
It was the Eleven-Books Club meeting for
Consensus on Mermaid... was basically "why the heck is this a trilogy?" with a dash of "this book needs an editor." Liz & I especially on that latter bit, per the LA Times review discussing how neither she nor her editor had YA experience. The book retreads scenes, even freezes the action, & does a lot of telling rather than showing. The book should have been a stand-alone, or failing that, the first book could have had an arc? Liz's theory is "three book deal," which...is probably true. The rest of the consensus view was that she does well with "real world" stuff-- her relationship with her mother, her best friend-- but that the deeper you go into the supernatural, the further that dissipates. I forget who it was-- book clubs are for wine!-- but someone said that the Polish mythology felt more like she had Wikipedia open in a tab, less "lived in," & I think it was Beatrice who said that everything magical comes to her without effort or training. Using magic powers as a metaphor for emotional catharsis is one thing, which you could argue she's doing, but I tend to agree, though for me the "martyrdom by Care Bear Stare" thing isn't too appealing. It was a fun meeting; we broke up early because I thought we'd lost Terra-- she was feeding Mal-- while Liz had a second party to go to (as is her wont) &