Beached

By Ros Baxter

The sequel to Fish Out of Water is a sexy, funny mystery about strength, love, and French fries.

When the clerk at a burger joint is assaulted for trying to sell a fish burger to a hot blonde, it's just the beginning of a clash between Land and Sea. The world is going mad, and Princess Lecanora is on a special mission to stop it. There are just a few complications…

First, life on the land is a bit harder to adjust to than expected, what with the wearing of clothing and the consuming of delicious (but pointless) calories. Second, the most evil magician the world has ever seen wants her as his bride – consensually or otherwise. Finally, a completely inappropriate gun–toting mercenary who goes against every one of her pacifist principles keeps rocking her world.

As the forces of darkness gather, Lecanora must come to terms with the lengths she will go to in order to save the sea home she has always known, and the land she has come to love.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Australia
• Release date: Apr 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9780857991454

Ros Baxter

Ros Baxter has been writing since she was eight and penned a whimsical series of short stories about a race of tiny people who lived on a rainbow. While a few things intervened - a career in social policy, four children - Ros started writing again in earnest three years ago. In that time, Ros secured a two-book deal with Harper Collins Australia, published Sister Pact (a romantic comedy co-written with her sister Ali), been a contributing author to the e-anthology URL Love, and finaled in the STALI competition. Ros writes transporting stories about love, family, friendship and women in all their glorious strength and contrariness. She loves to turn up the sizzle, throwing heroes and heroines into screwy and sometimes fantastical situations and watching how they take the heat. Ros lives in Brisbane's North with her husband Blair, four noisy children under eight, a neurotic dog and nine billion germs.

Book preview

Chapter 1

Nice girls don’t eat fish

Week Two, Day Three

The girl with the silver hair and serious grey-eyed gaze studied the clerk carefully. He smiled, wide and toothy. Looked like this was his lucky day. ‘How can I help ya?’

‘What,’ she said, her voice a low, breathy whisper, ‘is that?’ She pointed a trembling finger at the sandwich board standing by the counter, advertising a short-time-only special on a Fisherman’s Best. It showed a golden burger with a perfect halo of light hovering above it, suspended over a shimmering ocean in which multi-colored reef fish jumped and played. The words ‘Fresh from the ocean to you’ danced across the poster in a curly script.

‘You from Sweden?’ He felt his smile poke into his fleshy cheeks as he contemplated the tall, blonde stranger with the supermodel proportions and the slow, precise way of speaking. She shook her head.

‘‘T’s a Fisherman’s Best,’ he said, breathing in hard and pushing his chest out as far as his too-tight McLearner apron would allow. He wondered how old she was. It was hard to tell. Older than him by a few years, he guessed. Maybe twenty? ‘Real popular right now. Only a buck.’ He leaned closer. ‘Real fish in those suckers too,’ he said, going for a wink, and hoping she was one of those older girls who liked a little confidence, like his mama had told him. ‘Don’t believe none of that stuff about cardboard and mashed taters.’

The girl’s long arm reached across the counter between them, a pale finger caressing his shirt collar. The clerk felt himself turn pink. Then her finger curled, the others joining it to form a fist, as the girl yanked the teenager towards her by his collar, the serene look never leaving her face, the other hand smoothing the shiny laminex under its fingers as though disinterested, and unaffected by the exertions of the other. The clerk displaced straw dispensers, promotional stands and napkin holders as he was pulled up and over the counter, where he stayed suspended on his considerable belly, his face inches from the beautiful blonde’s.

Other customers standing close to the action scattered back, bundling their children in their arms. On the other side of the counter, the young cooks and dish-hands also pressed backwards, one yelling for his manager.

‘What grisly murder is this?’ She brought the young man closer to her face, using her other hand to pin his arms by his sides as he began to struggle. ‘Would you like me to turn you into a—’ She paused, motioning towards the sandwich board, and speaking in careful syllables. ‘What manner of food do you call this Fisherman’s Best?’

