The Twice Lost (series Lost Voices Trilogy: Book 3).

Porter, Sarah.  The Twice Lost (series Lost Voices Trilogy: Book 3).  Houghton Mifflin/Harcourt Brace  2013  471p  $16.99  ISBN 978-0-547-48252-1  hs  VG-BNS       

Luce, a mermaid, organizes exiled mermaids to fight the United States government in its attempts to slaughter them.  Can she negotiate a peaceable compromise?   Third in the Lost Voices trilogy, The Twice Lost is the tale of once-human girls first lost when a trauma transformed them into mermaids, then lost a second time when they broke mermaid law and were rejected by their tribes.  Luce transforms the exiles, living under the docks of San Francisco Bay, into an army.  As their general, she battles the United States government, which is determined to hunt the mermaids to extinction and end the their practice of sinking ships and drowning humans, which has been going on for centuries.

As Luce struggles to negotiate an amicable compromise, an antidote is developed that will return mermaids to their human forms and to their families.  But Luce is torn.  Despite her love for her father and her human boyfriend, Dorian, she still has unresolved issues to address, such as her need to get humans to improve their care of the oceans.  As the most recognizable mermaid on the planet, will her voice be as powerful as that of a human? Or as an ocean denizen?

The novel stands on its own.  However, most readers will return to read the previous two volumes to better round out the characters and back story.

Summary: Luce, a mermaid, organizes exiled mermaids to fight the United States government in its attempts to slaughter them.  Can she negotiate a peaceable compromise?

Mermaids-Fiction, Environment-Fiction                       --Hilary Welliver