Little, Brown Young Readers
September 4, 2012
304 pages
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Living under the sea with her sisters, the other girls that live under the water, Lo doesn't remember her human life before. Yet, she knows she had one that's been forgotten. Each of the girls, the sisters, did. Over time they forget it all. Lo isn't even her real name - and she knows in time she'll forget it, too.
Celia and her sisters are triplets, but that's not all that's not what makes them unique. No, it's their powers. Jane can see people's present, Anne their future. Celia, who can see someone's past by simply touching them has always felt she had the least of the three powers.
Then Jude, a musician on the pier falls in and she and Lo help save him. Lo, the girl from under the ocean who can't remember her past. The past Celia can see with just a touch.
Will their new connection be threatened by Jude? Or by the lore among the ocean girls that Lo can earn her humanity back by getting Jude to love her - and stealing his soul?
The first thing Fathomless had to do was convince me that seeing someone's past was actually not a much better 'power' than seeing their present. As Jackson Pearce writes it, seeing a person's present means knowing their feelings, intentions, etc and not just what they're doing so that did bump it up a bit.
But I was still unsure. Yes, you can ask someone about their past, but people can lie, not remember things. While I may not have been totally convinced that the past lost out to the present in powers, there were scenes that did a great job showing Celia's view. And how things worked for the sisters.
It was also a great set-up for her meeting Lo, a character who knows she has a past, but can't remember it. The characters became a great match.
Fathomless left me wishing for some of the atmosphere from Sweetly. This was a different setting yes, but neither the pier/beach area or the girls' school created much of a feeling. Live Oak - the whole town, really, but especially the main house - in Sweetly was so well envisioned and described that I missed having that here.
The mermaids/sirens/underwater girls in Fathomless have to watch out for storms, lest they get so turned and blown around they lose their way and are lost. At times, in this novel, I felt a bit like that reading. Part of Pearce's Fairytale Retellings series, this third installment doesn't twist tales as obvious - or well known - as the first two novels. The lore is unknown to the reader and, seemingly, to the characters as well. Previous parts of the series are brought in, making it both confusing at times but also interesting to make the connections.
The characters proved to be a great match for each other, their worlds while so different proved to have enough parallels to make them a great pair. Fathomless isn't a clear mermaid book which actually makes it better.
Rating: 7/10
thank you to LBYR and NetGalley for the egalley
This sounds like an interesting book. I have just started to read mermaid books but this looks like something I might like. Thanks for the review! I'll be adding it to my to read list!
ReplyDeleteI'm probably always looking for more mermaid books. This one was interesting in that it was a play-on Little Mermaid, but just barely - with a bunch of other stuff mixed in. (Similar to the other two in the series and their fairy tale twists.)
DeleteIt's a good read, though :) Thanks for commenting!