‘A…a burger?’ the clerk wheezed, his breath cut off from the way the countertop bit into his stomach. How had this all gone so horribly wrong?

The girl began to pant, her eyes starting to roll a little. She twisted the fist that held his collar, cutting off his breath and making his face pinker. ‘Would you like me to turn you into a burger?’ She said the last word like a purr. ‘Would you like for me to mince your…what do you people call flesh when it belongs to another creature? Meat?’ But before the pinioned boy could answer, a large man pushed forward from the rear of the kitchen, his face red and his arms held in front of him.

‘Now, Miss,’ he said, moving slowly towards the counter and motioning his staff further back into the kitchen as a high-pitched siren began to sound. ‘We don’t want no trouble here. You just put young Bradley down. I’m sure whatever he said—’

The girl cut across him. ‘Are you the master of this house?’ She released the boy’s collar, causing him to flop forward on the bench with relief, only to find himself pinned again as she placed a hand on the center of his back. He made to wriggle away, but she extended her hand upwards, holding him pinned in place on the countertop with just her fingertips.

‘Well yes, Ma’am, I guess I am,’ the middle-aged man said, inching forward again. ‘I’m the shift manager, and like I said, we don’t want no—’

‘Release my piscean friends,’ the girl said, moving her hand up to lace the back of the boy’s neck, his face down on the laminate surface, and pointing towards the sandwich board. ‘From wherever you are holding them. Release them, and I will let your apprentice go. I am not hurting him. I am simply restraining him. What manner of establishment is this, that you advertise photographs of this genocide?’

The man shook his head slowly, like he was having trouble keeping up, and looked from the sandwich board to the blonde. ‘You mean the burgers? The fish burgers?’

A low hiss came from the blonde’s pearly pink lips, and the boy almost passed out as he clocked the fury in her eyes. ‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘I mean the pisceans you mean to make into the—’ She paused, wincing as though the word caused her physical pain, ‘—burgers.’

The manager widened his eyes, like he was mentally rearranging information about the scene before him, and deciding he was dealing with certifiable insanity.

‘Okay, Missy,’ he said, walking even more slowly towards the girl and speaking in a low, slow monotone. ‘You like fish, okay, I get it. But there ain’t no fish here. Not live ones, leastways.’

The girl motioned with her head towards the sandwich board. ‘It says fresh,’ she insisted. ‘Fresh from the ocean to you. That means you are keeping them here, somewhere. Waiting to murder them.’

The man shook his head quickly, his face getting redder as he did. ‘No, no, no, Missy. You’ve got it all wrong. It says that, sure, the sign. But we get ‘em already dead. Processed, and frozen. Now, surely we can talk about this, hey?’

‘Do not humor me.’ The girl’s voice suddenly sounded older and more authoritative as she raised it, and then pointed at the advancing man. ‘And stay where you are. Right now. Or I will—’

But before the clerk under her hand could find out what she meant to say, a large, hairy man, who had retreated to the back wall with his family, leapt forward and wrapped muscular arms around the girl’s shoulders from behind. The blonde was very tall, but he towered over her in black jeans and a singlet top that revealed arms dripping in ink.

The girl pushed down on the neck of the boy balanced like a stranded beetle on the countertop and turned her body slightly. The silver curtain of her hair shimmered as her free hand tore the man’s arms from around her shoulders as though they were made of cotton candy. Flicking her wrist, she captured one hairy finger and bent it backwards, twisting his arm and body with it so the large man was forced backwards onto his knees, howling in pain and upending a nearby table and chairs as he went down.

At the sound, the manager also leapt forward, and a cacophony erupted. Customers screamed, and others surged forward towards the counter.

Then a single shot split the air, freezing the scene like a party game.

‘What the hell is going on here?’ A muscly brunette stormed into the middle of the action, a smoking handgun pointed at the ceiling and a stony look on her wildly beautiful face. She was dressed in tight jodhpur-style pants, and a black T-shirt. Her hair was short as GI Jane, but it did nothing to camouflage the full redness of her lips or the crazy-long lashes that framed her dark eyes.

