Merpeople are having a moment, editors tell PW (also see PW's q&a with Venessa Vida Kelley, author of When the Tides Held the Moon).
A Magic Deep and Drowning by Hester Fox (Graydon House, June) is a gender-flipped “Little Mermaid” set in Dutch Friesland, 1650. Twenty-year-old Clara van Weirenwith has a choice: live the easy, privileged life into which she was born, or risk a romance with Maurits, who is caught between the people of the land and the people of the sea. “Romantasy has tackled so many other fairy tale characters—trolls, elves, you name it,” says Sara Rodgers, associate editor at Graydon House. “It was time to explore water element stories.”
In Upon a Starlit Tide by Kell Woods (Tor, Feb.), a “sophisticated fairy tale that riffs on both ‘The Little Mermaid’ and ‘Cinderella,’ ” per PW’s starred review, the adoptive daughter of a wealthy ship owner in 18th-century France wants to thwart society’s limited expectations for her and run away to sea. When she finds a mysterious man passed out in the surf, a different kind of adventure awaits. “Mermaids are like us, but not,” says Tor associate editor Aislyn Fresall. “They don’t fear the ocean in the same way as humans: we want to conquer it, but mermaids actually do.”
