While neither fantasy nor romance are genres that I typically read, I have lately been trying to step outside of my comfort zone in terms of genre reading. This short story was a good cushioning beginning for me, as it allowed me to make it quickly through a story that I otherwise would not have picked up. The chapters are short (no more than 5 pages in length each) which makes the story an extremely quick read (40 pages total). The premise of the story did seem intriguing to me as a reader unfamiliar with these particular genres. However, because it is so short (both the chapters individually and the story as a whole) it left me feeling much more to be desired in terms of development, explanation, and detail.
In the beginning scenes, the reader is introduced to Sapphira, her royal family, and their attendants within the mermaid realm. This opening scene reminded me much of Disney's version of The Little Mermaid (young, teen-aged mermaid daughter interacting with friends and attendants to leave the mermaid realm for the human world on dry land), though this could be because that is truly the only mermaid story I am familiar with. Sapphira's relationship to her parents, as well as the descriptions of her and her mermaid realm home seemed somewhat under-detailed while the imagery that was included seemed almost forced and out of place with the flow of the rest of the story. It made sense that the descriptions provided about Sapphira and her family sounded regal and elevated, but that seemed to contrast with the more colloquial dialogue that followed throughout the story.
As well, the few descriptions in the beginning left me wondering more about Sapphira's past, her childhood, how she was brought up, her personality, her hobbies, and the background behind her familial and friendly relationships. As such, I was left with some confusion in understanding Winters' take on the mermaid race. It was unclear whether the royal family resided within the water or if the palace itself was surround by a pocket of magic that allowed the mermaids to remain in human form while home. Also, Sapphira at one point references "Lady Youle" and it is the only time within the story that this name is mentioned which left me wondering if this was a reference to mermaid myth and folklore or another character that was eventually erased from the released version of the story. As well, the author alludes to mermaids having supernatural powers such as telepathy, the power to conjure up items simply from thought, and something that Winters referes to "reorganization", yet it is not clearly stated or detailed in terms of the limits or explanations of these abilities. Because of this lack of detail, it felt as though the author added these abilities as an afterthought. I feel that with a longer story (with this current short story version acting as the preliminary draft) Winters would be able to more fully develop the mermaid species and realm in much more detail, and also provide much more explanation into the character relationships and background to create a fully-developed and unique world into which a reader could immerse his or her self.
The characters themselves also felt under-developed as noted previously with my questions about Sapphira, her species, her family, and her friends. I also didn't quite understand why Dan seemed so formal around his adopted family when he seems, at the same time, to be so grateful at their having taken him in and speaks about them so reverentially. As my own parents have actively worked in the foster care system for almost 10 years, and have also adopted my two youngest brothers, it felt inauthentic that Dan would not talk about, interact with, and embrace the Stuart family (his foster family) as his own after living with them for the entirety of his teenage years. Much like the early scenes with Sapphira, the scenes with Dan and the Stuart family left me wondering more about Dan's early life with his biological parents, the time he spent with his first foster family (which remains unnamed), and more detailed development of the Stuart family themselves as well as his interrelationships with them.
It may have been due to my misunderstanding of the author's intentions with these characters, but their relationship seemed shallow and inauthentic. For example, in the middle chapters when Dan and Sapphira begin to interact and develop their relationship it seems rushed and incongruous. Early on in the story, Dan is described as a shy, introverted boy who does not have many close friends and is somewhat socially awkward. However, in the first "date" between him and Sapphira, Dan begins as his nervous, shy self, but then is suddenly confident, flirty, and overcome by his emotions and physical attractions so much that he then throws himself at Sapphira. This sudden change in his personality in this scene makes him sound overtly dominant in how he comes on to Sapphira and, with a lack of her own thoughts in the scene, can come off as non-consensual. As well, the description of their physical intimacy in this scene attempts to circumvent being too explicit while still addressing sexual desires and emotions which makes the scenes sound unconventionally naive.
Between chapters 7 and 8, it felt as though a large chunk of the story had been removed. The plot moves quite suddenly from Dan and Sapphira saying goodnight after the first date at the end of chapter 7, to Dan barging into Sapphira's room while she is half-dressed to rush her out the door to meet his foster family. The story seems to lack any development of Sapphira and Dan's actual relationship in getting to this point and it seems improbable, even in the throes of hormones at the age of 18, that the two would jump to this connection overnight. There is another 9 month time jump again between chapter 8 and 9 where there is no information about the development of their relationship, and all of a sudden their relationship is challenged with the only conflict the two fact throughout the entirety of the story as Dan discovers Sapphira's secret of being a mermaid. However, instead of developing this conflict into a complex story line, Winters quickly resolves the climax of the story by sweeping Dan's confusion and questions about Sapphira away when the two exchange their love vows at the end of the same chapter. Then in chapter 10, Dan and Sapphira are suddenly in the middle of their marriage ceremony where it is unclear whether they are on land or water and how they plan to make their relationship work within these two, very different worlds. These quick time jumps lacking in relational development in the short three chapters left me with the sense that I didn't quite understand the relationship between Dan and Sapphira, and made the relationship itself seem rushed, childish, and ill-thought-out on the part of the characters.
Though Winters has some other short stories which she has released to the public, I have never read anything from her prior to this title. Therefore, I am unfamiliar with particular author's writing style. Personally, I found the writing hard to read which distracted from the overall sense of the story itself. As a a native speaker of American English and an American English teacher, I found it difficult to get deep into the plot as there were many English language and conventional grammar errors that distracted my mind from delving fully into the author's imaginatively constructed world within the story. One glaring example is that one of the secondary characters named Armanian is called by his nickname at multiple points by Sapphira. However, it is sometimes spelled as Arny and other times spelled as Arni. There were also some grammar and punctuation oversights throughout which were distracting. In my opinion, some third-party editing of the story by a more fluent English language editor could help to counteract these distractions for future readers.
Another disconnect resulting from the lack of detailed setting was that I found it difficult to infer where (geologically) the story took place. Please forgive me if this paragraph sounds ignorant and uncultured of me in not understanding the university format of other cultures; I am only familiar with American cultural standards and therefore found some of the information unlikely and improbable. For example, when Sapphira shows up for her first day of human college, Winters implies that the college has lockers for the students, which is highly improbable according to conventional American university campuses. Winters somewhat tries to explain this by detailing how the college also serves as a high school campus (where Dan was in attendance as a high school student and now as a university student) but this setup seemed highly unlikely according to American cultural norms, as well. I could be wrong, but I'm not sure many parents would feel comfortable sending their 14-17 year old sons and daughters to the same campus as young men and women in their early 20s, so I'm not sure a campus such as that conceived by Winters in the story could thrive in attendance. And while I understand that it is a fictional story and setting, these seemed to too closely mirror true society for me to allow for the suspension of belief on these parts. Another disconnect that stuck out to me was when speaking of some of the college courses that Sapphira and Dan take together, the other refers to their "Maths" course, while in American English this title would sound incorrect. Due to the lack of development in the detail of the setting of the story, it was hard to tell if these were oversights in detailing the setting story or if the story takes place in a location and culture where the seeming disparities are more conventional.
Overall, the basic idea for the story was quite interesting. While much of this may sound as if I didn't enjoy the story, that is not true. The premise of the story, as noted earlier, definitely intrigued me. I was simply left wanting more from the length and development of the story. I hope that Winters turns this short story into a longer, novel-length book that can help the reader to more fully understand her imaginative, mermaid tale (puns!).
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