Drown Your Worries With These Queer Mermaid Books

Ren’s life revolves round water. She’s a aggressive swimmer who spends most of her day both within the pool swimming or enthusiastic about swimming. You would possibly say she’s obsessed. But whereas successful competitions and making her teammates, mother, and coach proud are legitimate issues, they’re additionally human issues. And Ren isn’t human. She’s a mermaid. If solely anybody else might see it. It’s not till Ren performs a devastating act that any of her family and friends understand, although. By then, it is perhaps too late.

Is Ren actually a mermaid in human kind? Is she only a struggling teenager whose difficulties are neglected till it’s too late? Jade Song isn’t about to inform you on this reality-blurring literary novel, and neither am I.

Yetu is the reminiscence keeper of her folks. As the descendants of those that drowned on the Middle Passage, the collective recollections of their folks would overwhelm if remembered by everybody. So Yetu remembers for them. But being the one one to know and bear in mind is slowly destroying her. Fleeing to the floor, Yetu discovers a world her folks left behind. It’s completely different than she imagined, and the issues she learns concerning the previous and current assist her understand that the one approach for her and her folks to maneuver ahead is to recollect collectively.

This isn’t the story of The Little Mermaid such as you’ve ever learn it earlier than. After being compelled into a wedding on land, the mermaid on the coronary heart of this retelling offers beginning to daughters who devour not solely her husband however your complete land. Now, on the run, the mermaid meets a plague physician with a violent previous of their very own. Together, they discover solace in accepting their monstrous natures, however a cult of saints whose ageless kids are despatched out for blood threatens to upend any peace they may have discovered collectively.

In the icy depths of the ocean, a mermaid longs to study what lies past the ice shelf of her underwater dwelling. When she rescues a stranded protect maiden, Ersel lastly will get that likelihood. Ragna is all the things Ersel ever wished to study concerning the human world and all the things Ersel might need for herself. But once they’re caught collectively by a bitter merman, Ersel makes the determined choice to go to the trickster god Loki for assist. She can lastly be with Ragna, however when coping with a trickster, there’ll at all times be a price.

In this darkish, sci-fi Little Mermaid retelling, a famend scholar of the mermaid-like beings often called atargati releases a captive, figuring out it is going to value her each her profession and her life. But her fascination with the atargati, and this one particularly, forces her to reexamine all the things she thought she knew about herself and the world round her. It’s extra Hans Christian Anderson than Disney, so don’t anticipate it to be mild fairy story fare.

A genderqueer pirate and a noble, imperial daughter being shipped off to a husband she’s by no means met or wished are thrown collectively at sea when the service provider vessel Lady Evelyn Hasegawa has boarded seems to be a pirate ship in disguise, making ready to promote the passengers to the very best bidder. Along with the assistance — and hindrance — of a witch, a captured mermaid, and the legendary Pirate Supreme, the 2 must determine find out how to come collectively and save one another and themselves.

On an island the place nobody dies, however everybody’s lives finish as statues atop a cliff, Mara finds an opportunity to flee when Pearl, a mermaid, arrives on their shores in the future. Soon, Mara resides a life she by no means might’ve imagined for herself. But when Mara and Pearl lastly return to the island in the future, Mara’s dad and mom are starting to show into stone. What does it imply to be part of a spot and select to depart — or come again to remain?

Kaelyn could also be a princess, however for the previous yr, she’s been captain of a ship, disguising herself as a person named Captain Kae and main her sailors on a quest for revenge. A siren assault leads Kae on a renewed quest to destroy the ocean demons who’ve lengthy haunted her dwelling. Aqeara is a siren warrior, however when a mistake leads to the dying of her princess, she makes a deal to finish her banishment by slicing out the guts of Captain Kae in alternate for her princess’s resurrection. When Kae and Aqeara meet, although, their plain emotions battle with the missions they’ve each devoted themselves to — missions that will each consequence within the dying of the opposite.

This mermaid-centric anthology options a variety of queer mermaid tales, together with the story of a boy pining for the merboy who saved him years in the past, a trans mer who saves a Polish immigrant household throughout the Great Nor’Easter of 1962, and a woman decided to rescue the mermaid on show on the aquarium the place her mom works, in addition to many different. It’s excellent if you happen to’re on the lookout for a wide array of queer mermaid tales to get pleasure from.

The magical fourth son of the king, lengthy saved hidden within the palace partitions, lastly will get a style of freedom when he ventures out into the world on his coming-of-age tour. A mysterious — and charming — prisoner saved from a burning ship solely will increase the sense of journey. But when Athlen leaps from the ship, just for Prince Tal to find him alive and nicely on land a number of days later, he begins to marvel simply what secrets and techniques this unusual boy is so intent on holding. Before he can determine them out, although, Tal is kidnapped by pirates, and solely by accepting the magical powers he’s lengthy saved at bay — and perhaps somewhat assist from a good-looking boy with magical secrets and techniques of his personal — will he be capable of escape.

When a cult begins taking up a small city, hoping to flood the world and eradicate people, a lake mermaid and an area come collectively to save lots of their dwelling. Kye would do something for Dani, and Dani would do something for Kye, so when Dani exhibits up with a gash in her tail and a narrative about her cousin being chosen by a cult to be their new prophesied chief, Kye is all too prepared to assist.

Venturing onto land is an expertise all teen merfolk are anticipated to undergo, with one month to assist a human and return to the ocean or stay caught on land ceaselessly. Crest is all too desirous to get his expertise over with. Humans are disgusting polluters, in any case, who’ve crammed the ocean with their trash. But when he meets a lifeguard named Sean, his view on people begins to shift. Can a human and a merman, torn between two very completely different worlds, make a relationship work, particularly when it was faux to start with?

In a Maine lobstering city, the story of the ship captain who fell in love with a mermaid and by no means left, founding Mackerel Sky, has develop into legend. It’s a narrative that its inhabitants cling to, for higher or worse, utilizing it as an inspiration for poetry and an excuse — or rationalization — for tragedy. In Mackerel Sky, mermaid sightings could also be assured, however neighborhood is what retains the small city going.