The Water Mirror
The Dark Reflections Trilogy, Book 1
Kai Meyer
Simon Pulse
Fiction, MG Fantasy
Themes: Alternate Earths, Demons, Felines, Girl Power, Religious Themes, Urban Tales
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Description
Merle's young life, since being found as a newborn floating in a Venice canal, has been spent mostly at a dismal orphanage, but she's about to leave that life behind. The elderly mirror maker Arcimboldo, expelled from his guild for rumors of dark magic, has taken her on as an apprentice, and even a master of such dubious reputation has to be better than where she's been. Not that Venice itself is the great city it once was: for thirty years, it has been cut off from the outside world, surrounded by the resurrected Egyptian Pharaoh's army of mummy soldiers and flying, sun-powered skybarks, against which even Venice's stone lion guardians are as good as helpless. Only the mysterious Flowing Queen, a force alive within the very canals and linked, somehow, to the mermaids of the nearby seas, has kept the army at bay, but even that protection cannot last forever. Shortly into her apprenticeship, Merle stumbles across a plot by some of the city councilors to betray the Flowing Queen and sell Venice to the Pharaoh. The mystery of Arcimboldo's enchanted mirrors, the question of her own past, and the riddle of the Flowing Queen catch Merle up in an adventure that shake the very foundations of what she knows as reality.
Review
Meyer presents a unique and magical version of turn-of-the-century Venice, in a world where stone lions are bred as mounts for city guards, mummies and priestly sacrifices power a malevolent Egyptian army in its bloody march across the known world, and Hell is not only a known subterranean nation but sends demonic emissaries to court the populace with promises of protection. In truth, he presents too many ideas to track here, piling mystery atop conundrum atop riddle and enigma, angling not just to create an alternate Earth but to call into question the very nature of Heaven, Hell, and Reality itself. That's just a bit too much to pile on one's plate, even if he has three books to play with, but then I tend to recoil from any book which purports to unravel the Meaning of the Universe. Some of the concepts in The Water Mirror cannot help but be so grand as to seem less like knowable elements of the story and more like tricks the author can pull out of his hat when needed to either move the tale along or snarl it up. That said, Merle's tale picked up fairly quickly and - for the most part - kept moving, though I never once lost sight of the fact that it was only the first third of a larger tale; I knew most of the mysteries she found would simply be questions left hanging without hope of an answer, which grew a bit wearisome. She proved a decent enough heroine nonetheless, not particularly outstanding but adequate for the task at hand. I might consider reading the next book if I find it deeply discounted, as I found this volume.