In Deeper Waters

In Deeper Waters Book Review by F.T. Lukens

This book was so, so basic.

It’s almost like Lukens took every fanfiction trope in existence and combined it all to make In Deeper Waters.

That being said, it wasn’t a terrible read by any means, but it was shallow and very cheesy. The main premise includes all of the following:

-An altruistic prince
-A beautiful merman
-Shapeshifters
-Pirates
-The last of its kind/Chosen One kind of deal

All of these are tropes that I’ve read countless times before, especially in fanfiction and fantasy novels. All of these tropes also exist in In Deeper Waters, but none of them are expanded enough to make an actual concrete story.

There are too many elements here. If Lukens had focused on one or two of these elements, I think the book would have much more depth and nuance than it ended up having due to overexposure of tropes.

The whole book revolves around a young prince who is going on a coming-of-age tour of his kingdom. Adventure and trouble inadvertently ensues with a bare-bones backdrop of political intrigue.

The prince, Tally, is your super typical I-want-to-prove-myself-prince that’s been done a million times before. Nothing at all made Tally special, even the fact that he’s apparently the last living mage in his Kingdom (if anything, this made him more rudimentary).

He’s kind, he wants to help the common people, and he loves his family. Really, Lukens gave me nothing to work with here.

The secret merman (also the last of his kind if you can believe it), is named Athlen and is also about the most unsophisticated character Lukens could create. For also being the last of his kind and having lost his whole family, you’d think he’d be more interesting, but…nope.

He’s just a happy-go-lucky dude that made an Ariel from the Little Mermaid kind of deal in order to get legs and just…falls in love with Tal for really no reason and spends the rest of the book helping him.

Urgh, I don’t even know what to say about this book because there’s nothing to talk about.

The premise, the plot, the characters, and the world are all bits and pieces of other works that I’ve read before and where it was done better.

If you want a really basic romance with some good old royalty, magic, and mythological creatures, this might be your thing. The book is super simple and a quick and easy read. If you want something light and pleasant to distract you from your reality, you could consider picking this up.

I think a smidgen of my disappointment also comes from the fact that I’ve read F.T. Lukens before in her Star Host trilogy and while those books needed work and improvement, I thought they were really decent and I actually enjoyed the main characters.

The protagonists in In Deeper Waters didn’t hold my interest at all, and at the end of the day that’s where most of my inherent boredom came from. I didn’t care what happened to the characters as they never really felt like real characters.

They felt like caricatures of people with no flaws and boring personalities, royalty and fins withstanding.

Recommendation: Honestly, if this premise intrigues you, you’re better off reading A Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue by Mackenzi Lee. It has the same basic storyline as In Deeper Waters, but just done in a much better way. Or, you know, just read fanfiction with any of those tropes and your favorite fandoms, that works too.

Score: 4/10