Book Review: OF POSEIDON by Anna Banks

Book: OF POSEIDON

Author:  Anna Banks

Category:  Young Adult Fantasy Fiction

Publisher:  Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group

Due Out:  May 22, 2012

“Imagine how you’d feel if you were asked to trade that one thing you love so that the human race can go on.  People you don’t even know. People who aren’t even born yet.  Would you do it? Could you?  Even if almost no one ever knew the huge sacrifice you made for them and would never appreciate what you gave up?”- Galen

“Are you saying….what are you saying?”- Emma

“I’m saying you’re what I want, Emma.  I’m saying I’m in love with you.”- Galen

Emma is shattered after losing her best friend Chloe in a shark attack.  But life has to go on so she is forced to go back to school where sees Galen again.  Galen is the man she met the day she lost Chloe, the man whose unusual violet eyes mirror her own, the man whose eyes search for hers as soon as he enters her class.

Unbeknownst to her, Galen is actually the Prince of Syrena, more commonly known as Mermaids, a descendant of Triton himself.  He started searching for Emma as soon as he heard about the girl with the ability to communicate with fish.  And he himself saw her power when she commanded the shark that attacked Chloe to leave them be.  Galen wants to find out if Emma is who he suspects, a Syrena who is breaking their law by living on land.

He quickly discovers that Emma is no such person… or at least she doesn’t know who she really is.  So he helps Emma discover, acknowledge and nurture her newfound power of breathing underwater.  Falling in love with her is inevitable yet wrong because Emma has the power of Poseidon, an ability to communicate with marine life, which means that as the last one of her kind, she is meant to marry the king of Syrena, Galen’s own brother Grom.  

There is also an unknown threat.  The Syrenas feel their own kind in the water and everytime Emma sets foot in the sea, an unknown Syrena is always sensed by Galen.  But the bigger problem is Emma’s lineage.  Her violet eyes identify her as a Syrena, but her white hair and pale skin is that of a half breed, a child of a Syrena and a human, which has been outlawed for hundreds of years.  Being so might bring danger to her life, especially when they find out that the unknown threat, the one they could never identify until the very end, is the one King Grom has been searching for for a long time.

Author Anna banks

Just when I gave up on this book, the cliffhanger reeled me in.  The ending is good….really good.  The pace is a bit slow and the sudden change in Emma from a weak, insecure girl to a tough one in a few pages isn’t really believable.  Galen is a more likable character though it threw me off whenever he’d say fingerlings referring to children. 

The support characters Rayna (Galen’s twin sister) and Toraf (Rayna’s mate/husband) are a welcome relief.  In fact I think their love story is even sweeter than that of Galen and Emma. I do hope they have a bigger story line in the sequel.

The plot is not the usual so kudos to the author.  Her description of the underwater world is also pretty thorough.  Unfortunately I didn’t get pulled into the story.  The romance between Galen and Emma lacks the thrill I always look for in love stories but I do hope this gets better in the follow up book.

If you’re tired of vampires, werewolves and dystopian series and are looking forward to something new, try reading this.  If only for the cliffhanger, I would recommend Of Poseidon.