#i hope i succeeded
I want to say a massive thank you to the author, @tianawarner who provided a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review. I am so grateful, I thoroughly enjoyed the book and I can happily recommend it.
Ice Massacre by Tiana Warner is the first novel in a series which is based around the story of the island of Eriana Kwai and its pest problem. Instead of bugs or rats though, the pest problem in question is that of sea demons, or, mermaids. Each year the island sends out a crew of men to try to kill off as many of the vicious demons as possible, and each year they fail to claim their freedom. For the first time ever the island decides to send twenty battle ready girls instead, as they have a natural resistance to the mermaids lure.
Our hero and protagonist is Meela. Meela has already lost her brother to a previous massacre, and she wants revenge. But taking to the seas in a crew that is splitting apart at the seams with fear and contention isn’t easy, watching friends die isn’t easy. Before the end a mission to cull and fight for freedom becomes about more than just surviving each day.
I loved this book. I started reading it properly on saturday morning and I was finished by 3pm. The constant action kept the flow of the book moving, it was never boring and I couldn’t wait to see what happened, and who survived. This is one of the only books that I’ve read recently that has been this tense and I haven’t skipped to the end to make sure everyone I loved survived, and that was only because I was so caught up in reading the book itself that I forgot.
Meela herself is a strong character. As a child she hated seeing or causing pain but years of training to fight change a person, and killing to survive becomes a must. What I loved about her character arc is that we see her through some of her childhood, where she first meets Lysi, the mermaid child she makes friends with, to when she’s ready to depart from the island and ready to fight, to some realisations she comes to while on board, that I won’t spoil for anyone, and she never stops fighting for what she believes in. The other characters are all great too. Meela’s best friend Annith, I especially loved. You could tell that they loved each other but like all friends, they argued and kept secrets.
The world building was great. At the beginning I was slightly confused as to what time period the novel was set in but it soon became clear that it was in the modern day, which I love. This is the first book of its type that I’ve read set in our own time period, and I felt like it worked really well. The relief attempts in the form of food brought in on helicopters, the mention of spongebob squarepants, it all added to the atmosphere and provided a great contrast to how the weapons and the ships used give the novel an older feel. The change in the usual mermaid behaviour was also done extremely well. Mermaids are one of my favourite topics; books like Ingo were my favourite when I was younger, and Ice Massace adds a grown up touch to that, because it is definitely a dark book in a lot of ways. There is a lot of death and violence, which I expected going in from reading the title. In places it really is a massacre.
And of course, the reason that this book is on this blog, is because of Meela and Lysi. I don’t want to spoil their relationship too much for anyone, but I liked how it unfolded, and I can’t wait to see what happens in future books. This is the first book I’ve read that I can remember (that I haven’t written myself) where a girl and a mermaid fall in love.
Goodreads link: HERE. You can find links to the websites where it’s available to buy through the goodreads website.
