Grasp Home From The Sea (Elemental Masters, #7) Imagined By Mercedes Lackey Depicted In Electronic Format

much rehashing of past scenes between Nan and Sarah from The Wizard of London, The villains felt halfbaked and other parts of the story felt rushed, but if you're looking for a quick read this book is alright.
Confusing and disjointed, Home From The Sea is a rather disappointing addition to the Elemental Masters series, A fusion of old fairy tale lore and fantasy introduces us to a young Welsh lass, Mari Prothero, As the usual strand of these tales go, she find herself to be half Selkie and bound to marry a Selkie husband to satisfy an old family promise.


The premise isn't original, but done well with a strong female lead, What doesn't work with the novel is the strange entwining with the two young English girls whose backstory I still don't understand, Even worse a third of the novel was used up explaining the back story before any of our protagonists even met one another, It takes a little while to get the ball rolling on thisth Elemental Masters book, . . we jump from one set of characters to a second set, back and forth, until something happens that gives cause to unite the two to a common purpose.


Sometimes I find myself wishing that Lackey would save the "happily ever after" stories for her other series the Five Hundred Kingdoms in lieu of scrounging up some of the danger and the NEED in these Elemental Masters books.
What I didn't get from Home From the Sea was what danger, if any, would exist if Sarah and Nan hadn't interfered with Mari's story I mean, I know Mari's happiness was in danger, but Lackey alluded to the effect that "dark eyes" were watching Mari, yet the only bad joker to pop out of the proverbial woodwork was the unwelcome constable and a rather grumpy Selkie chieftain.
Had Mari learned enough magic from her bargain to cause a lot of damage and pain in her grief of losing her husband and children

All told, an interesting story that caught me up once Sarah, Nan amp the Selkies got involved.
A good, quick read for a day spent at home, in the A/C avoiding the heat, I am so disappointed.

The story of Mari, destined to be wife to a selch and a water master in her own right, had potential, And honestly, I have loved the Elemental Masters series, especially since I find that they're based on faerie tales utterly charming,

However, this book has been infuriating,

Lackey has been especially formulaic and feelgood with this book, Gone is even the slightest hint of darkness, I'm disappointed with that Lackey used to be genuinely good at creating genuinely human characters who confront painful topics, Maybe this is just more youngadult than usual,

I'm also more than halfway through the book pageand I don't know who the villain is, I guess it could be the new constable, but we've only really seen him once, Puck's mentioned a couple of times that there are dark powers interested in Mari, but I've seen little to no evidence of it,

There has been hashing and rehashing of the same information, both information from Sarah and Nan from The Wizard of London, the way magic works, and of the information Mari has been given.
I just stumbled over the second instance where she discovers the selch aren't immortal, Yes, twice. And the first one was only twenty pages or so ago,

Sarah and Nan are seeming especially powerless in this book, too they came to town, toddled around, found the bookshop, declared themselves incapable of finding their quarry, and called on Puck to help after saying over and over that they didn't want to.
For two young women reputedly trained in the Sherlockian methods of investigation, it seems especially wishywashy,

This is honestly the very first Mercedes Lackey book that I have genuinely disliked, These books tend to be my goto comfort books I know what I'm getting and I like what I get, but this seems rushed and illthought out.
It's like she settled on The Tempest but couldn't figure out how to deal with it, rather than writing the story and letting it fall out.


Anyway, grump. I'm only halfway through, and if by some miracle the book redeems itself in that time, I'll update my review, As it stands, I'm really sad, especially since Lackey is one of my top ten favorite authors,

Updated: the conflict in this book was so weak, I finished it, but I'm still really sad, I have LOVED the Elemental Masters series, and this one fell so flat, Some parts were really rushed, some were really slow, the villains were more, . well. . not very villainous, and Lackey left major characters out of the book Daffyd for long periods of time to just spontaneously pop up out of nowhere later.
Grump. :/ I think this may well become my favourite of the "Elemental Masters" series,

Unlike most of the other books in the series, in this the conflicts are relatively small, domestic affairs, The bad guys have mildly sensible reasons for their behaviour, and are not yet more "hurt people for power" types, which is a great relief.


