Review: In the Veins of the Drowning by Kalie Cassidy

In the Veins of the Drowning by Kalie Cassidy
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I was provided an ARC via Netgalley, all opinions are my own.

This follows Imogen, a siren in hiding.  She is the ward of a strange and abusive king who is making a show of her upcoming marriage to the captain of his guard.  When the handsome king from a neighboring country recognizes her though they have never met, things begin to unravel for Imogen.  She decides she must escape her prison of a home and the friendly king Theo may be her only hope of protection.  Imogen and Theo form a blood bond and embark on a journey to not only save her from her keeper but to save Theo's kingdom.  

I seem to be in the minority, but I thought this was just OK.  The concept was really interesting, but as a fantasy lover, so many things were left unexplained.  For example, why do the sirens have wings instead of tails? That is clearly a deliberate choice the author made to deviate from other siren/mermaid tales we've seen in the past, but we never get an explanation why or what they are for.  Also Imogen doesn't spend much time in the water so we never get to see her use her wings and she doesn't fly.  Maybe that will be made clear in the future.  As a romance reader I didn't feel the tension and chemistry between the two main characters, so I wasn't drawn into the romance aspect of the story.  I wanted more development of their relationship and character development overall.

I would have liked more development and information on the myths and lore of the world.  It was only in the last few chapters that we get a bit of backstory on the goddess Ligea and the deity Eusia.  We don't get much information on the other gods and goddesses of the world.  We also don't get alot of development of the magic system.  Imogen knows she is a siren, but she can't control her power at the beginning of the book.  She has one lesson with Theo then she seemingly is all powerful and can control her powers with no problem.   The concept of the Mage Seer was interesting but it left me confused and I felt like I missed something despite reading those parts over a few times.  I'm hoping we get more in the next book as Imogen's journey continues.

Overall this is a good start to the series, and I'm interested to see where it goes.  

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