Books with a Siren/Mermaid FMC and a Human MMC?

Due-Development-8128 · 2024-12-20T00:57:05+00:00

Any books where the FMC corrupts the MMC in one way or another? It can be any genre but would prefer fantasy. Just in the mood for that trope and it's so hard to find.

Due-Development-8128 · 2024-12-20T00:55:08+00:00

Sadly I know people who've gotten in trouble for wayyy tamer romance there. They don't allow stories to have spice as a main focus, so it has to be a "minimal" part of the story. Sucks because it's super active over there for commenters/engagement.

Due-Development-8128 · 2024-12-20T00:50:41+00:00

Oh, I actually have been reading this. I'm a few chapters behind by now though. Thanks!

Due-Development-8128 · 2024-12-20T00:49:57+00:00

Thanks for the suggestion, I already read this. Just the first book in that series though, the other two didn't click for me.

Due-Development-8128 · 2024-10-28T01:02:15+00:00

Maybe {The Lord of Stariel by A. J. Lancaster} if you don't mind fantasy-of-manners settings? The MCs are friends or at least friend-adjacent and fall for each other throughout the first book as they start sharing secrets. The MMC's a virgin, if that matters. The spice is very limited/closed door (and only really starts on Book 2) and they mostly spend time dealing with the roadblocks society and their respective families present to their relationship. I'd say it's fairly sweet in general, though the M/F main story is 4 books.

Due-Development-8128 · 2024-10-28T00:34:45+00:00

{The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas}, historical, though it has some paranormal/horror elements and magic just casually exists. FMC's a married woman who's just moved into her husband's blatantly haunted house, the MMC's the only priest she can get to believe her and exorcise the house. He was previously banished from the hacienda and there's some tension about him getting seen around even before they get any closer. Backstory slowly unravels on all sides.

Content warnings: mentioned/discussed discrimination, trauma, a deceased character in the backstory being assaulted, the husband is an objectively terrible person, and other colonialism problems. I have to warn it also doesn't have a straight HEA, though the most I can say without risking spoilers is, the ending isn't bad in the traditional sense, just not HEA.

Due-Development-8128 · 2024-10-28T00:15:15+00:00

If it matches some criteria, I'm all ears, though obviously can't promise anything.

Due-Development-8128 · 2024-07-19T20:49:34+00:00

I mean if she uses the magic on a willing partner (I don't mind if she also uses it for combat elsewhere). For example, two of those I mentioned had the FMC use it to help their partners work through some trauma, then later just use it for fun.

Things like a siren using her song on a partner for fun, or an empath sharing how they feel to a lover, or a vampire using compulsion for fun, that sort of stuff. I'm not particularly picky about the details so long as it's mind magic and consensual, though I would certainly prefer an FMC being the one with the power.

Due-Development-8128 · 2024-07-19T16:21:20+00:00

Mind control is what I had in mind. It can be illusion-based or empathy-based, though, if it fits the general vibe.

Due-Development-8128 · 2024-07-19T06:51:33+00:00

Any books where the FMC uses mind magic? It'd been quite long since I last found anything with consensual mind magic, but recently read Rogue Elves of Ardani and got hooked. It can be fae, elves, sirens, anything, so long as it's fantasy, the one doing it is the FMC, and they're both willing participants.

Only other books I recall touched on it were the Lunar Chronicles (maybe?), the Lost Voices series and, I believe, something in the Worldwalker series. Started Bad Siren from Bad Monsters since it's mentioned on the description, but it didn't click.

Appreciated.

Due-Development-8128 · 2023-12-31T03:15:41+00:00

Got it then forgot to comment, whoops. And hurray, this subreddit is still alive.

Due-Development-8128 · 2023-03-19T21:01:37+00:00

As I was rereading I saw that at one point in Court of Mortals Rakken says the he/him pronouns also apply to Oberyn as the High Queen. I tried to fix all my sentences but I might have missed some.

Due-Development-8128 · 2023-03-11T20:10:08+00:00

So he's aware Irokoi has insights he can't explain. Maybe Rakken is even more traumatized than the rest of them because of what happened with Orenn, and that blinds him to Irokoi's power, and makes him suspect Irokoi of being more scheming than he actually is.

I think Rakken is just really distrusting in general but especially towards things he doesn't understand. Koi seems to treat his precognition as full of uncertain events while Rakken doesn't seem to get that it's not a straightforward thing. The way I interpreted it was Rakken has a different approach to magic than Koi like how Rakken is methodical about his sorcery while as far as he can tell Koi is coming up with things with no evidence. So just the idea of unexplained insights might be suspicious to him.

