Back To Sea

Self-Published

Community Rating

Description

Ariel, daughter of Poseidon, successfully fooled the people of Atlantica, married herself a prince, and got everything she ever wanted. Until... the mystery of her sudden existence is questioned. Rumors spread like wildfire about her being a mermaid witch who gave herself legs, leaving Prince Eric no choice but to address the matter himself. In a test of truth, Ariel is cast into the ocean, yet never resurfaces (as far as the people know). Now expelled from one world and disowned by another she remains in shameful hiding. But as a cold war breaks out between land and sea, Ariel must find a way to fix a mistake made in foolish love before this cold war gets any warmer.

Information

Status: Hiatus
Year: 2022
Author: Onjel Bercier

Royal Road Stats

Rating: 4.6/ 5.0
Followers: 8
Views: 11,956

Reviews

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Community Reviews(1)

bokhiRoyal Road
★★★★ 3.5
It's a little hard to rate Back to the Sea. The trouble is this: it's good fiction, but not good fanfiction.
Let me explain.
Back to the Sea uses the Disney version of The Little Mermaid as its foundation. The issue is that, aside from the names, the characters have little in common with what is found in the Disney movie. Ariel doesn't sound or act like Ariel, and their only similiarity is red hair and spunkiness. Eric doesn't really seem like Eric, though to be fair, he didn't get much of a character in TLM. The mer-characters are likewise grittier, and the world doesn't resemble that of the Disney movie, either.
So all in all, I find it exceedingly odd that the author is writing this as fanfiction rather than an original tale inspired by the Little Mermaid pop mythology (rather than the H.C. Andersen tale), because that's pretty much what this is.
The world is grittier with sensible politics, and the characters are flawed in ways the Disney versions were not (or their flaws are taken to their logical ends--depends on the character!). It's hard to imagine a kid's cartoon while reading this rather than people, and generally that's a good thing. It's discordant here because again, terms from the TLM movie are scattered throughout, ensuring we do not forget it is borrowing the Disney TLM IP.
I feel like I should enjoy this story, but the dissonance from the grittier, more grown-up take and the usage of terms and concepts from a kid's cartoon movie is a bit too much. There are also areas where the worldbuilding seems to directly contradict the movie, but I haven't watched the movie in years so perhaps I'm wrong about that (though I'd be surprised).
If the Disney IP stuff were taken out, the dissonance would disappear and I think this could very easily be 4-5 stars, depending on how the concepts are replaced or refurbished.
Aside from that, there are some sentence fragments and punctuation errors, but those are reasonably easy to fix with another round or two of editing