Exclusive Cover Reveal + Excerpt: L.D. Lewis’s The Year of the Mer
Readers who love fairytale retellings and expansions are living their best lives right now. Truly, there are so many options in the fantasy space right now, and they just keep getting more and more creative. Such is the case with the Year of the Mer, a dark, sapphic mermaid fantasy that wrestles with questions of legacy, vengeance, and what we’re willing to sacrifice to get what we want.
Described as perfect for fans of The Priory of the Orange Tree and Circe, this haunting and atmospheric tale puts a dark spin on The Little Mermaid. It follows the story of Arielle’s furious granddaughter, who sets off on a dangerous quest for vengeance that will see her commit many of her predecessor’s same mistakes. (Including an unfortunate visit to a very familiar sea witch.)
Here’s how the publisher describes the story.
The fairy tale mermaid Arielle might have gotten her happily-ever-after, but her granddaughter Yemi is having a much harder time. Her father, the king of Ixia, was assassinated years ago, her mother is slowly dying of a poisoned wound, and she faces whispers and slights from her own people. Yemi has been raised as the shield of the kingdom and is soon to inherit the throne, but she cannot shake her fury at how Ixia has treated her family after all they’ve sacrificed. Only her patient mother and steadfast personal bodyguard (and fiancée), Nova, help Yemi rein in that fury…most of the time.
When the kingdom’s discontented rumblings reach a fever pitch, a coup erupts and Yemi’s throne is usurped, stripping her of her family and forcing her into exile. Now, only one being has the power to help her: Ursla.
Like her grandmother before her, Yemi is tempted by a deal with the sea-witch. With powerful and ancient magic behind her, Yemi could avenge her family, take back her throne, and protect the love of her life. But she should know more than anyone that there is always a price. As much as Yemi wants vengeance, Ursla has been waiting a very, very long time for her own—and it may take more fortune than Yemi possesses to keep her from losing everything all over again.
The Year of the Mer won’t hit shelves until April 7, 2026, but we’re thrilled to bring you an early look at its (gorgeous!) cover, the sprayed edges, which will be featured on the hardcover, and a sneak peek at the story itself.
Chapter One
The body was only a body in the sense that there was a belly button to keep it from being some other category of meat. There was a torso, bare and pale and waterlogged with shredded flesh at its ribs like so much fringe. What was left of the viscera that had once filled it was now a short trail just shy of the tide line. The remaining arm had been slashed in some places and nibbled in others and was without a hand altogether.
“Any way to tell if he’s one of ours? Crew of the Clodion?” Yemaya frowned. She stood over the body, rolling almonds in her hand before popping them into her mouth.
“Not likely. The half of him that’s left has seen better days,” Commander Hurand replied.
“Sharks?”
“Could be. Not really the type to play with their food, though.”
He looked at her pointedly, the way everyone looked at her when they didn’t want to say the word.
Mer.
“Hmph,” she grunted, neither confirming nor rejecting the idea.
“My Light. Commander,” someone called from behind them. Yemaya turned to see another one of her younger soldiers climbing the short hill. He presented her with the violet tatters of an Ixian flag.
“Found this washed up on the southern end of the beach. Stuck on some rocks.”
She inspected it. Torn, but nothing burned, none of it chewed.
“Anything else with it?”
“Nothing, My Light,” he replied.
Yemaya sighed, disappointed, and looked off toward the south as if answers were waving there, waiting to be noticed. “Right. Let’s get divers out before we lose the light. Look for wreckage. And, Hurand, collect this one for a proper send-off.”
Commander Hurand flinched. He was likely just fine leaving the body where it was.
“My Light, forgive me. Shouldn’t we take this… person back home?” the young soldier asked.
“He’s chum,” she replied. She didn’t mean to seem heartless, but it was a health hazard no one would have wanted to bear any distance in the first place. “No one’s making an identification off this, so no point traumatizing a family or more trying to figure it out. We’ll honor him all the same. Just get him to my ship. We’ll have Brother Lain do the rite.”
Her soldiers bowed and she left them to their tasks, heading down the grassy hill and back to the beach. Less than a week ago, legacy gunship the Clodion had disappeared at sea, and Yemi had been asked by her mother and the superstitious priests of the order known as the Kept to look out for it.
A small flotilla of her ships bobbed in the bay. She paused on the hill to sketch the scene quickly in her worn leather notebook. They’d been returning from a routine naval exercise in the southern seas when she spotted this island. And out of either curiosity or want of a reason not to go home just yet, she’d decided it was worth exploring. The body had been a surprise.
Her personal guard, Nova, waited on the beach, spear twirling in her hand. She was a lighter shade of brown, a warm sand to Yemaya’s cool clay, and her pompadour of white curls bobbed carelessly in the breeze.
“Lot of help you were protecting me from whatever maniac could be roaming the island, chopping people up and chewing on them,” Yemaya called.
Nova turned to her. “Nah, you were good.”
“What kind of guardian gets squeamish about dead bodies?”
“What kind of Qorrea are you to be so taken with them?”
“I’m royalty. I get to be eccentric,” Yemaya replied, tugging irritably at the royal collare of gold rings stacked around her neck. “Half your job’s hypothetically the killing part.”
“When I get to them, they’re still alive and probably pissed me off. I don’t like when they’re . . . in pieces already.” Nova made a show of scraping the taste of the idea from her tongue with her top teeth. “You make an ID?”
“Too far gone. Divers are headed out to look for wreckage. I think he’s from the Clodion.”
“Six ships missing this year,” Nova pondered aloud. “All Ixian, none of them found. Somebody’s fucking with you.”
“Hurand thinks it’s Mer.”
Nova raised an eyebrow. “He said that?”
“You know he didn’t. He did the wink-nudge thing.”
“I was about to say, bold of him.”
“I swear, first soldier to not treat my lineage like some dirty secret literally everyone knows gets a commendation,” Yemaya said, squinting into the soon-setting sun.
“They’re probably trying to forget as part of the Reconstruction,” Nova offered. “Hell, if it turns out you’re half what’s-eating-sailors, you’ll want them to forget.”
“You think it’s Mer?” Yemaya asked her.
“Do you think it’s Mer?”
She thought a moment. “Wouldn’t be unheard of. I mean, they used to, right? It was a whole thing.”
“Might be time to get Cerro to triple up on those tributes.”
“Ugh. Only if I have nothing to do with them,” Yemaya groaned. If one more of the Kept’s droning, pollen-drenched ceremonies was added to her schedule, she’d run screaming into the sea her damn self.
She crouched and ran damp black sand through her fingers. The island was lush and new, judging by the volcanic sulfur smell tingeing the breeze. It was too small and too far off to be of any strategic value to Ixia, but she enjoyed knowing an unknowable place. Still, this was one of her side adventures that might prove useful to someone other than herself—her fickle kingdom and increasingly-sick-of-her-shit mother, the queen, specifically.
They watched as the body was carried past them, suspended in a dark tarp, and on board a dinghy that would bear it to the ships.
“Qorrea!” Commander Hurand called, motioning toward the little boat.
Yemaya glanced at Nova, who shook her head almost violently. “Next one.”
“We’ll grab the next one,” Yemaya called back. “Come on, you big baby. I’ve got maybe twenty minutes before I’m summoned again. Chaperone me up this rock so I can get one last view of the coast.”
She had tried picking up her father’s journaling habit after his death. It didn’t take, but her sketching skills were passable and practicing gave her peace.
“Did you draw that guy? