her two missing family members, and the other mer.

So Erie traces his scars like she used to do when she was younger and her mother disappeared , noting that she used to imagine them as a secret path that would lead her to her. But now that she shares her fate, she realizes these scars were caused by a net (which she now also shares - but it’s only now that we get to know about it), so she asks Niku how he got him as well as how he managed to return from the landfolk.

After hesitating for a moment (enough for Finn and Jen to be gone by this point), he admits that it was all thanks to the queen.

Erie, excited to hear a story about her missing mother in her prime and that also doesn’t involve others blaming her from their current situation (for some reason) , listens intently as he tells her that one day, he and his two younger siblings were trying to find a school of fish and bring word back of it to the Seadom.

Once they found it though, they attempted to corral it back in hopes that it would earn Niku a place as a guard (even though as he notes, “it was an impossible plan”) However, they were so focused on what they were doing that they didn’t notice the arrival of two boats, much less the net stretched between them until his brothers slammed into it, with him being too stunned by the events to escape or help them.

He pauses to take a breath in the surface, and Erie - knowing his moods as well as how he blames himself for everything that befalls those he cares about (which we didn’t even get a little hint or implication about until now) - traces his side, wishing she could take back all those times she made him worry or insulted him by calling him a jellyfish.

When he sinks back, Niku reveals that the boats were capsized by a storm, and that he and his siblings were unable to surface due to still being trapped, which left him with his scars.

After surfacing once more and pacing around for a bit, he reveals that his brothers drowned - with the matter of fact way he states it actually being noted in-universe, disturbing Erie - while he passed out, but by the time he came to, he was free of the nets thanks to the Queen, who’d snuck away to save them in spite of her useless husband saying that it was too dangerous to come for their aid.

She helped him stay on the surface to breathe until he was strong enough to swim on his own, all the while telling him stories about her children , with him - and thus the text - only specifically noting Clair, the green haired Eaton - her only son, (who will be important later…. well, yesn’t. It’s gonna take a while to get there, but you’ll see what I mean) - and of course, Erie.

He pledged his life to her since then, and she promoted him to guard and asked him to safeguard his youngest daughter, which he now feels he failed to do.

Erie reassures him that he hasn’t and says, for the millionth time, that she’ll learn to speak to the landfolk and figure out what they want with them ( ok ok, but then what? What does she plan to do after getting that answer she oh so wants? We aren't given any idea of that in the text , and frankly, I don’t think she even thought about it herself), remaining resolute - even when Niku warns her to not trust their captors and that no one has returned after getting captured - that she will find a way to get them back home, and that she will save them both just like how her mother saved her guard.

Now, does she actually ask her question her ?… We’ll see.

[robocatfan]

An angry summary of Speak the Ocean by Rebecca Enzor -Part 4

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7

Preface 2

We get another in-universe training manual. This time it’s about how to handle a mer arrival.

It tells us that the tank should be cleaned and cycled for a week - which as stated before, should actually be for 2-8 weeks! - before they set out to hunt a mer, and that all equipment like the tanks and cranes should be inspected and ready to use by then.

It also notes that the mer will be drugged with quinaldine - a chemical used for the transportation of which (guess I did learn something useful from this book, huh) - for transport, but that doesn’t mean they’ll be any less dangerous.

Next, it talks about the transportation procedure, which involves lifting the mer from the boat with the dock crane and placing them in the transport tank with the head and arms facing back (“back” as in down? The opposite direction? Eh, who knows?) all while an employee keeps watch.

It also warns (in all caps) to not let the creature sit under the sun since that will cause it to foam from shock.

Once that part of the process is done, a vet is called for a simple visual examination of the mer. Seriously, that’s all they are allowed to do - they can’t even place their hands near its tank! One wonders how these mers don’t end up sick more often.

Anyway, when that’s done, the net should be hooked once again to the crane and slowly lowered into the holding tank, since dropping them so suddenly into colder waters can also cause them to foam from shock. Understandable, but considering how cold the waters of their natural habitat can get, they might be able to handle the temperature just fine.

And once the mer is fully inside and the net is removed, the lights should be dimmed and one of two fish should be thrown into the water to slow the mer to eat and recover once the effects of the quinaldine (which may last for about one or two days) wear off.

Lastly, if the mer shows aggression or dates to be just a tiny bit noisy, the electroshocker ™ should be used until they are under control.

Once again, no wonder these guys act so aggressive towards people :v.

Chapter 6- Finn

We are back to Finn’s perspective as he notes how crowded the dock behind Oceanica is (it doesn’t really feel that way, really) when the hunting boat arrives with the mer. He also notes the fishermen had to venture way out to find it (explaining why they were in the supposedly safe hunting zone in the previous chapter), and that the last day was filled with preparations, including that of the tanks he and Jen (mostly Jen) cleaned the week prior.

