Secrets of the Sea by Leslie Burbank is in fact two books in one, Lady Syren and Lord Nerus.

Lady Syren is the story of a mermaid named Syren who lives alone on an island off the coast of Scotland.  It is set in the time of pirates and danger when Scotland was under a different monarchy to England and pirates sailed the seas.

Syren is a mermaid who knows of no others of her kind and longs for a companion.  She wants more than anything to become human and when she rescues Black Macleod from the depths of the ocean she finds herself with a unique opportunity to fulfil her wish.

Kiernan Macleod is a pirate and has a dangerous enemy in the form of Captain Stewart.  Stabbed and then made to walk the plank he is close to death when the mysterious Syren pulls him from the sea and nurses him back to health.

When his strength recovers he finds that he has a solution to his own problem in the form of Syren.  Kiernan has been ordered by King James to marry and if he does so then he will be cleared of all piracy charges.  Kiernan is reluctant to marry because he wants revenge on Captain Stewart who killed his family and destroyed his ancestral home.  He knows that the Captain will still come after him even if he does marry.  He also fears that it will put his new wife in danger.

There is also the added dilemma that Kiernan is fearful of giving his heart to anyone for fear that they too will be taken away from him.

It is not long before Kiernan's loyal crew find him and he and Syren strike the bargain of a marriage of convenience.  For Kiernan, Syren is his way out of the hangman's noose.  For Syren, Kiernan is passage to the mysterious island of the Sirens and a necklace that is rumoured to turn a mermaid into a human.

But Captain Stewart is not far behind them and danger is never far away.

I found this story to be, in most respects, very good.  The setting was good and the use of various sea legends was well handled.  The main characters of Kiernan and Syren were will portrayed and we really do start to care for them.

However the other characters in the book are not so well filled out and there are loose ends left that I would have preferred were tied up.  For instance, it is never revealed what happened to Maddoc and what he was.  Maddoc was, perhaps, the main secondary character and was shrouded in mystery himself.  As a reader I was drawn into his story as much as Syren and Kiernans and was disappointed at what was left unsaid in respect of this character.  There was also the fact that Syren's mysterious beginnings were referred to but she never recovers the memory of her origins.

The second story is Lord Nerus and is set in the modern day.  Nerus MacDevitt is the last of the Finn Men and lives on the island of Eynhallow where no human being sets foot.

Protected by the Guardian Gifford he is a much darker merman than Syren was mermaid.  He has sequestered himself on his island and after the last human woman had let herself die rather than be with him knowing what he was.  As such he is not too happy to find himself with a houseguest in the form of the hard-hitting reporter Theodora "Red" Redmond who has travelled to the Orkneys in pursuit of the legendary Finn Man in an effort to debunk the myth.

Swept overboard from the boat she was travelling on she finds herself on Eynhallow waiting out the worst storm seen in over one hundred years.

Whilst trapped there she does everything she can to pass the time by trying to find out more about her mysterious rescuer and the rapidly aging Gifford.

Red is not prepared to find herself face to face with a Finn Man though and is torn between revealing him to the world and making her career or protecting his secret.

I found that this story was again steeped in myths, although it was not consistent with the myths in the story of Lady Syren, the Sirens taking on a different form in this particular story.

I enjoyed the setting of the story and the dark brooding atmosphere was well set out.

But again there were just too many loose ends which made the story disappointing.  During the course of the story it was said that Nerus had to find a woman who would accept him as he was in order to become human.  In Red he found that woman and from the final chapter it would appear from comments he made that he did become human.  So why, I found myself wondering, was Red unable to leave the island?  If he was now human surely he could make a new life on the mainland with Red?  What in the world was stopping them from doing this? 

I would also have liked to know more about Gifford and why he aged prematurely.  Since that curse was broken was he able to leave the island or was he too trapped there?  Personally if he was stuck there I would say he had a bit of a raw deal...he is now his rightful age but still trapped on the island for most of his life. A life that is now considerably longer.  Not much of a life for him there.  It might have been better if he were to find someone on the mainland to return to Eynhallow with him.  Just a thought.

All in all two very good stories about the merfolk but too many loose ends left floating for my liking.

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Also by Leslie Burbank: To Tame a Viking.

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