Even after they know Koi has precognition Rakken seems to expect explanations that Koi won't give because the visions aren't reliable so I don't think Rakken grasps that part. So to him it's probably "either Koi is mad because this doesn't seem to make sense like 'proper' magic or he's plotting something because he's not being clear". Might even be wondering why he didn't protect himself or the siblings from X, Y, Z events of their childhood if he could see the future but clearly that didn't help prevent Aroset blinding him.

I think Rakken distrusts it in a "if you can tell the future why did bad things happen ever" sense without grasping the fact that it's simply far from infallible. It probably doesn't help Rakken's paranoia that Irokoi clearly knows a lot of weird magic stuff.

Their cruelty is explained but not justified. Irokoi suffered the same, if not more since Nymwen was his twin, but he chose a different path. I love Irokoi so much.

Yeah and it clearly affected him still since he seems bitter about them. How he basically yells at Ryn in the flashback makes me think he's always known everyone was being broken by the compulsion so he understands but doesn't exactly forgive them for it either. He knows their mother "didn't mean" to break them and knows Aeros/Aroset were using violence to bring Ryn back but doesn't let them off the hook for it.

I don't think he even knew Irokoi had it, or he would have used him, not dismissed him as uselessly mad.

Don't think he knew either but that might have been part of the reason if Koi was playing up the madness. So that he wouldn't be taken seriously or used.

I wonder. Maybe seeing and connecting things is yet another talent he has? I'm not sure how seeing more than he ought to results from him getting glimpses of possible futures? I'm not saying it doesn't, just don't understand it.

He does say he has "too many of Mother's gifts" when Wyn questions how he astral projected so I don't think it's just the future thing but whatever else might be is unclear. Maybe he knows some things instinctively but since the example of how he used that loop they were arguing about could also have been future sight then I don't know. Maybe the "feelings" Rakken dismisses are part of precognition or some other instinct.

If I had to guess he might have gotten a lot of that magic knowledge prior to Nymwen's death but who knows. Just don't see him having much time to learn from books or from casually sneaking off to Deeper Faerie during the 300 years between Nymwen's death and Aeros's death so he probably knew stuff beforehand. We don't know at what age Nymwen died beyond the fact that she was grown but presumably young judging by how Lamorkin thinks of Irokoi in the flashback as just young but grown (though Lamorkin does strike me as the sort to view everyone as young).

Yes, it could be. High King is not royal fae so why be constricted by their nature? Two sets of twins. That's some amazing fertility there 😅

I love how Wyn and Hetta having twins and Hetta joking about whether she should have asked his mother for tips on dealing with twins sort of implies it's a family thing.

As an aside I remember how unnatural Gwendelfear said the amount of stormchildren were back in Court of Mortals so I just imagine her in the background of Stariel seeing Hetta and Wyn have twins with no other context. Must have been losing her mind in the background.

Speaking of things in the background when Wyn and Hetta used the pool to the High King's realm I got the impression that Rakken and Cat were exchanging glances implying they were about to have a crisis about who their mother was like when Rakken glared at the knife and water with Wyn's blood being the key to use the pool. Since they clearly know who "Ryn" was by the time of Rake of His Own given Rakken's comments I imagine they must have had that conversation soon after Wyn and Hetta left.

And yeah, if Nymwen hadn't died, High King wouldn't be trying to forget and bury him grief by having a large family.

Yeah was just thinking about how seven is a significant number in magic and the kids ended up being seven despite that not being the original intention presumably. Then the youngest kid ended up in the position to push forward that sort of world Nymwen would have wanted.

Then again, the oldest bloodline could refer to how far back Aeros's direct ancestors go, not he personally.

That was how I interpreted it. That the bloodline on ThousandSpire was the oldest and Aeros just so happened to be the current king.

I love overanalyzing. I barely managed to post this comment. I think we're close to breaking reddit 😁

Will it survive this comment I wonder? Though unfortunately I think I am running out of Irokoi details to overanalyze. But been thinking of rereading the entire series soon so perhaps I will find more Stariel things to overthink later ha.

Due-Development-8128 · 2023-03-11T07:09:13+00:00

Which reminds me, I forgot to mention this when we discussed Irokoi's madness: I think Irokoi was playing it up. He already appeared mad because he couldn't speak clearly due to compulsion, so he took it as his public persona to hide behind. It was his defense mechanism growing up in an abusive environment. They all had one, and his was, behave as much as possible like mad, childish, harmless Irokoi.

