The Mermaid, The Witch, and The Sea
The Mermaid, The Witch, and The Sea by Maggie Tokunda-Hall is a pirate adventure written for the gays. Yeah, you heard me right. In The Mermaid, The Witch, and The Sea, we follow a pirate and a lady and their adventure of love.
“Know your truth, not your story.”
Flora, the pirate-boy known as Florian, is just trying to earn enough money to get a better life for herself and her brother, Alfie. Evelyn, a lady of the Imperial, is being shipped off to marry a man- because of her “inappropriate” relations with her maid. In a world of men at war, and trade of mermaid blood angering the Sea itself, one would not think these two stories would intertwine.
“She was love as much as she was lies and a hope for power.”
The world-building of this was really well done and easy to fall into. The Imperial court vs. The Sea, the Supreme Pirate vs. The Nameless Captain, The Nameless Captain vs. The Sea, and of course, our lady and pirate witch: all well-rounded plotlines. Flora learning to claim her truth as her story was beautiful. Evelyn learning to be brave- even though she had always been a little spicy, to begin with, was exciting.
“And forevermore, the First Witch’s sacrifice and cleverness, her trickery and her wisdom, was both the price and the gift of all witches.”
The Mermaid, The Witch, and The Sea also contains so many different representations. From black characters and Asian cultures to gender-fluid and entirely nonbinary characters. Maggie Tokunda-Hall wrote a romantic adventure that pulls you in and holds you close, with the kind of ending that makes you cry.
Thank you to Netgalley for giving me the opportunity to review this book honestly, and thank you to my mom for buying it for my birthday. Happy pride month y’all, let’s go gays.
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