‘Holy fuck, it’s Lara Croft,’ the man on the ground bleated. ‘I can’t decide if this is a nightmare or the best fuckin’ dream I ever had.’

Lara Croft pointed the gun at him. ‘You,’ she said. ‘What did you do to her?’

The man tried to shrug but the action twisted his shoulder in its socket because of the angle at which his finger was being held, and he yelped with pain.

The brunette turned to the blonde. ‘Drop him, Princess,’ she barked, keeping her gun trained on the tattooed giant.

The manager started to protest, and the brunette pulled a slim leather wallet from her pants pocket. ‘No one move. I’m enforcement,’ she said, spinning slowly and showing her badge to the group. ‘I’m transporting a prisoner.’ She moved slowly to the counter and the blonde, who stood as still as a statue as the woman with the gun plucked her fingers from the teenager’s neck, pushed him unceremoniously off the kitchen side of the counter and yanked on one of her arms.

The boy, released from her grip, suddenly felt the full horror and humiliation of what had just occurred and began to howl loudly. The brunette considered him carefully before turning back to the blonde. ‘Have you hurt him?’

‘No,’ the blonde said, sounding shocked at the suggestion.

‘Well excuse me, Missy,’ the manager said, coming forward towards the counter again and squaring his shoulders. ‘But I’d like to know which parish you—’

The brunette waved her gun in his face. ‘You don’t get to know shit,’ she barked. ‘This is a federal matter. Just get the kid home to his parents.’ She put an arm around the blonde, who sagged against her. Then she motioned to another clerk, still frozen in place with a tray full of fries. ‘But before you do, we need two boxes of those, to go.’

* * *

‘What the hell was that? I was in the bathroom two minutes. I said to sit and wait. Sit and wait.’ Rania blew air out of her mouth and banged her hand on the steering wheel, stashing the gun in the glove compartment with her free hand.

Lecanora sniffed, her eyes closed as she leaned back against the chocolate leather of Ariel, Rania’s red Chevy Corvette Stingray. ‘They eat fish,’ she whispered, feeling a million miles from home as the horror of it settled in her skin. ‘I never knew that they eat fish.’

‘Jesus,’ Rania said. ‘They do worse than that. I thought you went to Land School. I thought your ma saw to that. I mean, you know, your ma, the Queen. Not…you know. My ma. Our ma.’

‘I did,’ Lecanora said, smiling a little at Rania’s attempt to get used to the new fact of their shared sisterhood. ‘I did go to Land School. I just never really knew they ate fish.’

‘They freakin’ kill each other,’ Rania exploded, emphasizing the last two words. ‘They couldn’t give a hot damn about fish.’ She turned to Lecanora, and her face softened. ‘They just don’t get it, babe,’ she said, her voice quieting. ‘They don’t know. They think fish are vacuous. They don’t know they’re sentient.’

Lecanora’s eyes closed again as she considered something. ‘Rania you have to tell me. Tell me straight. They don’t…?’

‘Don’t?’ Rania drummed her fingers on the steering wheel as she reversed out of the car park, like it was on fire.

‘They don’t eat…’ She dropped her voice to a whisper. ‘…dolphins. Do they?’

Rania laughed, a rich, throaty sound, and then stopped when she saw the look on Lecanora’s face. ‘Sorry babe,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean to laugh. No, they don’t eat dolphins. Jesus, I’d kill the fuckers myself if they served up a freakin’ dolphin burger.’

She shuddered, jamming her foot on the gas pedal once they were clear of the car park and back on the highway.

They drove for a couple of minutes in silence, and then Lecanora noticed Rania sneak a look at her, before she sighed and pulled over on to the shoulder.

‘Look at me, babe.’

