3 STARS - SOME SPOILERS
In a nutshell, this is not a bad book. Though it is not particularly good one either. To be fair, the book has never pretended to be anything other than simple, frivolous, easy-to-read story based loosely on a fairytale. "Midnight Pearl", is loosely based on the Little Mermaid (or more accurately, "The Little Sea-Maid" by Hans Christian Anderson). The main character is Pearl, a young girl of 6-8 years old, who was caught in a net by an old fisherman during a storm and taken home to be raised by him and his wife (a childless couple) as their own daughter. She has pale skin, silver hair, and abnormally long legs, as well as a large midnight-blue pearl clutched in her tiny fist. Thirteen years later, and now a young woman, Pearl is painfully self-conscious of her unique appearance, but enjoys a secret friendship with Prince James of Aster.
The story starts to get interesting when Pearl receives (the one and only) proposal of marriage from older (40year old) kindly blacksmith. The prince wants to propose to her to help her, but as he is pressured to marry and produce offspring, it is a convenient solution. Before he does, two latecomers are introduced in the story. They are the mer-siblings Kale and Faye, who come across Pearl and James rowing a boat in the ocean, rescue them from drowning...and instantaneously fall in love with them. Kale recognizes Pearl as Adriana, his betrothed, who went missing when she was just a child. She was kidnapped by the evil sea-witch who was supposedly imprisoned in a cave but managed to escape using magically powerful pearl necklace. The Sea-Which cursed Pearl with humanity and threw her out to the sea surface to die. During the struggle in the sea-Which cave, Pearl tore out one of her pearls and thus broke her necklace power, rendering the sea-witch truly imprisoned. Soon the two siblings have made a deal with the Sea Witch in order to gain legs. With Kale blinded, and Faye rendered mute, the mer-people take to the shore in order to win the love of Pearl and James...for if they can't do this within the week, their lives and souls are forfeit. It gets more complicated with the plot to dethrone and kill the King of Aster. The murder plot gets resolved in a 'meh' ending when the prince proves to be idiot and trusts his cousin despite numerous proofs he is a human scum. Robert the evil cousin proposes to Pearls parents who grant the engagement. While the king and his gay lover/servant prevent getting poisoned by testing all food on mice. Fay gets proposed but before she can marry the prince she is kidnapped by the evil cousin, who dies in the village square when she is returned to her mermaid form (her mermaid spine spikes kill him). Kale too is returned to his mermaid form with his sight returned, when Pearl walks into the sea and demands to return to her true form. The magical black pearl she ripped out of the sea-with necklace obliges her wish. Pearl than swims to the cave, curses the witch, and renders her spells absolute with the help of the black pearl (eyeroll here). Fay is recued by Pearls parents, and the prince carries her to the sea, where the mermaid Pearl gives Fay the black pearl to turn back to human and live on land with her prince.
The love triangle that grows into a love hexagon (including Pearl, James, his evil cousin Robert, and the two mer-people) is an overkill. The resolution to the love story is hardly satisfactory. James and Pearl are introduced as life-long friends who are just beginning to feel the first signs of romantic attachment to one another...until two perfect strangers come along who make overtures of love and drag our hero and heroine into two completely unconvincing examples of "love at first sight."
There are other things that are also annoying. The plot is often advanced by the characters acting like complete idiots, doing things that are beyond stupid, like the two mermaids selling their souls away in order to be with the human beings that they've known for all of two seconds. Sure, Disney's Arial did a similar thing, but at least the Sea Witch had a *very* convincing persuasion-song that successfully coerced her into it.
A minor, but rather baffling detail is the mention that the Sea Witch is a "dryad", described as a mermaid with a long serpent's tail. Dryads are Grecian tree spirits...why would they be at the bottom of the ocean?
And that there is the gay relationship between the widowed king and his man-servant/steward. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against this sort of relationship, but it is not entirely appropriate for the young children (6-12) this book is targeting. If the book targets adults (I very much doubt that) than I would say it was tastefully done, without any weirdness/stiffness about it. However its a failed attempt to humanize the flat, and nearly non existing caricature of a king.
"Midnight Pearls" stretches credibility too far. There's no "magic" no characters, only cardboard cutouts and a perpetually scared/flighty doormat of a protagonist; no real resemblance to any telling of the Little Mermaid story, save the mermaids...
