Product Description

In a tense, divided court, a young princess watches her mother struggle to hold the throne. On a remote coastal estate, a scholar finds a child washed up on the shore. Anne. Henry. A Christian princess of the royal blood. A pagan bastard, groomed all his hidden, lonely life to make a grab for the crown. In this work of stunning imagination, Kit Whitfield has written a fictional history at once familiar and alien. Since the ninth century, when the deepsmen invaded Venice, an uneasy alliance has held between the people of the land and the sea. That alliance was brokered by the warrior queen, Angelica, half landsman, half deepsman, the mother of the royal houses of Europe.Now, centuries later, no navy can cross the seas without allies in the ocean - and without deepsmen guarding its shores, no nation can withstand invasion. The hybrid kings keep the treaty between both sides, protecting their people from the threat of war. The royal blood is the key to peace, and ferociously protected. The penalties for any landsman who tries to breed with a deepsman are severe; the fate of any 'bastard' child, born of such an illegitimate union, is terrible. But the royal house of England is staggering, collapsing under the weight of centuries of inbreeding. Anne prays for guidance, a way into the future without hatred or bloodshed. Henry holds with fierce certainty that only the strong survive. But if either of them is to outlive the coming conflict, they may need more than faith alone...

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #78292 in Books
• Published on: 2009-03-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 352 pages

Review
"A powerfully intelligent novel about two young people trying to survive the plots of their elders and the cards dealt them by circumstance ... The supreme merit of this chilly book is its refusal of consoling prettiness." --Roz Kaveney, The Independent

About the Author
Kit Whitfield is a graduate of Christ's College, Cambridge and completed an MA in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia.Her first novel, Bareback (published in the US as Benighted) was shortlisted for the Authors Club Best First Novel Award, and longlisted for the Waverton Good Read Award.She lives in London.

Customer Reviews

Not "The Little Mermaid"
So I was going to the gym and I had a dilemma. I had an audiobook on my iPod but I was also halfway through "In Great Waters." So I decided to take the book, slog it out for twenty minutes on the cross trainer then finish my work-out with the audiobook on the treadmill. I plugged myself in, set out on the cross trainer, checked my time after five minutes and discovered thirty minutes had passed.

Like "Bareback," "In Great Waters" is a novel that sucks you in and refuses to let you go. Although not immediately likable, the characters' situation is so convoluted you find yourself rooting for them regardless. The "mermaids" are approached from a fairly scientific "what would they actually be like" point of view.

There are no singing crabs, no tentacled witches and no-one combs their hair with a fork.

I can't wait to see what Kit Whitfield's third book is like.

A fascinating read
I was enthralled by this book (as I was by Bareback)- except this is even better.
I found the concepts fascinating and although 'getting into it' takes a while, once there one is hooked and cannot put the book down as one starts living in the world Kit has created. The idea of 'imperfect' people being revered and the point-of-view taken by the main character about The Church makes an interesting debate.
The descriptions of things are wonderful and images are readily brought to mind. Anyone who swims and spends time in pools, lakes or the sea will easily relate to the way the author describes views and feelings when in the water (i.e. looking up, the feeling of being unencumbered and the vastness, etc). There were many paras which I read over a few times just to retain the impact of beautiful and invocative words.
I can highly recommend this book to anyone interested in something very different with a 'science-fiction' element and a touch of Margaret Attwood.