Stories of murderous mermaids already exist aplenty, but this is a wonderful and interesting twist on that genre. Instead of mermaids singing somebody to their sleep, this is the revenge of a mermaid stolen from her home. This novella is filled with body horror and gore and it does so with lyrical and lush prose. We begin our journey in the ashen embers of a kingdom destroyed in revenge and soon reach a cult of children in a dark forest. Our two main characters, a mermaid whose tongue had been cut out and her teeth pulled to keep her powerless, and a genderless plague doctor have to face their pasts and learn how to move forward, facing the horrors.
This is a very short, but really interesting look at fairytales, looking at the way stories can be used to offers us comfortable fictions that hide dark truths behind them. I found myself nearly unable to put the book down, reading the barely 100 pages in just a day and racing along with our protagonists to figure out what's going on.
The plot is not always super strong and sometimes (due to the shortness of the story no doubt) I found myself unable to truly suspend my disbelief enough. But if you are able to allow yourself to really dive deep into the fairytale you will probably enjoy this book as much or even more than I did.