Rania reached for Lecanora’s chin and tipped her face towards her, studying the silver-tinged eyes and pale skin. ‘You’re not yourself,’ she said. ‘You’re sick. You have to eat.’ She looked carefully into Lecanora’s eyes.’ You aren’t used to hydroporting.’

Lecanora knew it was true. She could feel the edge of nausea biting into her stomach like hunger, with a dash of seasickness added to the mix. She closed her eyes and remembered the journey. She had only song-travelled a few times in her life, but she was an Aegiran Princess. She had been taught all the skills of the deep ocean. She had sung the right notes, perfectly. She had imagined where she needed to be—seen it, crisp and clear in the eye of her mind. And then she had scattered into the droplets around her, to reform again in another place. A place far from the home she had always known.

A place where they make the gentlest creatures of the universe into burgers.

Rania picked up the box of fries she had stashed in the middle section. ‘Here, try these.’

The silver-blonde shuddered. ‘I could never take sustenance from that place.’

‘Oh, you’ll take it alright,’ Rania spat, running her hands through her hair. ‘You have to. If you don’t, you won’t last. It’s dangerous, Princess. I’m telling you, because I get it. I’ve been there. I’ve done it way more than you. Especially this last week, back and forth. Too much, too soon, or if it’s done wrong, it can kill you.’ Lecanora watched Rania’s face, and the shiver that shook her strong frame as she spoke about the previous week. ‘You have to eat. And you have to sleep. Otherwise, your body can’t take it.’ Rania patted Lecanora’s hand quickly. ‘Babe, listen. If we’re going to do this you’re going to have to learn. Hydroporting is dangerous.’

Rania picked up Lecanora’s wrist with one hand and looked at the watch on her other arm, mouthing out timing as she studied the delicate webbing of veins on Lecanora’s arm. Finally, she breathed out all at once, and spoke. ‘Oh, thank the Mother. There it is. The alorha.’ She dropped Lecanora’s wrist. ‘But your life fish is slow, babe. It’s sluggish. Ran help us, if the Crown Princess of Aegira dies on my watch I’ll have more problems than I’ve got already. You have to eat. You get that, right? You have to eat, now.’

The blonde slowly nodded, before picking up one of the fries. She knew it was true. Rania knew more about this than she did, more about bridging the space between The Sea and The Land. Rania knew more about almost everything that she did. Everything on The Land, anyway.

‘I am not just the Crown Princess,’ Lecanora said, smiling at Rania. ‘I am also your sister.’ It felt good to say it, and Lecanora reveled in the new feeling of connection as it blossomed warm and ripe in her chest. She had only known for a few days that her childhood best friend was also her sister. It was a new feeling to belong to something. And, for someone who had grown up with a black hole for a history, it felt good.

‘Half-sister.’ Rania smiled, motioning for Lecanora to eat.

Of course. Lecanora frowned, thinking about the man she had recently discovered was her father, the High Priest of Aegira. The story was unbelievable, and cruel. He had forced their mother to leave Lecanora in Aegira thirty-one years ago, in the care of the Queen, when she had been just a newborn babe. And she had spent thirty-one years not knowing her own story. Lecanora paused, the fry halfway to her mouth. ‘Our mother is right,’ she said. ‘You do always have to have…what does she say?’ She nodded, remembering the phrase. ‘The last word.’

Rania opened her mouth to speak, then shook her head and closed it again. She drummed her fingers against the wheel some more, and didn’t meet Lecanora’s eyes. ‘Are you angry?’

Lecanora considered the question. She understood that Rania was asking how she felt about having not known, until so recently, who her parents were. About her birth mother leaving her when she was hours old.

She frowned. ‘How could I be?’ She turned towards Rania. ‘I was raised by Imd, our Queen. She was the most loving mother a girl could have. And I know the truth now. I know that your mother, our mother, would have done anything she could to keep me.’

‘He threatened to kill you,’ Rania reminded her, ‘when you were hours old. When she tried to leave with you. If she tried to take you again, or tell you, he would’ve killed you.’