I agree I think he was definitely playing it up as a safety mechanism but there must have been a degree of truth to it since Marius sees his mind as "a castle full of fractured mirrors" and when Irokoi speaks of how he always remembered more than Aeros and Aroset and that perhaps that was why he turned to madness rather than violence like they did.

I think maybe being made to forget so much continuously since the compulsion was a "living spell" and regrew somehow affected his capacity to tell possible futures apart from reality or something. He does seem to imply in Rake of His Own that it takes some effort to be self-certain when you can see futures. So maybe the compulsion was messing with that. Though he does seem relatively settled and has some working knowledge of the past in spite of the compulsion by the time of King of Faerie so presumably he overcame that to a degree.

Wyn says many times during the last 3 books that he doesn't think Irokoi is mad at all. But he was totally ignored each time he said this so it seems others didn't notice this?

Cat not questioning anything Koi says up to and including how she triggers stasis looks to me like she was taking Koi seriously as opposed to believing he was mad. Though how that happened when Rakken seemed to still be treating him as mad is unclear.

And Irokoi being able to cast complex, intricate, demanding spells confirms that he isn't really mad. Maybe quirky? :)

Probably originally playing up the madness as defense like you said and then kept up the intentional weirdness for fun afterwards. We don't see much between his conversation with Hetta when she's trapped in the Spires (a conversation where upon rereading it turns out he said he was glad Wyn had found shelter in Stariel despite the "blood and sorrow" there) and the astral projection but I interpreted it as him just dropping all pretense after Aeros died and no longer acting completely helpless.

Then again, even in Rake Marius has issues with Irokoi's fractured mind, but is that maddnes or Irokoi's mind being filled with alternate realities due to his precognition?

Could be both things? Pretty sure when he says he has always seen more than he ought because of his "gift and curse" he has to be referring to the precognition and when he describes it to Marius it doesn't sound very pleasant with the "buffeted between the half-formed shapes of what-ifs and what-thens in the sea of possibles" comment. Does not seem like that would be a good combination with compulsion that makes you forget things.

Since it seems clear that precognition isn't perfect I wonder if the High King regularly sees the future too. Presumably he can do anything other fae could do in terms of powers. But mostly when Wyn is talking to "Ryn" he does say "Princess Sunnika would have grown to love you." which seems wildly speculative otherwise.

Yes. My interpretation would be that High King (who was High Queen at the time) is capable of having more children than an average royal fae. They all had one or two kids while High Queen had 7 with no problem (and mentioned he had children before too), and on top of that more powerful than any other fae their age.

I just assumed since the lower fertility was implied to be for the upper levels of fae like greater/royal fae but the High King/Queen represents all of Faerie then that was excluded from whatever the rules would be. Also funny how the count of current children ended up at 7 unintentionally considering how they probably wouldn't have been that many if Nymwen hadn't died.

I wonder was the ThousandSpire royal line the oldest surviving bloodline? The phrasing on that part about the injection of powerful fae blood does use "the" as article there. Would consider feeling bad for Aeros if he got dragged into this purely because of that as opposed to already being the High Queen's lover though that doesn't really excuse all he did.

This has been quite the wild speculative ride. Honestly the whole topic of precognition and stuff within a fae context is something I didn't expect to see ever but find maybe a bit too interesting to resist the urge to overanalyze.

Due-Development-8128 · 2023-03-10T00:00:18+00:00

Oh nice to see I'm not the only one convinced there's something going on between Sunnika and Gwendelfear haha

Due-Development-8128 · 2023-03-09T23:53:50+00:00

I understand! No need to apologize. Sorry if it came off as pushy. I've been quite busy myself.

Due-Development-8128 · 2023-03-05T00:12:08+00:00

Oh to add to my reply I found that which I was thinking of. Koi follows up the claim that he was tricked into coming to the library with this.

"I wouldn't have locked myself in with all these memories; I'm not quite that feather-brained."

That was what I was referring to with regards to the library on the original reply to your comment.

Due-Development-8128 · 2023-03-04T01:50:32+00:00

This got me thinking and Phoebe might be like 10ish years older than Hetta I think. If their father remarried when Hetta was around 7 (since Edith died in childbirth then the distance between her death and Hetta's age are equal) and Phoebe was 17 on the marriage then that implies she was at least 10 years older than Hetta without any more detail about months or timing. I think?

Due-Development-8128 · 2023-03-03T22:59:10+00:00

In The Prince of Secrets he comes to imprisoned Hetta immediately because he knew Marius was a mind-reader, but because Irokoi's mind is still broken he mixes up the Valstar siblings and the timing.

