Goddess of the Sea by P.C. Cast

Christine Canady, called CC, is a Sergeant in the Air Force, and it's her twenty-fifth birthday. But everyone who loves her seems to have forgotten her birthday. Her parents call her only to wish her a happy birthday before leaving on their latest cruise, and her best friend has also forgotten. Celebrating with some KFC and Champagne, she finds she has also gotten a call from someone who she knew at her former duty station- reminding her that her own birthday is a month and a half from now.

Tired and annoyed, Christine gets drunk on Champagne, wishing for a little magic in her life. But when she sees the moonlight outside her small apartment, she decides to go outside and do a little ritual, calling on the Goddess Gaea for some magic and love in her life. Just before she passes out, she has a vision of a man reaching out to her, and her reaching back for him.

The next morning, she wakes up late. Very late. It's almost noon, and she's very glad that she didn't have to report to the base. Instead, it's time to do a few last things before shipping out. But a near-fatal accident is prevented when a woman stops her from stepping onto an elevator that isn't there. A fireman tackles her before she can fall down the shaft, and later, at the BX or Base Exchange, she is given a lovely amber pendant necklace by a woman who claims that she is beloved of the Goddess.

But the next day, she takes a plane across the ocean, and a man who is called Apollo asks to switch seats with her. When the plane goes down, she nearly drowns, but is somehow saved by... a woman with a fish's tail? The woman asks to take her place, and have CC take hers, and CC agrees. When she wakes up, she finds that she also has a fish tail and has become something like a mermaid. But what a mermaid! Life, however, isn't all good, because she is chased by another merman and child of Lir named Sarpedon, who calls her Undine.

CC manages to evade him and slips into a secluded cove. Sarpedon follows her, but CC is saved when the Goddess Gaea banishes him from her realm with a breath. Gaea cannot keep CC with her, nor can she protect her from Sarpedon in the sea, so instead, she comes up with a compromise; She will allow CC to walk on the land by day, but it will hurt her. Once a day, she must return to the sea and bathe in it. This will keep her safe and alive.

CC agrees, and Gaea performs the spell that changes her back into a human, but without her tail and the ability to breathe water, CC is about to drown when she is saved by another Merman, Dylan. At first, she thinks that Sarpedon sent him, but he says he has no love for Sarpedon, and touches Gaea's amulet to prove it. He brings her to an island, and CC finds that once she steps out of the water, she is clad in a beautiful dress, her hair draped in jewels. But a shout from the shore sends Dylan back into the sea, and a human warrior appears to rescue her from the waters.

CC has appeared on an island in the distant past, and the man who "rescued" her is named Andras. He takes her to the island's monastery for shelter, but the monastery is run by monks who take a very dim view of women, and the appearance of "Princess Undine" puts them into a lather. Since she is a Princess, they cannot turn her away, but her modern-day lack of religious belief is highly disturbing to them, even though she tries to go along with their ways.

As she recuperates at the Monastery, she finds that Andras is attracted to her, both for her beauty and apparent wealth and status. At first, she's flattered by the attention, but his attitude towards women as a whole isn't much better than those of the monks, and the monks slowly work on him, seeming to make him think that she will make him unclean if he should win her.

Inside the monastery, she finds something to do in restoring a statue of Mary, who very much resembles the Goddess Gaea, and slowly wins the support and attention of the women who serve the monks of the Abbey, in particular one of the women who serves in the kitchen. CC, in turn, steels them to stand up to the men who would treat them badly, and wins their support with her work on the statue.

Meanwhile, her excursions outside the abbey to the sea to bathe are attracting the attention and ire of the monks, who believe that she is an unbeliever and perhaps something monstrous. As they slowly infect Andras with their beliefs, CC turns to her deepening relationship with Dylan, who has been meeting her every night when she bathes. Between the threat of the monks at the Monastery, and the threat of Sarpedon in the ocean, can CC find love and keep Princess Undine from falling victim to Sarpedon's lust? Because the only way for her to stay alive and return home is to find a way to do just that. But can she ever leave Dylan behind, when she has come to love him so much?

I love P.C. Cast's novels, and Goddess of the Sea is no exception. CC is a strong and engaging heroine, and while she has enough flaws to be interesting (she hates to fly but joined the Air Force because they had the best benefits package), she doesn't often feel sad for herself and fights against injustice as best she can. She asks the Goddess for love and magic in her life, and gets both in spades when she takes the place of Undine.

Drawn back in time and into a world where all the Greek Gods exist, as well as the creatures of Greek myth, CC feels in over her head at first, but soon she's working to empower the women of the Monastery, since the monks have such a bad attitude towards women. She doesn't hide her intelligence or independent spirit, and this makes the monks hate her with a virulence I've rarely read in romance novels. Yet CC holds up just fine, and doesn't allow it to get her down. In the end, matters come to a head when the monks succeed in turning Andras against her, and she must flee the monastery or die. Her influence remains on the women there, who face the monks on her behalf, so there is hope that she has changed things for the better.

The ending was perfectly suited to the novel, and provided the kind of ending I wanted from a book like this. No less magical and wonderful than the story itself, and allowing Dylan and CC to stay together, while also saving Undine from Sarpedon forever. This book is damned near perfect, and draws you into the story with a force of a black hole, not spitting you back out again until the end, when you'll wish for more. More comes in the form of other books in the Goddess series, but this is a book I'm glad I read and glad to own. Highly recommended, and you won't forget the story here, ever.