‘Yes.’ Lecanora nodded. She placed the fry in her mouth, and felt her eyes widen. ‘They’re hot,’ she said, chewing slowly. She frowned, a delicate frown between those silver-grey eyes. ‘What manner of food is this?’

‘Potato,’ Rania said. ‘Sort of.’ It was her turn to frown. ‘Well, it was once. Now it’s just kind of… Look, don’t worry about what it is. It’s not fish, okay? And it’s definitely, definitely not dolphin. Just eat the freakin thing.’

The Princess continued to nibble on the fry. As she chewed, she felt warmth seep through her and fill up all the spaces in her cells that had been stripped ragged by the hydroporting. ‘They’re good,’ she said, eating more quickly. ‘They’re really very delicious. Where do they farm these…potatoes?’

‘Err,’ Rania said, cramming a few fries into her own mouth. ‘I’m not sure anyone knows really.’

Lecanora’s eyes widened again, as she considered the idea of eating something of unknown origin.

‘Just eat,’ Rania sighed.

* * *

Twenty minutes later, the two women were speeding along the coast road.

‘How the hell did you end up beaching here?’ Rania motioned to the vast arc of bay before them as they rounded a hilltop, the darkening sweeps of blue water laid before them like a child’s paint-by-color chart.

Rania had taken the top down, and Lecanora felt the wind in her hair and smelled salt and fire. ‘Are we a long way from Dirtwater?’

‘Oh yeah, baby,’ Rania said, turning to smile at her half-sister. ‘Dirtwater is a long way from anywhere. Especially anywhere with water. And especially here.’

Lecanora twisted her hands in her lap. She felt small and naive beside this woman, her warrior sister. ‘I did it wrong,’ she said. ‘The hydroporting. I tried to get to Dirtwater. But…’

Rania patted her hand. ‘Doesn’t matter,’ she said briskly. ‘It’s true, you’re crap at hydroporting. But it’s kinda like sex; everyone’s crap to start with, right?’

Lecanora said nothing, looking down at her hands.

‘Er, right?’ Rania looked up from the highway and prompted Lecanora again.

‘I would not know,’ Lecanora said gently.

Rania made a whistling noise, and shook her head. ‘Oh may the Goddess mother help us. Please do not tell me you’re a virgin? You’re two years older than me!’

Lecanora felt an unfamiliar sensation surge through her. Her skin warmed and prickled, and she shot a hand up to her neck. ‘Rania,’ she said, her voice high and fast. ‘I’m not sure what…something is happening.’

Rania looked quickly at her half-sister, a deep frown creasing her brow. Then she smiled. ‘Ah,’ she said. ‘It’s okay, babe, you’re just blushing.’

‘Blushing.’ The warmth continued to grow, spreading through Lecanora.

‘Doesn’t happen so much seven miles down,’ Rania muttered. ‘Anyway, you’re fine. Honest. It’ll pass in a minute. More to the point, how come you never?’ She motioned quickly up and down Lecanora. ‘You know. I mean, you’re kinda gorgeous. Even for an Aegiran.’

Lecanora tried to smile. She understood Rania’s confusion. There were no strictures about mating outside life-partnership in Aegira. Aegirans took their pleasures freely, and without guilt. But not with her. She was the princess. And she had always been an enigma, the mystery of her birth a source of curiosity rather than lust. Just another thing that set her apart.

Like she could sense Lecanora’s shame and sadness, Rania changed the subject. ‘Anyway,’ she said. ‘Doesn’t matter. Over-rated. My point was the hydroporting. I knew we should have come back to Dirtwater together. I knew we should have team-ported, especially when you’re still so new to the whole thing. Although, of course, it’s no guarantee of getting it right. It’s basically magic, and magic is kind of unpredictable. But still, I wish you’d have come back with me. Like I said.’

