Daughter of the Sea
Apr. 13th, 2012 09:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chocolatepotI got this for free on Amazon, and I meant to post about it before, when I finally finished, but I was kind of sick of it then.
It starts off as the story of a Roman girl, which seemed pretty cool at first, but it was very cliché - you know, her parents promised that Callista could choose her own husband, but then they're trying to get her to marry this older man, and he turns out to be evil and takes over the colony from her father. In escaping from the villain with her mother and younger brother and the sea captain she has sexual tension with, she and the captain get pulled into the water and end up at ... Atlantis. Because they are the children of Neptune and sea nymphs (which means they are half-siblings, and while everyone in Atlantis is like, cool, you should be together, they can't get over incest). And then Callista gets out of Atlantis by destroying it so she can save her family, and the captain dies for her confusingly, and she is in love with this Hadrian guy.
The biggest problems were the lack of foreshadowing and the heroine's inconsistent attitude.
1) Atlantis came out of nowhere. I'm still WTFing. And then the nymphs were like, oh, you're Neptune's daughter, haven't you noticed that you're really charismatic and able to get people to do what you want? This at least had a little buildup, but it was just Callista thinking "now that my situation is bad, I'm going to try to make people like me, that's all I've got." And then when she gets someone to lend her a cloak for a disguise, they agree so fast it surprises her - but I thought that was leading up to that person being a goddess or something (which is technically possible, still, as it's a trilogy or something).
2) The one I remember best was towards the end - Avaritus, the evil guy, is knocked out and she can kill him like she's been trying to for ages, and she goes, "no, I can't kill him, he's defenseless." The next second, his (also evil, but unarmed) slave comes along and she reaches out and slits his throat. Then there's Atlantis - the whole country dies because she took too long in leaving as she was calling her younger sister a slut while gloating about Hadrian liking her more, but apart from a momentary thought that it was too bad, she doesn't care. She gets to be the apprentice of the woman in charge so that she can succeed her eventually and she just mopes about how unfair it is. Basically, Callista is presented as strong and amazing when she's a brattier-than-average, self-centered teenager.
Which ties in with another ... IDK if I'd call it a problem, but it's a weird thing that kept poking at me. There's this weird feeling of a Hunger Games parallel. Although it seems less clear now that it's been several days. But basically, she and Claudius (the captain) were chosen to be sent to the world above to punish their mothers, who had tried to rebel to get more power for nymphs or something. (Hadrian's mother is Thetis, the nymph in charge of Atlantis, btw.) So that's like the Games, using children to punish their parents. Hadrian and Claudius felt like Gale and Peeta to some extent, with Hadrian being a kind of bad-boy type. And I felt that Callista was supposed to be hard and damaged like Katniss, but it just felt pasted on and bratty. It doesn't sound much like THG right now, but when I was reading it kept jumping out at me in various ways.
And my last point. Avaritus was supposed to make my skin crawl as a sexual threat to Callista, but he passed up a LOT of chances to rape her. And I can understand why the author wouldn't want to write that as happening, but she really should have done a better job making it make sense for his character. He was the stock "bastard who hates the legitimately born" (which frankly I find icky) and had no qualms about doing anything to get what he wanted, it just made no sense for him to call Callista up to his chambers at night, then remind her he was going to marry her in a few days and send her away. It didn't even come across like he was enjoying her fear and anticipation, it just confused me.
It starts off as the story of a Roman girl, which seemed pretty cool at first, but it was very cliché - you know, her parents promised that Callista could choose her own husband, but then they're trying to get her to marry this older man, and he turns out to be evil and takes over the colony from her father. In escaping from the villain with her mother and younger brother and the sea captain she has sexual tension with, she and the captain get pulled into the water and end up at ... Atlantis. Because they are the children of Neptune and sea nymphs (which means they are half-siblings, and while everyone in Atlantis is like, cool, you should be together, they can't get over incest). And then Callista gets out of Atlantis by destroying it so she can save her family, and the captain dies for her confusingly, and she is in love with this Hadrian guy.
The biggest problems were the lack of foreshadowing and the heroine's inconsistent attitude.
1) Atlantis came out of nowhere. I'm still WTFing. And then the nymphs were like, oh, you're Neptune's daughter, haven't you noticed that you're really charismatic and able to get people to do what you want? This at least had a little buildup, but it was just Callista thinking "now that my situation is bad, I'm going to try to make people like me, that's all I've got." And then when she gets someone to lend her a cloak for a disguise, they agree so fast it surprises her - but I thought that was leading up to that person being a goddess or something (which is technically possible, still, as it's a trilogy or something).
2) The one I remember best was towards the end - Avaritus, the evil guy, is knocked out and she can kill him like she's been trying to for ages, and she goes, "no, I can't kill him, he's defenseless." The next second, his (also evil, but unarmed) slave comes along and she reaches out and slits his throat. Then there's Atlantis - the whole country dies because she took too long in leaving as she was calling her younger sister a slut while gloating about Hadrian liking her more, but apart from a momentary thought that it was too bad, she doesn't care. She gets to be the apprentice of the woman in charge so that she can succeed her eventually and she just mopes about how unfair it is. Basically, Callista is presented as strong and amazing when she's a brattier-than-average, self-centered teenager.
Which ties in with another ... IDK if I'd call it a problem, but it's a weird thing that kept poking at me. There's this weird feeling of a Hunger Games parallel. Although it seems less clear now that it's been several days. But basically, she and Claudius (the captain) were chosen to be sent to the world above to punish their mothers, who had tried to rebel to get more power for nymphs or something. (Hadrian's mother is Thetis, the nymph in charge of Atlantis, btw.) So that's like the Games, using children to punish their parents. Hadrian and Claudius felt like Gale and Peeta to some extent, with Hadrian being a kind of bad-boy type. And I felt that Callista was supposed to be hard and damaged like Katniss, but it just felt pasted on and bratty. It doesn't sound much like THG right now, but when I was reading it kept jumping out at me in various ways.
And my last point. Avaritus was supposed to make my skin crawl as a sexual threat to Callista, but he passed up a LOT of chances to rape her. And I can understand why the author wouldn't want to write that as happening, but she really should have done a better job making it make sense for his character. He was the stock "bastard who hates the legitimately born" (which frankly I find icky) and had no qualms about doing anything to get what he wanted, it just made no sense for him to call Callista up to his chambers at night, then remind her he was going to marry her in a few days and send her away. It didn't even come across like he was enjoying her fear and anticipation, it just confused me.
