So apparently, in addition to being the Knitter in Residence here at SBTB, I am also the the aquatic romance reviewer. When Amanda sent me a book about a mermaid stripper, you know I had to read that, right? It’s as crazy-sauce as I could have hoped.

The book is about Aazuria, a mermaid princess  who lived in an undersea ice palace and who is now destitute after her murdering her dad. To be fair, her dad is like King Triton meets Mommy Dearest so he pretty much had it coming. Aazuria and her sister/friends go to Alaska and become strippers because they need to buy weapons and medical equipment to get their underwater empire back up and running.

Obviously the mermaids can get around on land and have legs and stuff. How the fuck they’re going to get weapons and medical supplies back under the ocean and not, you know, ruin them, I’m not entirely sure. There’s some talk of underwater guns, but whatever. You try bringing a CT machine to your underwater ice palace and let me know how that goes, thanks.

Now, Aazuria is described as being such a remarkable dancer that she can almost hypnotize men with her grace.

There’s also another mermaid who has siren-like abilities when she sings. So it makes total fucking sense that in order to get tons of money, they turn to stripping. Look, I’m not opposed to stripping. Find your bliss. But if you have two individuals who are so remarkably talented in singing/dancing that it brings salty crab fishermen to tears, maybe shoot a little higher than stripping in a small Alaskan town. Go for Vegas. Hell, maybe become the next Beyonce.

Holy fuck, Beyonce is a mermaid with magical abilities, isn’t she. I KNEW IT.

Anyway, this crab fisherman/ businessman named Trevain “I’m almost 50” Murphy is at the strip club–but only to cheer up his men because he’s almost 50 and too old to be looking at young ladies, as he constantly reminds us. He sees Aazuria do naked ballet dancing to the other mermaid singing opera with no musical accompaniment and he’s transfixed.

I envisioned this gif almost immediately:

Even though he’s ALMOST 50 he invites Aazuria and her sisters to come live with him because they’re down on their luck. So rather than sharing a crappy motel room, they go. After like 5 minutes of living together Aazuria tells him she’s a mermaid and he’s all, “Haha you’re so cute.”

Trevain is not very happy because men keep disappearing off his fishing boat and dying (presumably falling in and drowning). Other fishing boats are disappearing entirely. Aazuria knows what’s up:

For thousands of years, the ruins now known as the Bimini Wall had been home to a thriving and prosperous undersea settlement in the Caribbean. That was until about a hundred years ago. An army of anarchist sea-dwellers from various clans and kingdoms all over the world had banded together under a revolutionary leader from the Clan of Zalcan. They had ferociously attacked the Bimini Empire.

The underwater war had been waged for many years causing a massive amount of collateral damage in the form of land-dwelling causalities. The area became known as the Bermuda Triangle to superstitious seafarers. It was a well-known technique that mermaids used against each other to attack ships or nearby surface settlements and bring huge numbers of suspicious investigators to the area, making it unlivable.

RIGHT.

The Bermuda Triangle is a fucking mermaid conspiracy. The other Smart Bitches were not impressed that I was unaware of this going into the story.

So the Clan of Zalcan is starting shit in the Bering Sea to drive Aazuria out of her ice palace which make zero fucking sense since she’s already living in a shitty motel in a fishing town in Alaska doing nearly-naked ballet while fishermen shove dollar bills in her g-string. Dear Clan of Zalcan, get your shit together. The mermaid-ice-castle princess has enough to look after while squatting next to the tip-rail. Thanks.

Anyway, Trevian DESPITE BEING ALMOST 50 starts falling in love with Aazuria and proposes to her. She accepts but tells him:

“Then you have my word,” she said to him earnestly. “I will be your wife–on one condition.”

“Anything,” he echoed.

She smiled. “When the time comes, if the time comes–will you be open to a concept which you currently consider impossible? Will you allow a new idea to enter your mind, and will you trust me?”

This is my favorite passage in the book because I have to assume that Trevain thinks she’s either talking about 1. pegging (NSFW) or 2. freeganism (SFW).

Of course he agrees because a little what-what in the butt or eating of the dumpster is totally worth it.

But then the Clan of Zalcan shows up and is attacking more boats so Aazuria and her mermaid sisterhood decide to take to the water and protect Trevain and his crew. They do this wearing green tactical gear and carrying underwater rifles they bought with their stripping money. Honestly, if I made money stripping, I’d buy an underwater rifle, too. It seems like the right thing to spend that cash on.

They defend Trevain’s boat, Aazuria-as-a-mermaid kisses Trevain but he doesn’t recognize her. Mermaids don’t have fins in this book, but when she’s in the water Aazuria becomes very pale with white hair. On land, her hair’s really dark.  DUDE, I HAD THAT BARBIE.

Also, I love how Trevain’s crew rationalizes the mermaids in tactical gear that just saved them IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FUCKING BERING SEA:

Wyatt cleared his throat. “Uh… Arnav was killed by a bunch of people wearing black, but then some females wearing green kicked their asses for it?”

“They had APS underwater assault rifles strapped to their backs,” Doughlas said. “Probably some military training thing….they  probably came from a stealth submarine which we can’t see somewhere around here.”

Doughlas is clearly the genius of the group.

At some point Aazuria tells Trevain that it was her, that she’s a mermaid and he freaks the fuck out. She gets pissed because she’s all “YOU SAID YOU WOULD TRUST ME WHEN THE TIME CAME!”

And Trevain is probably all “BUT I THOUGHT YOU WERE TALKING ABOUT BUTTSECKS!”

And she’s all “I TOLD YOU I WAS A MERMAID! JFC!”

But in his defense she told him she was a mermaid like right after he watched her naked ballet dance to her friend singing opera with no musical accompaniment in a seedy strip club in a fishing town…so quite honestly the mermaid comment was like the least fucking weird thing about that.

So Aazuria and her friends have to defeat the Clan of Zalcan, get Trevain to believe her, and also WTF is she going to do with him because she’s 603 mermaid years old and HE’S ALMOST 50, OKAY? and she has to return to the sea.

Spoiler: He’s a fucking mermaid too.

Epic crazysauce aside, the writing in this book is just painfully stilted and awkward. All the mermaids talk like characters from a 30’s gangster movie:

“It’s too late for her, sweet pea. I shot her through the heart. She’s gone.”

“And I’m here to score superior weaponry for our forces,” Visola said. “It’s embarrassing to admit, but our weaponry is pretty primitive. I can easily fix everything with some hardcore American dollars.”

Also there’s this passage:

“Are you saying your father was a rapist?”

“No. Perhaps not in the legal sense of the term. But also yes. Very much so.”

Right.

The other thing that bummed me out is that there is no descriptive sex in this book. I mean, at least with The Orca King I got some high-quality whale-size ejaculate to go with my crazy sauce.

So, in summary, you’re all welcome. I read the mermaid stripper book so you don’t have to. It is, however, free on Amazon  so if you want to dip your toe into the briny abyss, go for it.