Rebellious Reviews! ~ Enchanted Waters

Hey guys, welcome to this week’s Rebellious Review! This time it’s going to be quite different than usual seeing that I have been only reviewing Cosplay materials and animes. This time, I’m going to be reviewing a book I had the great pleasure of reading. It’s called Enchanted Waters. A book of a conglomeration of stories about different tales of the sea. From Selkies to sirens, and more. And the authors of this book are as followed: Alice Ivinya, Astrid V.J., Jennifer Kropf, Lyndsey Hall, N. D. T. Casale, and Ben Lang. Now that we have introductions out of the way, let’s get started, shall we?

The Stories

I’ve gotta say, I’ve read a lot of high fantasy novels and plenty of books talking about myths, Vikings, and creatures of the deep. But, I don’t think I have ever found something quite like these stories. Each one had its own interesting spin and at least by the third page I was pretty much hooked. I can even call some of the stories my favorites. Stories such as Merrily, Merrily where we get to meet a large group of pirates—who at first, given the story setting, icy waters, and a frigid atmosphere I almost thought they were Vikings so, it was a tad confusing. We get to see a race between two men who are competing over the right to take over the ship and be captain of the crew. It’s so much more than a basic race though. There’s deceit, betrayal, magic, and desertion. I will most definitely be putting that one on my reading list seeing that in Enchanted Waters we only get a chapter or two. It’s a good tactic though, because if the reader wants more that’s a sure-fire way of getting them to go find the entire book.

Another I found interesting was The Daughter of The Selkie King. I quite liked the descriptions and how it was shown that Selkies weren’t exactly held in the best light above water but yet, the main character is half Selkie and has a struggle with her identity and which life she wants to ultimately live. It caught me right away and I was actually quite disappointed to see only a small section of the book because I would have loved to read more. So I’m definitely going to track down the rest. The only thing that I found a bit difficult was the introduction of the characters. At the beginning of the story, I found myself having to go back and forth trying to figure out when each character came into play because it felt like a lot of names were suddenly thrown in all at once and it was a bit hard to keep track of. Else wise I really enjoyed reading the story.

Score: 8/10

The Characters

Overall reading about each character was really quite a treat. Each one came with their own personality that either made me like them immediately or in the case of Kiss the Frog, the frog ticked me off to the point where I took a lot of joy in the frog’s suffering. He was very insufferable with his cocky behavior and complete disregard for practically every woman he came across—regardless of his situation. I got a kick out of the witch who cursed him though. But any reaction a character be it hate, annoyance, love is a good reaction and that’s what you want in a book. To make the reader feel something. Although in that same story I was a bit confused as to how the wolf suddenly appeared. I didn’t really feel like that was explained too well. There were a few other characters in other stories that were like this too, but I feel like this can easily be overlooked by how well-written the stories are themselves.

Score: 9.5/10

The Flow of the Book

What I mean by “Flow of the Book” is the order in which the book is presented and how each story was paced. With that, I really can’t say much other than I felt it was really well-paced and it didn’t feel like I was yanked around so to speak. So I really appreciate that seeing as most short storybooks tend to do that, but this one did not. The pace was nice and even and none of the stories felt jarring in the slightest. I felt like I was pulled in as a silent observer in each.

Score:  10/10

Overall thoughts

The stories were really good, and I was entertained by many of them. I highly recommend this book of short stories to anyone who likes to read high fantasy and anything to do with the sea and what mysteries may lay beyond it. The profits of the book also go to Oceana, an organization that is for the conservation of the sea. And if that’s not a noble cause I don’t know what is.

Final Score: 27.5/30

What do you guys think? Do you agree with my final consensus? I’d love to know! And if you have any questions or just wanna talk about the book in general I’d be more than happy to chat! Just leave a comment below and I’ll answer asap!

Lastly, if you wanna support Rebel Fae and get exclusive access to things such as work in progress posts and stories I don’t post here or anywhere else, hop over to my Ko-fi page and donate. I’m eternally grateful for all that y’all do for me, you guys give me the strength to keep going so thank you from the bottom of my heart!

That’s all for now…

Rebel Fae out!

* Header picture is not my own it is owned by the publisher and owners of Enchanted Waters