Fathom -- Cherie Priest

FathomSometime in the 1930s, 18-year-old Nia is invited to take a break from working on her family's orchard and visit her wealthy aunt and cousin in Florida.  Her cousin Bernice is a New York sophisticate, worldly and -- as Nia's disapproving grandmother puts it -- "fast".

She is also, as Nia quickly discovers, extremely angry and totally bananas.  Her rage leads to a life-or-death confrontation between the girls which ends in a wholly unexpected manner:  Arahab, a water witch, takes Bernice beneath the waves -- because she needs human assistance to wake the sleeping Leviathan.

Unbeknownst to Arahab, another being witnessed the showdown -- an earth elemental who is determined to prevent her plan from succeeding.  So while Bernice is exploring her new existence and testing her new powers, Nia is going through a much slower transformation.  Their clash on the beach will not be their last meeting.

While I didn't really connect emotionally with the characters, I loved Fathom.  I loved it for its action-packedness (I read it in one sitting, occasionally having to force myself to go back and read bits more carefully because I kept getting so swept away in my WhatHappensNext excitement).  I loved it for its surprises (there was an excellent OMIGODWHAT moment).  I loved it for its Wicker Man-ish island cult, I loved it for its Battle Between Eternal Forces And How We Little Mortals Are But Pawns storyline, I loved that the elementals came off as what they were (immortal and inhuman) rather than what that type of creature reads like in many other stories (pretty much human, just wiser and more zen). 

I loved it for what I'm starting to think of as specifically Cherie Priest-ish stuff:

Her affectionate mockery of genre clichés (while still putting them to good use):

And all the candle nubs, left scattered in the grass--they weren't regular candles.  They had a greasy texture and a black coating.  Who used black candles?  No one up to any good, that's who.

Her imagery and description, as usual, were both so spot-on that I forgot I was reading and really felt like I was watching the events unfold in person.  And, as with her other books, I loved her use of real-world history and settings -- before Fathom, I never knew about the Gasparilla Pirate Festival or the Bok Tower Gardens, and now I need to visit the latter.  As well as pretty much all of the other National Historic Landmarks.

This was published as an adult novel, but as with Cherie Priest's other work, it has definite crossover potential.  Thumbs up and up and up.

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Previously:

Four and Twenty Blackbirds (Eden Moore, #1)
Wings to the Kingdom (Eden Moore, #2)

Dreadful Skin