Book Review - The Mermaid and the Treasure of the Bay, By A. Algeri

The Mermaid and the Treasure of the Bay
(La Sirena #1)

by A. Algeri 

Release Date: 08/20/15

246 pages

Summary from Goodreads:

"The Mermaid and the treasure of the Bay" is the first adventure of Brinn, a young woman who had recently returned to her homeland, Nyar Kaad, after years of being away.

For her mother and sister it’s only supposed to be an episodic stay, because their intention is to return to the capital, Adaria, held by both aristocrats, by then, to be their home. Brinn, however, isn’t interested in living in the golden cage of high society and aspires to a different existence, that will push her to oppose the decisions of her family and to pursue a destiny according to her own wishes.

The accidental discovery of what looks like a map to hidden treasure, buried in Nyar Kaad, according to tradition, by pirates once dwelling in the settlement, will push her to search for the hidden riches- an undertaking that the protagonist will face courageously, at the cost of challenging her fears, the rigid social conventions, and more literal dangers to her person, venturing on a journey into the local legends and the past of her own family, until reaching an unexpected epilogue.

Set to Isara, a fantasy world inspired by the period between the seventeenth and the first decades of the nineteenth centuries, "The Mermaid and the treasure of the Bay" is a journey full of mystery in the universe where real and supernatural coexist intersecting in a subtle and insidious way, a world divided between palaces and largely unexplored expanses, an opulent capital and boundless oceans.

Review:

The idea of this book was really appealing to me.  I love books that don't start with main idea as the jumping in point.  With this book we get to know the characters, we got to see things as they unfold.  Brinn is a strong lead and we get to see her grow and change as the book moves.

Brinn is unhappy with how her life is going.  She is born into a noble family and as such has to start following more rules as she gets older.  She longs for the sea and the hold she grew up in when her mother and father them to the capitol.  I love that we can see how unhappy she is as we move through the story.  She is not trying to sugar coat her time with her family.

The only real issue I have with this book is very few interactions.  I love stories that you get more interaction between characters.  There were times it almost felt like stream of consciousness and not a book.  I have a hard time with that.  I could not get engrossed in the book because of that. I just could not picture myself in the story like I could with other book.

I do think that the idea of the book is a great one, with family history and legends, but I think it needs to be reworked into something that is not so internal thought and more flowing interactions.  I think I would have been able to get more into the story, feel more like I could be a part of the family, the world as a whole.

I can say I would recommend it to others.  While I personally struggled with the reading, not everyone will.  It is a great frame work for a new world to write in.  I do hope that in future books there is more between the characters.  I want to see how they go about developing their relationships and their world around them.

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About the Author:

A. Algeri is the author of "The Mermaid and the treasure of the Bay", his first published novel. He began writing while he was a teenager, setting most of his stories in the world of Isara, a fantasy universe of his own creation.

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