Deep Blue

Deep Blue by Jennifer Donnelly was dripping in cheese. I am actually fairly surprised that there isn't a copy in the children's section when the childishness would be appreciated. For a children's book, like sixth grade, no higher than eighth grade, would be okay. They would enjoy it. I did not. I even read another review, hoping that it would get better, but she had the same complaints I did and said it didn't get better.

Donnelly used cliches which weren't actually cliches. Such as: Money = currensea, girlfriend - merlfriend, a family tree = coral tree, and candies are weird things like "cillawondas, bing-bangs, janteeshaptas, and zee-zees." It also has paragraphs like "the others set off and she followed at a little bit of a distance, watching Neela, swim with Ling, and Ava with Becca. ... But as she watched her oldest friend, and her three new ones, swim ahead of her, she felt surer and stronger about facing what was to come." (Two lines of brief dialog followed by a new chapter. I wrote like that when I was in high school--I was alright, but not good enough to get published, at all. I remember having filler words like "at a little bit of distance." Why not say "behind" or even "at a distance"? The book is very wordy and takes a long time to get anywhere. 

It takes a while because most of the book is an info dumb. I get that there needs to be explanations, and exploring this world, which isn't a cliche fantasy world, is important. She needed to set the environment, but I could easily skip paragraphs, almost whole pages, and not be hindered. The world was well thought out, but poorly executed on the page. 

By page 77 I was bored and I only got to 150 before I gave up. The inciting incident finally happened, but not until page 95. 95!! There was too much set up in her perfect palace life with minor dramas between her and a cliched cheerleader like figure. Again I had one in my high school stories. My character Daisy served the same purpose as this one did, filler of possible backstory. But then suddenly everyone in the capital city is dead or being held hostage by the bad guy--somehow that happened. She and her friend run, er swim, but then get captured and talk to the villain of the story. He's charismatic and condescending and threatens to kill everyone if he doesn't get his way (like another one of my characters from high school, they are really good at throwing tantrums). They escape, find the rebels and are suppsoed to save the sea from the bad guy and his evil plan.

The characters didn't develop at all throughout the first half of the book. Neela is SUPER childish at 16 years old and is always gorging herself on candies. All the relationships seem... fake? They are weird. I felt nothing for any of the characters when they died--maybe their are dead, we don't know for sure because nothing was definite about many of the ones who died. I should have felt something, especially if you are going to spend 150 pages of info dumping.

The plot was extremely cliche. You have a strange dream because you're the chosen one. You don't want to marry the guy you re betrothed too--because you're a princess. You are on your own, because what YA novel has your parents as being a big role during your adventure? Because you're the chosen one you must stop the bad guy and releasing doom and destruction on the world. There are magical objects you need to find. Oh and those mythical creatures you thought were mythical, they aren't. Moral you learn is probably friendship, because boys are dumb in this book. P.S. Girls rule and save the seas.

The only thing I think this book had going for it was the mermaid thing, but the cliches killed it for me. There are three or four other books, but I'm not going to be finishing this one let alone the others. Jennifer Donnelly, you disappointed me.