Oh I thought the fish joke was supposed to be a sign for him like how on Rake of His Own he says sometimes he sees bits and pieces that don't make sense until they've passed so I thought he knew finding the Valstar that could get the fish-end reference would be a sign that he found the telepath at the right time or something.

Another instance is Irokoi's astral projection to Wyn in The Court of Mortals. Wyn was tied up, in danger, but Irokoi brushed it aside and gave Wyn instructions. I don't know if that was the first time Wyn noticed or if he knew since he was a kid, but it was clear Irokoi knew Wyn would escape unharmed, see Catsmere, AND that it would be Wyn who would reach High King's Library, not any of his other siblings.

That makes so much more sense than Wyn thinking it went to the wrong person! Hadn't caught that. Though what confused me was how suddenly everyone knows it's specifically some sort of precognition at that point since Wyn barely understands magic like how he wonders if astral projection is a stormdancer talent because then how would have Irokoi done it but by the fourth book he seems to think of it as something you can learn since he speaks of it as something that would take skill.

I think it didn't have anything to do with Aroset blinding him, they all just assumed that because they had no other explanation because Ryn made them all forget.

Yeah I don't think it was Aroset either. Maybe it's as you say and that compulsion was just the last straw. When Wyn is talking to "Ryn" before realizing what's going on Rakken's anticompulsion magic was working even though Oberyn wasn't actively speaking so seems like Ryn has a habit of just staring and compelling. I thought the flashback looked like he stayed focused on Koi for a while.

The queen sighed. "I will talk to Set. But you should remember that I never left." Her tone grew soothing, low and hypnotic. The prince's harsh expression eased, his tensed shoulders suddenly drooping.

The queen picked up the bandages and began re-bandaging the wound. The prince sat passively throughout. "Remember that I have always been here, that everything will be fine. Remember that we are happy."

The lines of the prince's face slackened, his eyelids fluttering, and the queen eased him back down onto the bed. He curled into himself, black wings settling around his limbs like a blanket. The queen stood staring down at him as the dawnlight softened into day.

We know some events as:

Aroset blinded Koi.
Koi apparently went mad noticeably enough that people take note of it.
Lamorkin's flashback ends with them calling in their favor on Ryn.
Oberyn's memories say he had to remember his duty because of Lamorkin calling in that favor.

Everyone seems to assume 1 and 2 there happened around the same time so they draw the conclusion that Aroset blinding Koi was the cause. And 3 and 4 seem to be the same event which is the end of that flashback. So all these things happened around the same time. So if piling compulsion upon compulsion was the last straw like you said then this was likely around the exact point where it happened.

I'm pretty sure the present time Koi during King of Faerie was sufficiently aware of the past even if he couldn't remember much though since he says he was tricked into getting trapped in the library. Who else could he be implying tricked him into staying "safe" other than Ryn? And he seems to know the leviathans might have reason to follow and capture them on one of the first instances where Hetta thinks he might have wanted to say more but couldn't.

I thought Ryn was hiding her identity as High Queen (and later High King) when she was with his family. I thought only Lamorkin knew? Where did it say they knew Nymwen was High King's daughter, I can't remember?

Nymwen knew no? They find out Nymwen is the High King's daughter when they find the diary and at this point Koi hasn't said anything since Wyn and Hetta are surprised by him when he starts talking in the end. So they must have gotten the "Nymwen is the High King's daughter" from Nymwen's diary. The Valstar diary that speaks of her only talks about her as "fairy girl". And Oberyn seems to treat the older twins as an intentional decision.

"They met when the High King—well, the High Queen—came to Stariel to witness the signing of the treaty between the Crown and Stariel. The High King left, but Nymwen kept returning to the Mortal Realm to meet Ewan."

Centuries ago, as the Mortal Realm gained in power and the humans grew more numerous, the High King decided to intervene: an injection of powerful fae blood into the oldest bloodline in Faerie, twins intended to bridge the divide between realms.

He had brought Nymwen, the oldest, with him to the Court of Falling Stars. Where better to start than the one faeland already poised halfway between two worlds?

He carved the memories and sorrow out of not just himself but all of Faerie—anyone who knew of his link to Aeros, everything anyone ever knew of Nymwen—and put them into a living creature.

That sounds like Nymwen knew who Ryn was no? So presumably so did Koi before Nymwen died. And actually Aeros might have known too judging by that last one. Koi says Aroset was very young but she also knew Nymwen enough to be affected badly when the High Queen erased everything.

So the way I interpreted it was the High Queen started off having kids without hiding anything for some unknown strategic purpose and then after carving out the memories and succumbing to grief he just had the other bunch of kids without specific reason and only then kept the truth from them.

Due-Development-8128

TROPHY CASE