Lecanora smiled to herself. She was getting used to Rania’s protectiveness again, and her need to control those she loved to try to make sure they didn’t get hurt on her watch. ‘I had to stay back, a day or so,’ Lecanora said. ‘I had to get make sure my mother was…’

‘It’s okay.’ Rania smiled.

‘But I did it wrong,’ Lecanora said again. ‘I’m sorry.’

Rania shrugged. ‘Like I said, hydroporting is hard.’

Lecanora studied her sister, expertly handling the wheel on the winding coastal road. ‘How did you find me, back there at the beach? How did you know where I would arrive?’

Rania paused, fiddling with the controls of the stereo. Lecanora jumped as a loud noise filled the little car. A strange young voice declared what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. The statement seemed rather obvious to Lecanora, but Rania nodded, as though satisfied, before she turned back. ‘Remember we talked about the visions, back in Aegira?’

Lecanora nodded. ‘Yes,’ Lecanora said. ‘I told you that I had been having them, too. You remember when I saved little Tila from the rip in The Eye?’

Rania nodded.

‘Like I said, I saw it, seconds before it happened. That was how I could move so fast. How I managed to save her.’ Lecanora shuddered, remembering the rip in The Eye of the Goddess, the central meeting place of the Kingdom of Aegira. The rip had been the work of the sorcerer Manos, looking for a way in to the kingdom. Looking to destroy them.

He was still trying to destroy them.

After ten thousand years.

Lecanora shook her head to clear the thought. ‘And you told me you’d had visions too. Told me that was how you were able to find Imogen. But you didn’t tell me much about how the visions have been for you.’

And it was true.

Lecanora had felt as though Rania had been keeping something back when she had briefly discussed her new powers with her, back in Aegira. Back then, it hadn’t seemed to matter. They had found Imogen, the missing choirgirl. She was safe, even if her voice had been stolen forever.

Rania grinned in a way that Lecanora knew well from the teenage years they had spent together when Rania had summer-schooled in Aegira.

It was her diversion grin.

‘I woke up this morning and I just knew you were landing here,’ she said. ‘I can’t explain it. Not a vision. More a…thought, planted in my head. I’m just glad I got here in time. And you know what else? You’re just real lucky it was a nude beach. If you turned up some other places looking like you had when I found you, you might have really raised some eyebrows.’

Lecanora thought about these people and their fear of their bodies. Strange. Although, she considered, having observed some of them back at the fast food restaurant wolfing down burgers and ice cream and pie, perhaps the fear stemmed from the terrible crimes they committed against those bodies every day.

‘I was still lost, when you found me,’ Lecanora said. ‘The pieces of me were scattered, still re-forming.’ She could almost taste how it had felt, coming back to her senses in the shallows on that wild beach, feeling so alone, and afraid. And then Rania arriving, her eyes dark and hunted as she had swooped down, picking Lecanora up, as though she weighed as little as a feather, and carrying her up the beach in her arms. And then taking her to that place, With the burgers made of fish.

And the fries, she remembered, licking salt from her lips.

They had the fries. Perhaps these people could not be all bad.

Rania tapped Lecanora’s arm to bring her back to the moment. ‘Anyway, honestly babe, it doesn’t matter. It’s been ages since I took a drive to the coast. And, you know, it’s important to do the things you love, while you can.’ A strange look crossed her face, and Lecanora wanted to ask her what was wrong. She had seen that look a lot, before Rania left Aegira, disappeared when she had been sixteen, and never came back. And she had seen it more often since she’d returned. A fleeting look that was equal parts terror and sadness. And something else.

Resolve?

Lecanora reached out with her mind to the door of Rania’s and felt it clang shut.

‘Back off, babe,’ her sister snapped.

Lecanora nodded at Rania. ‘As you wish,’ she said, staring out the window at the way the coastline hugged the ocean. ‘So, Dirtwater is a long way from here. I suppose that is why our mother chose it when she fled. So my father could not find her there.’

Rania shrugged. ‘At least we’re starting to get some of the answers,’ she said. ‘Now, if only we knew some more about the damn prophesy.’