In a nutshell, this is not a bad book. Though it is not particularly good one either. To be fair, the book has never pretended to be anything other than simple, frivolous, easy-to-read story based loosely on a fairytale. "Midnight Pearl", is loosely based on the Little Mermaid (or more accurately, "The Little Sea-Maid" by Hans Christian Anderson). The main character is Pearl, a young girl of 6-8 years old, who was caught in a net by an old fisherman during a storm and taken home to be raised by him and his wife (a childless couple) as their own daughter. She has pale skin, silver hair, and abnormally long legs, as well as a large midnight-blue pearl clutched in her tiny fist. Thirteen years later, and now a young woman, Pearl is painfully self-conscious of her unique appearance, but enjoys a secret friendship with Prince James of Aster.
The story starts to get interesting when Pearl receives (the one and only) proposal of marriage from older (40year old) kindly blacksmith. The prince wants to propose to her to help her, but as he is pressured to marry and produce offspring, it is a convenient solution. Before he does, two latecomers are introduced in the story. They are the mer-siblings Kale and Faye, who come across Pearl and James rowing a boat in the ocean, rescue them from drowning...and instantaneously fall in love with them. Kale recognizes Pearl as Adriana, his betrothed, who went missing when she was just a child. She was kidnapped by the evil sea-witch who was supposedly imprisoned in a cave but managed to escape using magically powerful pearl necklace. The Sea-Which cursed Pearl with humanity and threw her out to the sea surface to die. During the struggle in the sea-Which cave, Pearl tore out one of her pearls and thus broke her necklace power, rendering the sea-witch truly imprisoned. Soon the two siblings have made a deal with the Sea Witch in order to gain legs. With Kale blinded, and Faye rendered mute, the mer-people take to the shore in order to win the love of Pearl and James...for if they can't do this within the week, their lives and souls are forfeit. It gets more complicated with the plot to dethrone and kill the King of Aster. The murder plot gets resolved in a 'meh' ending when the prince proves to be idiot and trusts his cousin despite numerous proofs he is a human scum. Robert the evil cousin proposes to Pearls parents who grant the engagement. While the king and his gay lover/servant prevent getting poisoned by testing all food on mice. Fay gets proposed but before she can marry the prince she is kidnapped by the evil cousin, who dies in the village square when she is returned to her mermaid form (her mermaid spine spikes kill him). Kale too is returned to his mermaid form with his sight returned, when Pearl walks into the sea and demands to return to her true form. The magical black pearl she ripped out of the sea-with necklace obliges her wish. Pearl than swims to the cave, curses the witch, and renders her spells absolute with the help of the black pearl (eyeroll here). Fay is recued by Pearls parents, and the prince carries her to the sea, where the mermaid Pearl gives Fay the black pearl to turn back to human and live on land with her prince.
The love triangle that grows into a love hexagon (including Pearl, James, his evil cousin Robert, and the two mer-people) is an overkill. The resolution to the love story is hardly satisfactory. James and Pearl are introduced as life-long friends who are just beginning to feel the first signs of romantic attachment to one another...until two perfect strangers come along who make overtures of love and drag our hero and heroine into two completely unconvincing examples of "love at first sight."
There are other things that are also annoying. The plot is often advanced by the characters acting like complete idiots, doing things that are beyond stupid, like the two mermaids selling their souls away in order to be with the human beings that they've known for all of two seconds. Sure, Disney's Arial did a similar thing, but at least the Sea Witch had a *very* convincing persuasion-song that successfully coerced her into it.
A minor, but rather baffling detail is the mention that the Sea Witch is a "dryad", described as a mermaid with a long serpent's tail. Dryads are Grecian tree spirits...why would they be at the bottom of the ocean?
And that there is the gay relationship between the widowed king and his man-servant/steward. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against this sort of relationship, but it is not entirely appropriate for the young children (6-12) this book is targeting. If the book targets adults (I very much doubt that) than I would say it was tastefully done, without any weirdness/stiffness about it. However its a failed attempt to humanize the flat, and nearly non existing caricature of a king.
"Midnight Pearls" stretches credibility too far. There's no "magic" no characters, only cardboard cutouts and a perpetually scared/flighty doormat of a protagonist; no real resemblance to any telling of the Little Mermaid story, save the mermaids...
