There are a lot of good things about Daughter of Deep Silence. It grabs you on page one. You immediately want to know about what happened on the Persephone. Mass-murder, castaways, dramatic deaths and rescues.
Frances’ double life also is a big draw. Her hatred and her determination to get revenge promises teeth and blood and righteous anger. Healthy for her? No. Cathartic for you? Yes. You can’t help but want to see her enemies get ripped to shreds.
The problem comes when we get to the middle, where Shakespeare-level revenge becomes an angry star crossed lovers mooning over each other. Frances/Libby’s righteous anger gets sidetracked by the power of her attraction and love for Grey. Ugh. It’s at this point where the story starts to slow down to a pace that will keep you interested but not hostage. Granted, there were a lot of places where the plot could have taken a detour to Clicheville but it manages to avoid the obvious pitfalls and potholes of melodrama. (Read: That love triangle that you thought you saw coming was never even considered by the characters).
Maybe the problem is with me. I find that romances usually call on me to suspend my disbelief much more than when I’m reading fantasy. I’ve been finding that love-conquers-all schtick tougher to swallow. But Daughter of Deep Silence wasn’t so bad. Frances/Libby doesn’t want to be in love with her enemy, she wants to hate him. She just sucks at it.
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I guess the success of this novel rests on the type of story you’re trying to tell. A story of love redeeming revenge – it works. A story of hardcore revenge where the bad guys pay – it’s mediocre. There was enough things lost to the protagonist that I didn’t want to gag at the ending and never anywhere did it throw its revenge themes to the wind to become a full blown romance novel. For a love story, it wasn’t awful.
