When sixteen-year-old Ell Gossamer's two mothers mysteriously disappear, the teen human-mermaid hybrid quickly flees home with little more than a mysterious family keepsake, a book called āDreams of Song Times.ā Alone in the world, Ell seeks love and safetyāonly to be pursued by a fanatical cult hoping to extract magic from her ancient DNA. Ellās quest to control her life leads to heartbreak and triumph, as she courageously steps out to defend other endangered creatures before discovering her own astonishing destiny. CONTAINS: Sexual situations, violence, and death.
When sixteen-year-old Ell Gossamer's two mothers mysteriously disappear, the teen human-mermaid hybrid quickly flees home with little more than a mysterious family keepsake, a book called āDreams of Song Times.ā Alone in the world, Ell seeks love and safetyāonly to be pursued by a fanatical cult hoping to extract magic from her ancient DNA. Ellās quest to control her life leads to heartbreak and triumph, as she courageously steps out to defend other endangered creatures before discovering her own astonishing destiny. CONTAINS: Sexual situations, violence, and death.
Ā
I donāt know exactly how I landed a short while ago at the tideās edge on this island, with its blue rocks, singing sea grasses, and powdered sand. My memoryās still a little fuzzy. I suspect I had help. I recall feeling the water propelling me as if I were riding atop a rocket. And I still feel the firm imprint of unseen hands guiding me.
Ah, yes, a giant wall of water was about to engulf me. Then everything went black. I remember that part now. I hope I remember the rest soon.
Older memories are more intact. I know who I am: Ell Gossamer, in her twentieth year of life. I know I put on this wetsuit, which Iām now peeling off, to shield me from the icy river that brought me from home to the sea and then to hereā¦wherever here is.
I know what Iāve concealed inside the wetsuit: a family heirloom, Dreams of Song Times. Iām counting on this book to help me understand what happens next.
Iāll take a moment now to feel the hot sun on my naked skin, the color of walnuts, someone once told me. Actually, my skin looks more like the blue-gray of the ocean, sleek and smooth. The wind makes the grasses sing, a soft handful of notes gliding up and down a scale. The island is so small I can see the other shore. A speck of land surrounded only by water as far as the eye can see.
Left so completely alone, shouldnāt I be terrified? Iām not. I suspect this isnāt a permanent situation. Change is sweeping in with the tide. This excites me, but I worry that my future could erase my past. Iām not ready to lose the memories of those Iāve loved and lostātheir smiles, their scents, the feel of their skin against mine.
Ahr and Per. Kay. Val. Bibi. Thereās even a tiny corner of my heart reserved for Angel.
If no one objects, Iād like to dwell on the past for just a bit longer.
Iām not hungry or cold, just gloriously naked, sitting on a blue rock. As night falls, Iām committed to reminiscing until my heart aches. Up in the night sky, my secret constellation, Lyk, winks at me.
I arrived at this place, and at this moment in time, because of secrets.
Secrets have defined me for so long, I am eager to learn who I am without all the baggage. My parents swaddled me from infancy in secrets, crooning lullabies in a strange tongue they never taught me. They tutored me to remember who I am, yet sent me out into the world forbidden to speak my truth.
They were trying to protect me, even if they made a mess of it. I understand that now. I have forgiven them.
I also understand that when you live your whole life as a secret, falling in love will break your heart.
I came of age only once I began telling the truth. And the truth is that I am a mermaid, possibly the last of my kind. And possibly also a carrier of deep and ancient magic, long forgotten and ripe for rediscovery. Love anchors me to the past, but magic may open the door to my future. I will know soon enough.
I picked up this book thinking it would be an urban fantasy novel about a mermaid. What I got instead was a tale of a young woman fighting to keep herself alive in a world determined to destroy her. It's not so much about mermaids, as such, but about discrimination in all of ' forms, and the struggle that the marginalised peoples of this world have to face every single day, because of the ignorance which prevails. Ell's mermaid ancestry is almost a metaphor with her entire, heartbreaking life being an allegory of the battle that those who are ever so slightly different from the 'norm' have to face.
As mentioned, Ell's story is heartbreaking, and Dreams of Song Times is a difficult, but compelling, read. Her story begins when she's washed up on a small spit of land consisting of blue rocks, sea grass and powdery sand. She can not really remember how she ended up there, but she can remember the events leading up to her Cast Away location. She has a book with her, rammed down the front of her wetsuit, and that book, she believes, holds the entire history of mermaids - or Rhfunia, in their ancient tongue. And, while she sits on one of the rocks on the small island she's claimed, she deigns it important enough to tell us how she ended up there.
Ell begins to tell her life story by recounting a memory from her Grade school days. When she watched The Little Mermaid for the first time, and the casual racism she encounters from her classmates. "You can't be a mermaid, Ell," one girl tells her. "Your skin isn't the right tone. It's nice and all, sort of walnutty. But mermaids are really white, like Ariel.". It's that sort of off handed comment which shapes Ell's very life. Later, she's invited to a party thrown by the girl, where Ell is forced to be Ursula along with another girl, who isn't quite 'white enough' to be Ariel. It's the first of her experiences of cruelty at the hand of Ariels, but that comes much, much later.
Her parents, Ahr and Per, are extremely cautious and implore Ell to never ever tell their secret. That she's a mermaid. But they never explain why. When her parent's disappear one morning when she's just 16, Ell is forced to face the fact that she's one of the last of her kind, and that her parents caution was very much needed. She escapes, barely, and runs away from Baltimore to a small town in Vermont. It's there she meets the other types of non-Disney Ariels; much more deadly and way crueller than the ones from her childhood. She's betrayed, by the people she's come to depend on, and in her own way, love.
What Dreams of Song Tides does so well, is highlight the individual stories of marginalised people without preaching. It's unequivocal in its approach about the plight of Indigenous Peoples, LGBTQIA+ and Black Lives. It handles, delicately, the way that societal expectations can have repercussions on the lives of immigrants, even within their own communities. One character is struggling against his parents demands for him to follow their dreams instead of his own. But, if it fails at anything, it's that the characters only ever have room for one passion at a time. Be it Ell's love of books when she's working at a bookstore in Vermont - or later, her passion for human rights. At one point, there's a rally, where to get their point across, the activists show a slide of an endangered Jaguar - to then say that they can't worry about that when their own lives are at risk. While they have a point - people have room in their hearts for more than one concern. One can be worried about the wildlife and endangered species around the planet, as well as be concerned about the persecution of discriminated people. And that's why I've awarded it only four stars. If Bernstein had perhaps added a bit of dimension to her characters, allowing them to feel more than one emotion at a time, or have more than one passion, then this would have been, undoubtedly a five star review.
S. A