The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea

[psocoptera]

I mentioned this a couple of weeks ago for its amazing Victo Ngai cover and now I have finally finished the book. The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea, Maggie Tokuda-Hall, 2020 YA fantasy, although perhaps more on the "fantasy that happens to have YA protagonists" end of that genre. (But I think it is marketing as YA, so.) I really liked this in some ways: some nifty interweaving of characters and motivations, the queer romance, my endless appetite for stories that do interesting things with the "girl dressing as a boy" trope, in this case going in a nice genderfluid direction. It also had some pacing unevenness, and there were things that I thought might pay off more than they did. I'm going to rec it, but with a note that it's pretty significantly dark; this is more on the "if you liked Chaos Walking" end of YA SFF.

(God, which, I guess the Knife of Never Letting Go movie finally came out? In... theaters, which I guess are open?? I don't even know.)