Sea Witch is a 2018 young adult fantasy novel by
Sarah Henning. It’s the first book in the Sea Witch series. The novel is
a retelling of The Little Mermaid. It can be purchased here from Amazon
or here from Bookshop.org
The novel follows a teenager named Evie, an outcast in her
small fishing town. Since the death of her best friend Anna, she’s been
overcome by guilt. After her other friend, Crown Prince Niklas, nearly drowns,
she spots a girl with an uncanny resemblance to Anna appear on the shore. The girls
befriend one another, but her new friend harbors secrets of her own. In order
to help her new friend stay, Evie must make a sacrifice and the price is higher
than she ever could’ve imagined.
The novel has four characters worth discussing: Evie, Niklas,
Annamette, the girl Evie meets early on in the story who reminds her of Anna,
and Iker, Niklas’s cousin. Evie is the main character and narrator. She begins
the story as an outcast in her village, both because she’s seen as unworthly of
Nik’s friendship, since she’s a fisherman’s daughter, and because many blame
her for Anna’s death by drowning a few years before the story starts. She also
hides the fact that she’s a witch from the unaccepting town. Her arc is about
finding her place in the village and coming to terms with Anna’s death. Annamette
is the mysterious stranger who comes to the village, looking remarkably like Anna,
with a secret. Her characterization, unfortunately, wasn’t consistent
throughout the novel. The way she’s written for the first half to two-thirds of
the book doesn’t make sense with the way she’s written in the last third. There
was potential for the two very different sides of her to work, but the
character the reader is first introduced to isn’t given enough depth or nuance
to make such a change work well. Niklas and Iker are the love interests for Annamette
and Evie respectively. I can’t really say much about either of them, because
they are pretty much the same character, with Iker being slightly more skeptical
of Annamette and her story. While I did enjoy these characters, I wouldn’t say
that this book has especially strong characters or character work.
I enjoyed the author’s writing style. She did an excellent
job of setting a scene and keeping my attention focused on what was happening. The
story itself feels very atmospheric and during the course of reading, I could
see how deeply infused the sea was within the story. The inclusion of so much
from Danish history was appreciated and gave the story a feeling of being more grounded
in reality. I chose to read this book because I wanted to read a book about
mermaids, and this book delivered. I enjoyed the mermaids, the magic and how it
all fit together in the narrative. The conclusion was by far my favorite part
of the novel. While I wasn’t the biggest fan of the overall pacing of this
book, the ending really tied all of the elements together and fulfilled what
the author set out to create with this story. As mentioned above, this novel is
a retelling of The Little Mermaid, but this isn’t Ariel’s story, it’s
Ursula’s. Henning did a spectacular job of creating a compelling and believable
villain origin story. Also, and this one is the least important aspect of this review, the cover art is gorgeous and I want to see more by this artist.
While I enjoyed the writing itself and the ending of the
novel, there are a few criticisms that I have. My biggest issue with this book
is the pacing. The plot moves incredibly slowly for the first two-thirds. There’s
a lot of focus on the culture and traditions of Evie’s village and discussing maritime
practices, which wasn’t very interesting to me and I ended up skimming those parts
to get back to the main plot. There are flashbacks to Anna’s death, spread
throughout the book, focusing on a few different characters and their actions
on that day. While I don’t have an issue with flashbacks, some of them felt
unnecessary. The last criticism I have is in regards to foreshadowing. The novel’s
antagonist isn’t shown to have ulterior motives or even that they can’t be
trusted until very close to the end of the story. If there had been some
suspicious behavior, or moments that stuck with me as odd, then the reveal would’ve
worked better. As it stands, the antagonist’s goal, when compared to their
actions before the “big reveal”, don’t fit together the way that they should. As
a result, the plot overall isn’t as coherent as it could’ve been.
Sea Witch was not quite the book I was expecting it
to be. I enjoyed the magic and the writing itself, but the pacing and some of
the characterization didn’t quite work for me. As a villain origin story, this
is good one, not great, but not terrible. The conclusion is by far the strongest
part of the novel overall, and I wish the author had taken more risks earlier
on to match the excitement of the climax. I haven’t decided if I will read the
second book in the series yet. If anyone is thinking of reading this novel, I
would recommend it, but caution that it’s not quite the story they think it is.
Rating: 3.4 Stars
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