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Useless ramblings about the things I love

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Book Review: The Water Mirror

Howdy as my mother's boyfriend would say, and welcome to my second ever book review! *Applause* Hurray! I'm posting! Well, anyway, as you can tell I am not reviewing The Midnighters, I do have a few reasons...well actually, no, one reason, I read them a couple of months ago and now I don't want to re-re-read them to review them. SO I decided to review a book that I recently read, recently as in I just finished it last night.

So the book is The Water Mirror By Kai Meyer, it's actually the first in a series called Dark Reflections. Its a very good book with unique writing that I find both delicious and delectable...if I where to eat books that is. Anyway, here is what it looks like:

But it could also look like this:
(I like the first one better, SHH don't tell)

This book is a fantasy novel, but it is really one of the most unique fantasy novels I have ever read. It isn't in a faraway world nor does it contain vampires and werewolves. Instead, it is placed in the beautiful city of Venice, Italy. And instead of vampires and werewolves there are mermaids and stone lions. There are no tormented lovers, instead there is an orphaned girl named Merle who stumbles upon a meeting that will make everything go from bad to worse.

The main character is...well, Merle I guess, but their are so many characters who tie into this story and make it fantastical and what not that is hard to solidly say that Merle is the main character. Anyway, pretty much what is going down is that the Egyptians have taken over the world in the Great Mummy war. They weren't able to take over Venice because of something/someone called The Flowing Queen, you don't really know what it/she is up until almost the end of the book, then you REALLY get to know her. Anyway, the flowing queen somehow managed to stop the multiple armies headed Venice's way and put-off the war that is destined to happen. So pretty much, Venice is the last city not taken over by Egypt, as you can imagine the city is not doing very well and has fallen into hard times and most of the palazzos and homes are abandoned. Enter Merle and Junipa, two orphans who have been sent to apprentice with the magical mirror-maker, Arcimboldo. They are both in the 13-14 range, Junipa is blind and Merle has this hand mirror that instead of showing your reflection is filled with water that doesn't spill out or leave things wet when inserted and removed. So they pretty much are living in the house with three other apprentice boys, Arcimboldo and his friend/house keeper Eft. The story progresses from there with another character named Serafin who is apprenticing across the canal at this magical tailor guy. Anyway, obviously it's a fantasy book so you can't really have a fantasy book without AWESOME CREATURES!!!
This book has Mermaids, but not just any mermaids, these mermaids have beautiful eyes but their mouths are the things from nightmares. A slit goes from ear to ear, they have no lips but they have rows and rows of sharp teeth. Some of the venetian men will capture these mermaids and force them to race, which inevitably kills them. Another creature in these books are stone lions, now the stone lion story is a very long, very sad story that I will let the book explain. So the guards ride atop these lions and some have flying stone lions which are pretty cool. There are also mummies (obviously), demons from hell, scarab beetles with little suits of armor (aww!) and much more.

I give this book LOTS OF EFFING BATS! Because it's so awesome and different.

I recommend this book if you love fantasy but you are sick of vampires and fairies!

Thanks for reading :)

2 comments:

  1. Whoa crazy! I was just thinking about this book the other day. I've never read it, but I remembered the cool mermaid on the back cover and it interested me. Glad to know it is good :)

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  2. It's very good.

    Oh and p.s. you didn't actually follow the blog, in case you where wondering :)

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