Lecanora closed her eyes and heard the words in her brain, spoken in her own language, the Aegiran tongue, adapted from the songs of whales and dolphins. She heard the words as the Queen had taught them to her: the Prophesy of Earth and Sea, brought down by the dolphins.

At the end of Ran’s line

only one world can be,

and the bloodtide will only be stopped

by the swellsong of the three.

The memory brought home how far Lecanora was from her own home, the underwater kingdom she had always known. Lecanora smiled to herself, thinking about that word—kingdom. Queens had ruled Aegira for nine thousand years, ever since the murder of Aegir, the Norse god who had founded Aegira with his goddess wife, Ran. And since his nine daughters, the billow maidens, had been condemned to be reborn consecutively, living for a thousand years before giving birth to the next sister, Lecanora’s own mother, Imd, was the last of the nine queens, the youngest of Aegir and Ran’s daughters.

Imd, meaning Dusk. The end of Ran’s line.

‘I miss her already,’ Lecanora whispered, reaching for Rania’s hand.

‘Your mother?’ Brown eyes considered Lecanora.

My foster mother, Lecanora reminded herself. But yes, always my mother.

‘We’ll be back there soon enough, Princess. We must be.’

‘It’s not that kind of missing,’ Lecanora whispered. ‘It’s…her time is almost upon her. She has lived for a thousand years, and she is coming to the end.’ Lecanora squeezed her eyes against the pain that sliced through her at the thought of a world without her mother. And more—at the thought that she would be expected to replace her as queen. There was no-one else. The train of thought jolted Lecanora, reminding her why she was here.

She touched Rania’s strong brown arm. ‘We have a mission.’

Rania grimaced. ‘I’m still not convinced this is a good idea,’ she said. ‘You don’t really get it. You thought the fish burger was bad? You’ve got no idea what Land dwellers can do when something really piques their interest. I really don’t want to end up in a test tube.’

‘Nevertheless,’ Lecanora said. ‘My mother has commanded it.’ She felt the mantle of royalty sit more comfortably on her, now that she knew who she was: the child

Reviews for Beached

[shelleyraec · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Beached is the second book in Ros Baxter's Aegira Chronicles, a fantasy trilogy with a creative twist on Norse legend. The first, Fish Out of Water, introduced Rania Aqualina, deputy sheriff of small town Dirtwater, and half mermaid. Her investigation into the discovery of a dead blonde with a fish tattoo on Main Street leads Rania to uncover a plot which could mean the end of her underwater home, Aegira, and her own life, at the hands of a crazed sorcerer, Manos.In Beached, the focus of the story shifts to Rania's sister, Princess Lecanora whom the Queen has sent to Land to find support for the battle against the Sorcerer from none other than the Presidential candidate. Lecanora, while struggling to adjust to the ways of the Land, joins her sister, mother and their allies to gain the candidates favour while dodging over zealous bodyguards, Manos's army and saving two worlds.The action is fast paced, as Manos launches his attack, determined to take Lecanora as his bride so he can rule over Aegira, and destroy any chance of the prophecy of 'the Three' thwarting him by killing Rania. The fight moves between land and sea, finally culminating in an epic battle in Aegira.As in Fish Out of Water, there is a strong romantic element within the story and it's Rania's ex, Doug, who leaves Lecanora breathless. Peace loving Lecanora is baffled by her attraction to the gun toting, ex special forces, bad ass and the strange feelings he evokes. It's insta-love of a sort, but not too badly done.I enjoyed the humour which came from Rania's snark, and Lecanora's naïveté. Baxter writes well, with snappy dialogue and descriptive prose. I'd recommend reading Fish Out of Water before Beached though it's not strictly necessary, Baxter provides enough back story to orient a reader new to the trilogy.Beached, like Fish Out of Water, is a fun book, combining action, fantasy, humour and romance, which I really enjoyed. I'm looking forward to reading the final adventure in the Aegira Chronicles.