This review is a recap to jog my memory - spoiler alerts.

Sirena is a strong-willed mermaid who will gain immortality if she marries a mortal man and consumates their marriage. She and her sisters have a beautiful voice, which tempts ships of men, but alas many of the men drown and the island nearby is uninhabitable.

Sirena decides to leave her band of mermaid sisters and go to the island of Lemnos because she has given up her quest for immortality. There she meets Philoctectes a man who has been shipwrecked on the island and left to die because he has been bitten in the leg by one of Hera's serpents. Sirena begins to secretly care for him and she eventually reveals herself. They both fall in love and marry granting her immortality. The story then takes on a different twist because he begins to age while she does not. Sirena tries to undo her gift once she see's Philoctectes' gray hair.

While they are on the island the Trojan War is ragging and the ship that left comes back because he has Hercules bow and arrows. They are surprised to find him still alive and ask him to return to Greece with them. He must make a decision between fighting (which he feels honor bound to do) and staying on Lemnos with Sirena.

The ending is open, but has a hopeful slant. Sirena stays immortal and Philoctectes returns to fight, but vows to come back (though Sirena tells him not to) and he gives her one of Hercules arrows, which symbolizes that he will return because they are his prized possession.

The book was a quick read. It was enjoyable reading about her mermaid tale and the way the scales would shimmer gold in the sunlight and swimming with porpoise, squids, jellyfish and other creatures of the ocean. She adornes herself with starfish, while her sisters choose pearls and shells - all of the images are very vivid. I also enjoyed the mythology, which I know little of - it made me want to learn more. It also reminded me in ways of Quicksilver, which is a tale told by Hermes.

This is an easy book to recommend, but be aware that they do consumate their marriage, though it does not go into detail. ( )

A beautiful little novella. It tells the story of the mermaid Sirena. A mermaid must be loved by a mortal in order to obtain immortality, and the siren's song is the weapon by which she obtains that love, albeit spell-induced. Sirena yearns for more, and abandons her school in search of it.

I was not terribly fond of the writing style - spare and plain, even terse. But one gets accustomed to it. It draws richly on Greek mythology, without lapsing into impersonality. I found the story moving, and much more satisfying than Andersen's "Little Mermaid", which I remember as one of the most distressing stories I read as a child.

210/210
Sirena is a book about a mermaid who lives with her sisters, their life goal is to fall in love with a human, so they can become immortal. One day that changes her life, a ship of sailors come to their island and blame them for their shipwreck, and Sirena feels guilty so she swims to the island of lemnos. once she's there, a young sailor is thrown overboard with a snake bite, she tends for him and after a while they fall in love. Each day they live together helping each other through their struggles. In the end he has to make a big decision that changes their life together.

The main character, Sirena is at first a part of her sisters "school" but once she gets on her own she learns about herself, and the qualities of immortality.

I don't think this book was very relate able because I'm not a mermaid and I don't have to deal with immortality. I think anybody can relate to this book if they have to deal with the struggles of love and differences between others.

Sirena is a Siren, who, in Napoli's work, are mermaids; the offspring of the rape of a parrot-fish by Eros (no, really), they cannot be immortal unless they have a man fall in love with them. Yeah. So Sirena, unlike the rest of her sisters, doesn't want to trick a man into loving her by her singing (shades of the Little Mermaid, oh my), and runs off to Lemnos, where she meets Philoctetes. You could probably fill in the rest, too. Not a *bad* book, but it mostly was a supposed-to-be-titillating, I think, meditation on a young "girl" discovering sexuality, and really, YA books *can* be about something else! The constant discussions of sex, though not graphic, offended me a whole lot more than the graphic scenes in either An Arrow's Flight or Cook's Achilles. I think it's this sort of nonsense that ought to be kept out of the hands of teenagers, not to mention its ridiculous romanticism of Love. Bah! ( )

I disliked this book very much. It is written in present tense (ew) and I really didn't like it. The story is about a mermaid...and she falls in love with a man. ( )