Goddess of the Sea

Author: P.C. Cast
Published: October 7, 2003 (Berkley)
Category: Romance
Series: Goddess Summoning
Rating: 7/10

Air Force Sergeant Christine Canady ("CC") is about to start a several-month-long post in the Middle East when her plane goes down on the way to her destination. Fortunately for her, she summoned the goddess Gaea a couple days before she left during a solitary drunken birthday night. In her ritual, she wished for more magic in her life, and when she fled the plane wreckage into the Mediterranean Sea, she meets the mermaid Undine, daughter of Neptune and Gaea. They strike a bargain, and for CC to continue living, she agrees to switch places with Undine.

However, Undine didn't tell CC that a 'roided up merman named Sarpedon, who happens to be Undine's half-brother (eeeeeuw) is set on mating with her. He's macho and controlling, saying that Undine will be his, like she's chattel. To protect Undine/CC, Gaea gives her a human form, but she must return to the sea every three days to change back to a mermaid or she'll die. If Undine finds her true love, she can wear her legs permanently.

When the change to human form takes place, it's sudden and Undine is struggling to stay afloat when another merman, Dylan, rescues her and helps her to shore. He is kind to her, and realizes that this Undine is not the mermaid he's known since childhood, and that another soul inhabits her body, but he is attracted to this new soul. So Undine pretends to be a shipwreck survivor and is picked up by a knight named Andras and taken to a nearby monastery. As they are living in the medieval times, men are in charge, women are chattel, and beauty and magic are the work of the devil.

While Undine believes the handsome knight could be her true love, his views on women (they should be seen not heard, pious, dependent on their husbands, etc.) severely offended her modern-day woman's sensibilities. Plus, Andras's occasional bursts of irrational anger were frightening, and some of these incidents were due to Sarpedon's influence. He possessed the knight and used Andras's lust for Undine to his advantage, twisting it into something evil.

Undine turns to Dylan and finds her true love in him. It's a sweet just-add-water romance (ha ha, they're merpeople!) that comes out of nowhere without much of a foundation. And what follows over the next couple weeks is some far from traditional lurving. Merpeople sex, merman-woman sex, regular human-human sex. I can now say that after reading this book, I know how merpeople do it!

Too much manly oppression in this book. There was Andras, Sarpedon, and Abbot William. I know that they're not real people, but every time they said something about how women who act independent are wild and need discipline from their menfolk, I'd get really annoyed.

It all comes to a head when we have a battle royale between Sarpedon and Dylan with divine interference, as Gaea and Neptune appear to pass judgment on the participants in the story. The servant women who helped Undine are justly rewarded for their bravery and the manly jerks got their comeuppance. CC returns to her own time now that Undine no longer has to fear Sarpedon, and she finds her own happiness back in the future.

It was a sweet story, but I was annoyed during much of the book.