Mermaids: The Most Underutilized Fantasy Creature
The fact that there is barely any mermaid fantasy out there is genuinely crazy to me
As a lover of fantasy, one day I suddenly realized how I rarely see fantasy books focused on mermaids. Dragons, vampires, witches, demons, there are tons of those. But mermaids are surprisingly small. To be specific, I’m talking about the YA and adult fantasy genre. When I was younger, mermaids were everywhere. Disney’s A Little Mermaid, Barbie in a Mermaid’s Tale, even Dora the Explorer had a mermaid moment.
Then I turned like 13, and suddenly mermaids were just not really a thing. So I’m always keeping an eye out for mermaid focused stuff in media. My search has been mostly barren, but the few things that have turned up on the shore have…unfortunately not satiated me.
Unfortunately I think mermaids are not given opportunities to live up to their full potential in media. Which is a darn shame because mermaids are cool. The ocean is cool. You could do so much with an underwater society. So many ocean creatures are stranger than fiction, some animals glow in the dark for crying out loud. And a huge appeal of fantasy is that you get to visit a world completely different from our own. That’s why most of us fell in love with fantasy, for the adventure.
So I don’t understand why it seems, that every mermaid book I encounter, is essentially just another version of The Little Mermaid. So far, every mermaid story I’ve consumed has had the same premise of The Little Mermaid, even if it’s not advertised as being inspired or a retelling of the story. It follows a mermaid, who gains legs to travel on land, usually because of falling in love with a human, or falls in love with one along the way. And I have examples of this too.
Skin of the Sea by Natasha Bowen is a YA fantasy that falls into this issue. Now to be clear, I actually enjoyed this book, as it was still a fun fantasy adventure with characters I liked following. I’d honestly recommend it if you want a fantasy read. However, my main criticism of it is how little the story does with mermaids. We barely see our mermaid protagonist as a mermaid, exploring the ocean world. She talks to other mermaids and the ocean goddess she serves like once. Most of the time we follow her as she’s on land, and she also falls in love with a human boy. Although The Little Mermaid is used as a comp title, and the book is still very enjoyable, I really wished there were more stuff actually related to the mermaids. Then again this book is a duology, so perhaps the sequel has the mermaid goodness I’m searching for.
Then I found The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Shaw. This is an adult horror, and I went into it knowing that it followed a mermaid and a plague doctor, and that was enough to hook me. Unfortunately, I found the book disappointing for a number of reasons, but the main one I’ll focus on was the underutilization of the fact that the protagonist was a mermaid. Although the book is short, we learn the mermaid’s backstory, which is essentially just a dark retelling of The Little Mermaid. We never once see the mermaid in the sea as an actual mermaid, as the book takes place after the mermaid is free from her horrible human husband. So she’s essentially a human the entire time, and there seems to be no real reason for her to actually be a mermaid. It feels like you could make the main character a different fantasy creature, and nothing about the book would change that much.
Why are people so fascinated by the fairy tale of The Little Mermaid? I do have multiple theories, the main one being that the fairy tale has lots of potential for allegory and metaphor to be used. A big one that I saw was in another book called The Magic Fish by Trung Le Nguyen (which is incredible and you should absolutely read it), where the fairy tale is used as a metaphor for the main character’s mother immigrating to America from Vietnam, and having to start a new life for herself. It’s a beautiful way to write about the topic of having to leave the only home you’ve ever known. I really liked The Magic Fish, and how it uses this fairy tale to tell its own story is one of the reasons for that. So obviously I’m not against retellings of this fairy tale, but why is it the only time I see mermaids used in media? Can we please get some new and creative ideas here?
My second theory as to why The Little Mermaid copies seem to be the only mermaid fiction around these days, is literally just because The Little Mermaid is a popular and recognizable title to use in marketing, and so publishers take a chance on those ones because they think it will sell more.
I don’t ask for a lot. I just think we could do more with mermaids. Why can’t we tap into our childhood love for them, return the wonder and whimsy that came with playing mermaids in the pool with your friends? Why can’t we have mermaid fantasies where us humans get to travel to the world of the ocean, and where mermaids don’t grow legs just to have most if not all of the book take place on land? The ocean is so vast, we know so little, and yet what we do know about it just speaks to the beauty of our world. How have people not used it to take inspiration for an ocean focused world? Why not have a mermaid fantasy where the human wants to turn into a mermaid, huh?
If you know of any books that have what I’m looking for, please send them my way. I would make sure robbers mistake your worst enemies home for yours when choosing their next victim. The books I’ve mentioned may not fit my specific set of mermaid fiction criteria, but I hope you give them a chance if they sound interesting to you. Just don’t expect a ton of scenes in the ocean. At the moment, the only other mermaid book that comes to mind is The Deep by Rivers Solomon, which I know is more literary fantasy than adventure fantasy, but it seems that the mermaids stay mermaids. So maybe I’ll check that out sometime. But seriously, help a girl out. I want to find actual mermaid stories.
Thumbnail: Allen & Ginter; Pampano, from Fish from American Waters series (N39) for Allen & Ginter Cigarettes; from the Met Museum
Now I have to write a mermaid story..... 🤣