Every so often a book comes along and I'm utterly enchanted and not by the story itself but by the front cover.
Mermaid Moon is the latest novel from award winning author Susann Cokal.
I received a copy in the post (a real surprise) and with no obligation to review it, I simply sat down and enjoyed the tale presented in front of me.
Sanna is a mermaid — but she is only half seavish.
The night of her birth, a sea-witch cast a spell that made Sanna’s people, including her landish mother, forget how and where she was born. Now Sanna is sixteen and an outsider in the seavish matriarchy, and she is determined to find her mother and learn who she is. She apprentices herself to the witch to learn the magic of making and unmaking, and with a new pair of legs and a quest to complete for her teacher, she follows a clue that leads her ashore on the Thirty-Seven Dark Islands. There, as her fellow mermaids wait in the sea, Sanna stumbles into a wall of white roses thirsty for blood, a hardscrabble people hungry for miracles, and a baroness who will do anything to live forever.
The front cover depicts a majestic mermaid surrounded by blooming white roses covered in what appears to be spatters of blood and a towering castle standing tall in the background.
Intrigue immediately increases.