When the net lifts the creature (Erie) out of the boat, he and Jen are surprised upon seeing the dolphin (aka Niku) she’s hugging, since that’s proof that the theory that both species have a symbiotic relationship is true, as well as the stories the fishermen told about dolphins helping the mers steer away from boats.

And yet we never get to see any of that in the previous chapters- much less them being successful in it, considering the big amount of darkened shells.

The pair is lowered into a ten feet long and 3 feet wide transport tank that’s barely big enough for them, and while Delmara argues with the fishermen about the price for their catch - since she doesn’t want to pay them extra for the dolphin, Finn and Jen step for a closer look.

Finn then sees that the mer has the same hair color that the mer his dad found (aka the queen), and his first thought is that he knows exactly how to make her his. Ew.

But before that he remarks that she’s probably as young as their previous arrival, showing Jen that one can determine a mer’s age by how vibrant the tips of their fins are, and that the color fades with age. And when Jen comments that she’d expected the mer to be actively trying to slaughter everyone (most likely due to Finn’s constant, incessant warnings), he repeats what the training manual said about sedating the creatures.

As Delmara’s discussion continues (with Finn telling us in two sentences what they are doing instead of actually showing it), Jen suggests that, instead of separating the dolphin from the mer, they could have them perform together since that would draw in more people.

And though he notes that there’s something calculating in her gaze as she says that, that’s all it takes for Finn to be convinced by her idea and go up to talk to Delmara.

At first she dismisses him since she’s too busy cursing out the fishermen, but he manages to voice the suggestion and insists on it when she tries to refuse due to lacking a husbandry license for cetaceans. (but not before he mentally compares the woman who’s been essentially his mentor for the past few years to a Chihuahua.) Since they don’t have much time to decide due to the risk of the mer foaming under the sun, Finn persists.

And when Delmara still doesn’t relent even after he reminds her that she’d promised him a mer, notes that Jen could help due to having studied marine biology in university (but shouldn’t she already know that since, you know, she hired her in the first place?) and that someone needs to take over when he comes back to school (which I hope refers to college/ university, because this grown ass man surely has graduated by now) in August, Finn pulls out his trump card: a colored sketch he’d found in his dad’s office of the mermaid he’d discovered, which just so happens to resemble the once currently in their transport tank.

This finally is enough to sway Delmara to keep the dolphin and give the mer to him, but she warns him that he only has until the end of summer to make a profit. Finn’s mood is not affected by this: in fact, he’s so happy that he picks up and twirls Jen around when he goes to tell her the news. And since she came up with the idea in the first place, he’s making her his assistant.

She’s dismayed by this, and when she remarks at the apparent nepotism when Finn reminds her he’s friends with Delmara’s nephew, he notes that “he has a lot of responses to that, but most of them would get him smacked”, so they instead focus on moving the transport tank. Yes, them - not any of the supposed “many” employees that are crowding the dock.

Yeah, in spite of this place having enough workers to completely crowd the dock- some of whom could have done this task - it feels emptier than a bag of chips due to the fact that the only people we see doing or interacting with anything are the named characters. The others just exist to fill up space I guess.

Anyway, after reiterating that the tank is too small for the pair, Finn and Jen bring it to the holding tank room. As he calls the veterinarian over, Finn notes that while the mer is cowering instead of scrutinizing them like the rest of her kind (and that will make her easier to work with), her dolphin companion is actively attempting to protect her.

Since it’s also obscuring her from view, the vet tells Finn to hold it down- which he somehow manages to do, and then somehow gets a large cut from it a sentence later.

And I’m like ?????????

Someone please tell me how this even works, because how?!

Anyway after the vet finishes his checkup (which is not elaborated upon, to the point that there’s not even a remark about the literal tail injury!), and casually paying no mind to the large cut on his forearm after cleaning it up (which is never brought up again), Finn helps Jen crank the net up. And he notes that the mer gasps- gasps, a sound associated normally with humans - when the net lifts, but he doesn’t even think about it.

As they are slowly placing the net in the normal tanks and the mer tries to get her gills in the water (shouldn’t it be her mouth since that’s where the water enters her body?) Serge comes over, and upon seeing the creature’s hair color, suggests calling her Neon.

Jen corrects him and says that they should call her Dotty due to resembling a dottyback or royal gamma instead, and while Finn is in “nerd love” at her knowledge of reef fish, he rather go by their normal periodic table naming conventions. So after a couple of suggestions (including Cadmium, which they give to the dolphin due to being a male name), they decide to call the mer Iodine.

