Review: The Vicious Deep by Zoraida Cordova

From Goodreads: For Tristan Hart, everything changes with one crashing wave. He was gone for three days. Sucked out to sea in a tidal wave and spit back ashore at Coney Island with no memory of what happened. Now his dreams are haunted by a terrifying silver mermaid with razor-sharp teeth. His best friend Layla is convinced something is wrong. But how can he explain he can sense emotion like never before? How can he explain he’s heir to a kingdom he never knew existed? That he’s suddenly a pawn in a battle as ancient as the gods. Something happened to him in those three days. He was claimed by the sea ... and now it wants him back. 

My Rating: 3.5 hearts 

Thoughts on the Novel: The Vicious Deep by Zoraida Cordova was a book that I thought would be much darker and have more action. Even though that didn’t turn out to necessarily be the case, I was still pleased with Cordova’s debut because the characterization and worldbuilding were fabulous.

I sometimes find that when female authors are writing from the point-of-view of a male teenager, their protagonist doesn’t sound like a guy. Cordova, however, appears to have nailed it with Tristan’s voice. At times, I really liked Tristan because he had a great sense of humour and because even though he could be quite cocky, he did have his moments of insecurity. At other times though, I wanted to slug him for acting like a jerk and being so thoughtless. Either way, I thought Tristan was a pretty memorable character.

Cordova’s secondary characters were fleshed out nicely too. Although I didn’t care for the romance angle between Tristan and Layla (mainly because Tristan came off as a player to me), I liked that Layla didn’t get overshadowed by Tristan’s personality. I also enjoyed Tristan’s interactions with his parents, Kurt, Thalia and Marty, and I can’t wait to see how he holds up against Nieve.

As well, it’s obvious that Cordova put a lot of thought into her worldbuilding, and I liked the allusions to The Little Mermaid. I would have preferred the search for the Sea King’s missing trident pieces to have started earlier though so that it didn’t feel rushed at the end.

A solid start to what I think will be an extremely fun trilogy, The Vicious Deep was released by Sourcebooks Fire on May 1, 2012.

Comments About the Cover: The storm raging in the background complements the title of the book and the slogan “Don’t let it pull you under.” Also, since The Vicious Deep isn’t overly girly, it could be marketed to male readers and so it’s nice that the cover can appeal to them too.  

In exchange for an honest review, this ARC was received from the publisher (Sourcebooks) for free via NetGalley.