It's also something of a sequel to "The Wizard of London", and it's nice to meet the grownup Sarah and Nan,

Then there's the domestic minutiae that the author does so well, and the sympathetic characters, and the village gossip, and, . . well, it's all just sort of lowkey, no messing about saving the world or anything, and it's really rather lovely,

Even if she clearly hasn't the faintest idea what seacoal actually is, This review also appears on my sitelinkblog,

.stars

In the newest Elemental Masters novel, Mari Prothero learns that her father's preternatural fishing and sailing abilities aren't just skill long ago her family made a pact with the Selchs, a type of Selkie, and in order to keep the pact, Mari must marry a Selch, have children, and give her husband and one child back to the sea.
But what nobody counted on was Mari's abilities as a Water master and her genuine affection for the man she marries,

Anyone who reads my reviews knows I'm a Mercedes Lackey freak, Her books helped get me through adolescence and they're still comfortreads now, I love almost everything she's written, and will defend her themes and characters to the death,

I didn't love this,

Home from the Sea may be the weakest Lackeyonly not counting cowritten books work I've read to date, and that's including the Collegium Chronicles novels that I've fussed about and am sincerely hoping the last one improves on.
There are several reasons for this judgment:

, There's no story here. Or rather, there's a story, but there's not enough story for a fulllength novel, not even one that doesn't even hitpages in ebook.
There was a lot of padding, and not stuff that helped the plot or ending of the book at all, In several places, chunks of other stories or books those involving Nan, Sarah, and their birds were essentially copypasted rather than summarized, retold, or even discussed.
And they were chunks that contained information that set up events later in the book, but we didn't need them verbatim, The actual story is a blend of several Celtic mythsTam Lin, East of the Sun and West of the Moon, the Two Magicians, etc.
and could have been quite charming if the stuff not related to the story hadn't been such a slog,

. The characters are utterly unsympathetic, I never really connected with Nan and Sarah, anyway, and they make up half the book, But then there's Mari, who in no way lives up to the usual spunky Lackey heroineat least until the very end of the book, when the trials to reclaim her husband and sons begin.
She's utterly flat, boring, and uninteresting, Her father, Daffyd, seems okay until Mari realizes that he's not as special as she thought because his fishing is augmented by the pact.
At that point, she suddenly decides he's a cad, There's not enough character development or exposition to set this up for us all we have is Mari's opinion,

. The villains are mustachetwirlers of the first degree, The constablewho is utterly unnecessary to the plot at all except that the real villain spends all his time in the oceanis a onedimensional bully whose reasons for tormenting the Protheros are never revealed.
The other characters speculate about his reasons, but nothing solid is ever offered, And then at the end, everyoneNan, Sarah, the Water Elementals, Earth Elementals, and Robin Goodfellow himselfgangs up on him to make him look like a complete boob.
The Selch chief is also a bully who hates it when something doesn't go exactly his wayeven if it goes generally his wayand exists only to make life for Mari and her husband as miserable as possible.


. There's no real tension. The story went forward, for the most part, with a very singleminded forward thrust that said that this is how this story goes and nothing is going to get in its way.
Maybe it's just because it's based on a fairy tale and therefore the structure of the story was already laid out, but in this case I feel Lackey dropped the ball on staying within the structure but still giving us a story we could see possibly going terribly terribly wrong.


The ending isn't badit actually feels more like a classic Lackey than anything else in the bookbut it doesn't make up for the drag it took to get to the end of the book.


