Mermaid Fillet-Review

Intro

Mermaid Fillet was a book that I was extremely keen to read. I am very interested in speculative fiction set outside the realm of Europe, and I am always excited to see SA authors branch out of nonfiction to explore reality within the fantastical. I enjoyed Moxyland and Zoo City by Lauren Beukes and had a ton of fun with Charlie Human’s Apocalypse, Now Now. So when I discovered what seemed to be a dark and gritty urban fantasy tale involving mermaids, I was all on that like a bag of chips. Now that I have read it...

Writing

The problems with Mermaid Fillet start relatively early, namely that there are too many characters in a short story. Characters are chronicled over each chapter; honestly, I didn’t care for any of them. They were utterly disconnected from one another, maybe only in regard to the theme, but the connection is tenuous until the final chapter. Speaking of which, Mia Arderne seems utterly disinterested in the juicy metaphor of human trafficking and sexual abuse via the mermaids and goddesses in favor of pedestrian (but still horrific) real-world sexual /gang violence. That isn’t to say that there isn’t some magical realism in the text that waves the real horror with the supernatural; it’s just that Mia Arderne doesn’t take advantage of the supernatural to complement the real world, such as in One Hundred Years of Solitude. The magical realism is muted throughout Mermaid Fillet, to the point where it feels like an afterthought instead of an essential genre factor.

That isn’t to say that the book is badly written, just poorly planned. Mia Arderne does a great job establishing a dreamlike version of Cape Town in the first two chapters. Granted, it doesn’t go anywhere, but it's a good attempt; the scenes of sexual assault and abuse of women are harrowing but ultimately don’t go anywhere. Michaela (who is Tumblr personified) gets molested, and the trauma she experiences within that chapter is disturbingly authentic, but nothing else happens with it. It doesn’t affect her behavior patterns; she is still a terminally online, porn-obsessed weird that goes on rants about capitalism while working from home. Letitia’s trauma is more pronounced and affects her marriage, but again more comes of that; she still says with her abusive pimp husband. There is a profound sense of anti-climax with all the characters, partly cause they had no room to breathe, partly because Mia Arderne didn’t seem to have an idea for a resolution to their arcs. Their stories more or less stop, which could be the point if they were more developed or exciting, but as we keep jumping from one character to another, over nine chapters in only 224 pages. This was not the case.

We spend pages upon pages of characters not being or only occasionally involved in the main themes; Letitia and Michaela are the closest in theme, revolving around the exploitation and abuse of their bodies. However, Isaac and the unnamed person born with Air Jordan meander around, trying to fulfill their confusing and meaningless chapters before getting what they want without much apparent effort or simply dying in a gang war. I never engaged with their storylines, as I had no clear idea of what they wanted or how they planned to get it.

Conclusion

Mermaid Fillet is one of the most disappointing reads I have checked out this year, filled with too many underdeveloped characters with a meandering plotline. Mia Andrea failed to take advantage of her fantasy elements and shows an apparent disinterest in said elements; there is a strong voice in the prose. Still, it doesn’t prevent Mermaid Fillet from being too short and unfocused to be anything more than basically okay.

Acknowledgments

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