The Mermaids Madness [Mass Market Paperback]

Cinderella, Snow White, and Sleeping Beauty - the three princess heroines of The Stepsister Scheme are back in this much (for me) anticipated sequel! What happens after the fairy tale ends? That's the essential question that Hines's series attempts to answer. The first book tells us the fates of Cinderella (Danielle) after she's married her prince, of Sleeping Beauty (Talia) after she's awakened from her long sleep, and of Snow White (Snow), after she's escaped the murderous intentions of her stepmother. Hines takes the darker versions of these tales, and twists them into something highly original and new. The three familiar princesses now serve Danielle's mother-in-law, Queen Beatrice of Lorindar, going on secret missions to aid diplomacy, stop wars, save princes, and protect the kingdom, where Danielle is now Princess.

I've been waiting for The Mermaid's Madness literally since I finished the last page of The Stepsister Scheme. It was the sort of book that made you want to keep reading, that made you want to stay in the world and find out what happens next. The title alone, but virtue of the fairy tale roots of this series, lets us know right where we're starting off. With the tragic tale of the little mermaid. But with Hines at the helm, the tragedy of the story is twisted into something much more complex.

We begin with Princess Danielle on a mission of diplomacy with Queen Beatrice, their yearly tithe and renewal of peace with the merfolk, who prefer to be called undine. Since the undine are usually a matriarchal culture, it makes sense for the Princess and Queen to take the lead. Unfortunately, things go very wrong, very quickly. For instead of the King they are expecting, they are greeted by his mad daughter, Lirea, wronged by her human lover and looking for vengeance against all humans. In the ensuing conflict, Queen Beatrice is grievously injured. This leaves Danielle and her friends Talia and Snow to find both a cure for her ailment, and to find a way to stop Lirea from making war against their kingdom - and all of humanity.

Of course, it's much more complicated than that, as the girls quickly discover.

Once again, Hines gives us excellent world building and characterization. We get to see a bit more of Danielle's Prince Armand in this one, which I appreciated quite a bit. We feel so much of her love for him in the last book, but in this one we actually get to see them interact as a couple. New characters are introduced, as well - the mad Lirea and her sister, Lannadae, and a new Prince of a neighboring kingdom, who I'm guessing just may return for future books. But the heart of the series is the relationships between our three princesses, and Hines does an excellent job portraying the myriad ups and downs of the bonds of love and friendship so important between a woman and her best friends. The girls argue, fight together and for each other, and hold each other up when needed. We find out a few more details from each of their stories, though most particularly Talia's and Snow's. Hines does a particularly good job of this. I love reading the little details of how Snow's mother raised her, or how Talia escaped from her homeland. These are the details that make the books come alive.

There are some bittersweet moments in this one. I won't spoil them for you, but suffice it to say, things are not all happily ever after for everyone in the kingdom of Lorindar.

In the end, I was sad to come to the last page for a second time. I stayed up late to finish reading, because I could not wait to find out how it all turned out in the end, and then I was sad to be finished. What will the girls do next? With a title like Red Hood's Revenge, I can only imagine!

Right now, the competition in my stack of reading material is downright Darwinian; I've got so many good books, great books, significant books and books on fascinating subjects that this book was really not on the reading radar.

It became the book I kept sneaking off to read. Even when I discovered that it was the second book in a series, I was unable to stop reading in order to go find the first.

The initial premise seems both cute and a little silly: Snow White, Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella are here given their "real names" (Cinderella's is Danielle) and band together to defend the kingdom against the magical threat posed by a jilted mermaid, out for revenge against the man who done her wrong.

But in addition to taking a light-hearted attitude, Jim Hines has used as his source material the darkest, Grimmest version of the famous fairy tales. His heroines have tragedies in their backgrounds and that often gives the light satirical tone a real edge. There is a problem here, however. Perhaps because most of his "cast" is female, Hines has a tendency to pull his punches in his fight scenes and in his satire. I felt that sometimes he was ducking out of following the emotional implications of the dark stories he eluded to by switching to a Disney cartoon sequence of events. Some of his fight scenes lost credibility by not sticking to physics when magic wasn't involved.

But there is fine fantasy here. Hines makes us believe in the marvels he shows us: in kelpies and underwater forests, jars that hold the souls of sailors, a glass sword and an abalone knife. Here is adult fantasy that is lots of fun, and you bet I'm going to be searching out that first book soon. I never believed in that "happily ever after" guff and Hines fills in that gap in a most entertaining way.

When the princesses travel by ship to the kingdom of the mermen and mermaids, the Queen is attacked by a mermaid princess. The Queen's body is badly wounded, but her soul has left. As Danielle, Snow, and Talia rush to save their beloved Queen, they must hunt down the mermaid and recover her magical knife that has somehow captured the soul of the Queen. But the little mermaid has a story of her own, and it's quite different than what the storybooks say.

In the The Stepsister Scheme, we are introduced to Danielle Whiteshore (Cinderella), Talia (Sleeping Beauty) and Snow (White). The three princesses have a much darker history than the stories say. They aren't princesses that need rescuing. Each has their own gifts and abilities to save themselves, and those they love. When their mother-figure, the Queen, is in mortal peril, the princesses once again show sterner stuff.

I thoroughly enjoyed this novel, even more than the first. With a huge twist on the Little Mermaid story, the princesses stand up against the dangers of the sea as well as odd magic from a legendary sea witch. Steeped in adventure and danger, this dark fairytale is like no other. And a huge twist in the story had me at the edge of my seat until the very end. Fantasy and fairytale fans beware; you'll be hooked on this mermaid's tale.

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