The Merman is a 5-book gay paranormal romance series from Raythe Reign. This series contains psychic powers, a mostly-naked merman lover, an evil scientist, and true love beneath the waves.Gabriel Braven’s destined love is a merman, Prince Casillus Nerion. Problem is Gabriel doesn’t believe mermen are real. And worse, Gabriel’s parents died of drowning so he has no love for the sea.But the sea is … the sea.
But the sea is Gabriel’s destiny in more ways than love. Caught by high tide in a cave, Gabriel drowns, but does not die. Casillus brings him to the surface, but tells Gabriel that he must return to the waves or perish.
For Gabriel is becoming a merman.
NOTE: There are audiobooks and paperbacks for the individual novels. There is not for the boxset.
Raythe Reign produces escapist, romantic M/M shifter, fantasy, scifi, adventure, and urban fantasy books and graphic novels.
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O.M.G. Loved every minute.
I actually ordered the paperbacks before I even finished the boxset.
I haven’t had great luck with ‘boxsets’ or ‘bundles’ lately. I’ve more often read 1 or 2 stories of the set and then abandoned the series, because it just hasn’t grabbed me. That wasn’t a problem in this series. The Merman was an amazing series from start to finish, 5* for every story.
Book 1 began with a brutal start, an intriguing concept, and an MC that was a perfect bland between sympathetic, intriguing, and travelling on a journey I wanted to follow. Gabriel is a brilliant MC, and it was lovely to explore his personal journey. My heart broke with that brutal beginning, but worked well to explain how and why the following events took place. I especially loved that his fear of water wasn’t instantly cured, just because of what he discovered, but that Casillus worked with him to face his fears and slowly work through it. He never shamed or judged him for it, but understood, supported and accepted his fear.
Corey won my heart, right from the start. He was such a happy place, a beautiful soul and a lovely character that I would love to read more about him. I see he features in the next series, so I’ve got my fingers crossed. But, at this rate, I’d read even an MF story if Corey was the central character. Though I still have my hopes he’ll get his own romance, eventually. Corey is a total peanut gallery, but I desperately love him.
I loved how the backstory of each character, their personalities, and the storyline was sprinkled evenly between all 5 books, and how it had multiple sub-plots that were resolved and/or further explored in each book. It was so intriguing, keeping a cliffhanger ending to each book within the series. I’m so glad I bought the boxset, so I didn’t have to wait even a minute between ending one book and starting the other.
When it comes to the Mer as characters, I utterly ADORED the fact that they weren’t fish-people. There were no fins, no scales, no weird biology or anatomy quirks. They were just human-shaped people, who had gills on their sides to let them breathe. Sure, they had benefits, like endurance, strength and telepathy, but they weren’t super creatures, or fish. They were just like a weird kind of Origin of Species evolution of humans.
I loved the ending! I love knowing that there are more books to come, but I’ll have to re-read this series nearer their release date, since it seems a while before they’ll find their way to general release.
Problems?
I found some of the sex scenes were written a bit more floral for my taste, and certainly more formal than the other passages preceding it.
The constant recaps at the beginning of each book were a little frustrating, when reading it in a boxset. Some simple edits, before releasing it as a series boxset, would have eliminated pages of info dumps and explanations that weren’t needed in this format. I ended up skimming maybe 3-4 pages at the start of each book, from Book 2 onwards, stopping when dialogue interrupted the info dumps. Then, when referring to things from the previous book – as each ended on a cliffhanger and picked up immediately from that spot in the next one – there were info dumps to explain characters and/or situations that had preceded.
However, despite those issues, I LOVED the entire series. From characterisation, plotting, how it the story unravelled, pacing, and the twists. It was perfectly done and I look forward to reading more. I see the note at the end says there is more to come – so far, a short story on the author’s website that is free to buy, and 2 follow-up series that require you to be a member. I’ll be waiting until those two series become available to the general public, after the note of how this series changed from the original concept on the website to the published version.
Favourite Quote:
“Hey, we’ve got to get you interested in someone. Maybe a merman is the trick,” Corey said.
“With my fear of water, I’m sure that’s just the thing for me. Talk about star-crossed love,” Gabriel said.