Review #66 - Deep Blue by Jennifer Donnelly

Deep Blue was always going to be a book I would find difficult to review. On the one hand, I did enjoy it but then on the other hand this book has so many flaws and things I have issues with. So bear that in mind.

Deep Blue is a mermaid book about prophecies, underwater genocide and a force that spends his life chasing mermaids round the seas so quickly it means none of the supporting characters can grow in the slightest.

This is a book with a primarily female set of characters. I love love love books with female characters because I often find that women create more complex characters in books. I struggled with the girls in this because they were extremely simplistic. As a result I didn't really care. I didn't care about their relationships and I didn't care about how tired they were from all that singing and swimming . I also found towards the end all the characters were introduced too quickly as if the author got bored while writing.

The first setting was introduced wonderfully. You have to credit Ms Donnelly, she did do some great world building. It felt a lot like Triton's castle from The Little Mermaid (is this something to do with the fact it's published by Disney Hyperion?). There was also a large emphasis on singing as it is the way the mermaids do magic spells.  I really enjoyed that bit. There were "cliffhangers" at the end of each chapter but they were mostly shockingly bad.

I felt a lot of the book that I was in PSHE or in a Greenpeace seminar as there was a lot of anti-commercial-fishing-propeganda. I do believe that it is important to educate about environmental issues but when it's being presented as statements that you just have to accept I become a little annoyed. I felt like the book was treating me like an idiot. The worst thing is this is marketed at 9-12 year olds and I don't like that this is trying to influence them. 

This book is, of course, the first book in the series. In classic publisher style, there is no hint of this on the cover. This is also your classic "first book in a series" as it is just a set up book and doesn't feel like a book in it's own right. It left me feeling really, really frustrated.

I would recommend this to you if:
You want to read a mermaid book that isn't as adult as September Girls
You want an undersea adventure
You believe passionately in both fantasy fiction and the environment

I gave this three stars

Buy it here