And once the pair is fully lowered, the group prepares to “separate these elements”. And while Jen grimaces and wonders if it’s necessary as Serge goes for the electroshocker ™ ( not before Finn warns him to not poke his mer like a jellyfish) Finn, in full corporate mode and unwilling to screw up his chance, tells her that not only will it make them easier to wake with, but allowing them to be together once they are performing will be “a good incentive to get them working. A treat for cooperating.”

… alright then.

While Jen isn’t fully convinced, she relents and everyone gets into position.

Chapter 7- Erie

After they are fully inside the tank, Erie - who’s still clinging to her guard- is surprised at the strangeness of their new surroundings and confused when the net starts to gather below them.

Niku is also confused (and Erie almost casually notes that she tasted the blood from his attack on the landfolk), but tells her to stay calm and not give the landfolk a reason to hurt her.

Just then a “loop” (aka the electroshocker ™ ) enters the water and the net shifts. And before Erie can ask what’s going on, they are both electrocuted.

As expected it hurts like hell, to the point that Erie feels like her body is burning and when it ends, they both end up floating belly up like the mers in chapter 4. And before either can recover, the net separates them.

The next five paragraphs are spent with Erie panicking, screaming and begging for her guard not to leave her as she tries to reach him through the ropes - and while he’s tense enough that she fears he might beach himself in an attempt to attack the landfolk, he just swims around and tells her he doesn’t know what to do instead of doing anything useful to save her like pulling at the net.

Eventually she’s completely lifted from the water, leaving him out of her reach and sight, only able to huff water at her.

As soon as she’s dropped into a different body of water, Erie screams for Niku and tries to reach him, but it’s blocked from doing so by a barrier that’s keeping them separated. And though she’s unable to hear him due to not being in the same space, she takes comfort in the fact that she can still see him.

Well, until one of the landfolk (aka Finn) steps between them, which causes her to back up and look at the surface in fear of the loop, and when she looks back at him, the creep smiles at her possessively. Once again, ew.

The next paragraph is spent describing how he - “a creature out of her nightmares” - looks from her perspective, with her noting his snail-like skin, the different colors of his “two tails” ( the term the text this time uses to describe the legs. Why didn’t it use that earlier instead of outright referring to them as legs?) and the large bump where his nostrils are. Once again, just like the advisor.

… you can probably guess what the author is intending to say with all of these constant reminders.

Anyway, she hears him say something she’s unable to understand before there’s a splash that she first assumes it’s the loop, but it’s instead the result of a dead fish thrown at the water, which confuses her immensely.

She then waits until the landfolk leaves to inspect the barrier, noting it’s mostly uniform and has few anomalies, including a thing resembling a tube worm (aka the tubes connecting the tanks) that connects their enclosure, but she can’t - doesn’t even try, really - figure out a way through.

So Erie only stares at Niku helplessly until her adrenaline fades and she curls up at the bottom of the enclosure, exhausted.

[aliteraryprincess]

August Wrap Up

Summer is over and I’m going back to school tomorrow, which naturally means my computer has decided to break. Because why the hell wouldn’t it? So I’m on my work laptop for the foreseeable future, which is the slowest thing in the world. So I might not be as active as I usually would be. Hopefully it will be fixed soon.  

Books Read- Goal: 6  Total: 6

Despite how the picture looks, I did make my reading goal for the month. They were mostly audiobooks and ebooks. I’d say my favorite of the month was  Charlotte Brontë Before Jane Eyre closely followed by Speak the Ocean. I didn’t really have a least favorite. Starred books are audiobooks and books with the ® sign are rereads

Charlotte Brontë Before Jane Eyre by Glynnis Fawkes - 4 stars

The Swallows by Lisa Lutz - 3 stars*

Postcolonialism: A Very Short Introduction by Robert J. C. Young - 3 stars  

Twilight by Stephenie Meyer - 4 stars ®

Austenland by Shannon Hale - 3 stars*

Speak the Ocean by Rebecca Enzor - 4 stars   

On Tumblr:

Not a ton here, but I am back to doing lists! What would my school year be if I didn’t use those to procrastinate?  

Birthday Haul

Reblogged: “Snow White” Retelling Recommendations Part 1

Reblogged: “Snow White” Retelling Recommendations Part 2

Tagged: The Racing to Read Tag

Tagged: Preferred Trope Tag

Plays aliteraryprincess Has Read

On the Blog:

I posted a fair amount of reviews as well as my first recommendation post over there and two “A Literary Life” posts. “A Literary Life” posts are just about bookish things going on with me and general bookish discussions. There will be lots of exciting things happening over here in September, so definitely check it out!  

A Bookish Birthday

Book Review: Charlotte Brontë Before Jane Eyre by Glynnis Fawkes

Book Review: The Swallows by Lisa Lutz

On Reading Slumps

Review: Speak the Ocean by Rebecca Enzor

Recommendations: What to Read When You Love Jane Austen

Review: Daddy: Stories by Emma Cline