I'm very sad that I didn't like this one and have to give it so few, I truly hope that the next few Lackey novels on their way make up for this fumble, Another great entry in the series, and I loved the nod to Elizabeth Peters legendary Amelia Peabody! Quite enjoyed this entry in the Elemental Masters series, mostly because Nan and Sarah had major roles.
This one seemed to be based on a combination of the stories of "The Seal Wife" and "The Judgement of Paris",

I am finding though, that reading them backwards that some of the earlier ones aren't as good as the later ones, Apart from Nan and Sarah and Puck, I didn't much care for the characters, The constable just seemed like a badly drawn plot device who served no discernible role in the story,

Still, worthon the basis of the interactions of the characters I do like, This book follows the fairly predictable pattern of the other Elemental Masters books, but there is enough variation to keep it interesting, I like that the main villains are different from those of previous books, . . no evil mages or vindictive aunts/stepmothers who also happen to be evil mages here, just elemental creatures and a bullying constable, I also enjoyed the return of Sarah and Nan from sitelinkThe Wizard of London as young adults, figuring out what they are going to do with their lives.


There were a few things that threw me out of what was generally an enjoyable story, Firstly, the reference to the "family of archaeologists" who aid Nan and Sarah in Egypt pulled me out of the story a bit, since they were clearly the Emerson family from the Amelia Peabody books by sitelinkElizabeth Peters.
Not that it's a bad thing, but it was a thinly veiled reference and I would have liked it better if it was more obscured.
Mentioning a pair of archaeologists who live on a houseboat with their son would have implied the connection, . . telling us that they call the lady "Sitt Hakim" and that she has a sword parasol is pretty much a dead giveaway, if you've read any of Peters' books.


The other thing that threw me off is a case of bad editing, . . one of the minor characters is introduced as "Siarl", referred to that way a few times in the subsequent paragraph, and then a few chapters later he shows up as "Niarl".
He is called "Niarl" too many times for it to be a one time typo, and a few chapters after that he's "Siarl" again.
If I can catch that as a reader, someone in the publishing business should have caught it first,

Overall I liked this book more than some of the others in the same vein, . . it was much better than sitelinkThe Gates of Sleep but sitelinkPhoenix and Ashes is still my favorite, Actually improves on a reread, The

first time I was annoyed by the story flitting away from Mari to Nan amp Sarah, This time I don't mind the digressions, Would probably be better if I'd read other books in the series where they appear,
A sweet tale of magic in Wales with a slow pace and no dark villainy, Even though I give this bookstars, its faults should be addressed:

Mercedes Lackey is definitely past her prime, Nevertheless, I read her books religiously anyway because they're enjoyable, and her truly wonderful works in the past still deserve some respect by recognizing her mediocre works of the present.


The villains of Home From the Sea were never fleshed out, To the point that you weren't even sure they were villains until late in the game, when you realized that the lack of emotional depth wasn't meant to conceal a heart of gold.
It was just a lack of emotional depth,

In fact, halfway through the novel I wasn't even certain what exactly the "problem" of the story was meant to be, Mari, the protagonist, had agreed to a magical deal that did not seem manifestly unfair at face value, Nan and Sarah from "The Wizard of London" showed up again and waxed on about how their greatest problem was a bad case of idle hands.
Halfway through the novel I felt myself enjoying Lackey's typical sensory details focusing on food and practicality, but I found myself seriously questioning whether the plot was going to go anywhere.
After "Reserved for the Cat," I can say I have been burned by Lackey before,

Part of Lackey's problem is that she does not even pursue the interesting plot points she includes, half the time, In this novel it is established that the Prothero family is in the habit of taking selq brides, bearing two children, and giving over the selq bride and one child back to the sea in seal form.
It is established early on that this took place with Mari's mother and brother, Early in the novel Mari learns of this family secret and meets with the selq folk, And absolutely no character ever thinks to pursue the possibility that Mari could actually talk to her mother or brother, Or at least want to, What one would expect to be an obvious plot point to address, Lackey ignores entirely without explanation,

I was glad that the final quarter perhaps finalth of the book resolved itself with at least some sense of suspense and an actual problem to be solved.
But again, I feel like it has been years since Lackey wrote a proper novel with sufficient plot twists and suspense, It would help if she embraced a more Whedonesque habit of killing main characters, Something. Anything. If anotherpages could have been added to this novel with more nittygritty urban fantasy details, I would have been satisfied,

It should also be noted that I adore selkies above all other magical creatures so was dying to read this book as soon as I saw what it was about.
So, I am infinitely grateful for the concept of the novel, if not the execution, .