Review: Fathomless by Jackson Pearce

Fathomless by Jackson Pearce
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

In Sister's Red, we learned about the Fenris. The Big Bad wolves who love to kill and eat people. In Sweetly, we learned that Fenris need some love. But their love is a bit too dangerous, so they need dark ones. Dark ones are created to be the lover of Fenris. They’re girls who lost their twin, either naturally or by Fenris, and are then thrown into the sea. There, they’ll become mermaids and eventually become the dark ones.

So, can you guess what this book is about?

The Good:

After I finished Sweetly, I really wanted a book that didn’t have the Fenris as the main villains. I understood it in Sister’s Red, but I felt like it was a bit of a stretch in Sweetly. So imagine my surprise, where the Fenris hardly show up in this book. Are they still the main villains, yes. I think at this point that’s just how it’s going to be so I might as well deal with that, but I did like that the story didn’t focus on them.

I liked that the huntsmen were not huntsmen here. Instead, we get Silas’ and Samuel’ little sisters. Granted, they’re not much of hunters, but they do have powers that seem to be unique to them. I do wonder if they got it because they’re girls in a family of huntsman, or because they’re triplets. Sadly, we never really get the answer to this, but I did like that the guy wasn’t a huntsman.

Lo and Nadia’s personalities felt very different, but still the same which I liked. I might be bias though, since I quite liked Lo. She felt real to me, so her struggling to keep Nadia, but still stay with her sisters in the sea was a dynamic I enjoyed reading about.

The Okay:

If you haven’t read Sweetly, then the ending with the Fenris might come from nowhere, but if you did, then you might feel slightly disappointed. The moment we’re introduced to Lo and she tells us that an ’angel’ brought her to the sea, you pretty much knew what was going to happen. The longer the girls let go of their humanity, the faster they’ll become dark ones. The faster they become dark ones, the faster they’ll get some lovin’ from the Fenris.

So when Lo/Nadia is trying to figure out what happened and Molly tells her the awful truth, it was kind of a letdown because Sweetly already told us this.

Celia, along with her sisters Anne and Jane, have special powers. Anne can see the future, Jane can see the present, while Celia can only see the past. Celia feels left out from this group, because her power isn’t as awesome as her sisters. Her sisters....there wasn’t much about them, so her feelings of being left out didn’t really grab me.

With Sister’s Red, the dynamic of the sisters were done better, then again, the sisters were the main characters of that novel. Here, it’s just Celia and Lo, so her sisters never really did much other than say that they should stick together and get some guy to buy them fondue.

The Bad:

I don’t know what it is about this series, but I can never seem to get into the romance. Granted, this one was pushed to the back burner, but still it never felt authentic. Celia and Lo both love Jude, but I never understood why. He hardly even shows up, so where did this love happen? I know it was there to the Little Mermaid retelling full circle, but I kind of wish this was developed a bit more.

Whenever Lo surfaced and walked on the beach, there would be a trail of blood. Not sure why no one noticed this trail. Sure, the beach my sweep some of it away, but if she’s sitting down and walking to a church then wouldn’t people start getting suspicious?

This book did tend to drag on and didn’t feel as real as Sister’s Red and Sweetly. I really like how Pearce creates these settings making you feel like you’re actually there, but for some reason that magic didn’t really happen here.

Considering the fact that Celia, Jane, and Anne are from the huntsman family, why is it that they seem to know nothing about the Fenris. Plus, Celia saw her father’s past, so wouldn’t there be Fenris memories there that she could see or pick up on? Why didn’t her brothers ever tell her who she really was? Why does Celia, Jane, and Anne feel like they only have each other? Do they even know that they have brothers?

Overall:

I didn’t like this book as much as I liked the other two. I’m not sure what happened here to be honest. The writing is still great and the retellings are interesting, but this book felt a bit flat. That being said, I did still enjoy it and liked Celia and Lo enough to not get bored. I just feel like there was something missing with this story.

I think the main problem is that if you read Sweetly, you already know the mystery surrounding the ocean girls. So when Lo/Nadia is searching for the truth, you already know it.

The series is still fun to read though, so this won't stop me from reading Cold Spell.

3 stars out of 5