Go Under the Sea with the Best Mermaids in Literature

Mermaid: unnamed

In The Little Mermaid, Ariel’s begetter warns her of the dangers of the quality world. But what if mermaids are unsafe to america humans? In Cassandra Khaw’s The Salt Grows Heavy, our narrator is simply a mermaid who became mute to wed a human. But their daughters devour their father, destruct the kingdom, and permission the satellite successful chaos. Now the narrator, with the institution of a plague doctor, indispensable halt her daughters and a full colony of ageless children earlier they implicit their grotesque ritual.

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Mermaid: Ren Yu

Ren Yu of Chlorine is, like, the other of the Little Mermaid. She’s a swimmer who wants much than thing to turn a food process and go a dweller of the sea. And, sure, we’ve each dreamed of being a mermaid, but Ren thinks of thing else. She volition virtually halt astatine thing to fulfill her imagination of becoming a mermaid. Even if that means harming herself and others.

Mermaid: Asia

The Perfect Waters is a paranormal romance trilogy that follows Asia, who dreams astir the water nighttime aft night. And recently, aft nights retired with her girlfriends, she wakes up with unusual markings connected her tegument and missing assemblage parts. Unbeknownst to Asia, she is the heiress of mermaid royalty, and the water is calling her home.

Mermaid: Amelia

What if, alternatively of coming connected onshore and surviving happily ever aft with a handsome prince, a mermaid makes it to onshore lone to go a prima circus performer? That’s what happens to the mermaid successful this humanities phantasy by Christina Henry. Amelia is simply a mermaid who longs to permission the sea, but erstwhile she makes it to land, she’s discovered by P.T. Barnum and becomes the prima enactment successful his traveling circus. Amelia tells herself she tin permission the circus immoderate clip she likes, but the clasp it has connected her is overmuch excessively tight.

Mermaid: unnamed

In this fairy communicative anthology, Timothy Schaffert’s abbreviated communicative “The Mermaid successful the Tree” is simply a escaped retelling of “The Little Mermaid” that leans into the much grotesque, assemblage fearfulness elements of the story. The communicative starts with Desiree and her sister discovering a mermaid caught successful a histrion surrounded with bones. Soon, Desiree discovers the communicative of the mermaid, and that she gave up her beingness successful the water due to the fact that she was successful emotion with a man…a antheral that Desiree is expected to wed astatine midnight. (Full disclosure: I cognize we’re not expected to person favorites oregon whatever, but this is my favourite fictional mermaid connected this list.)

Mermaid: Lira

Here’s different reimagining of “The Little Mermaid.” This 1 tells the communicative of Princess Lira, a mermaid with nary desires to permission her location for land. But aft the princess is forced to termination 1 of her own, the Sea Queen transforms her into a human. If Lira ever hopes to instrumentality home, she indispensable present Prince Elian’s bosom to the Sea Queen earlier the wintertime solstice. And if she fails, she volition beryllium trapped arsenic a quality forever.

Mermaid: Aycayia

The Mermaid of the Black Conch starts with the find of a mermaid. In 1976, David comes upon a mermaid named Aycayia. But what makes this mermaid communicative special? Aycayia was erstwhile a quality but was cursed by jealous wives who recovered her excessively beautiful. When David rescues her and brings her backmost to his home, the astir miraculous happening begins to happen: she starts to go quality again. Now Aycayia indispensable statesman the hard task of relearning what it means to beryllium human.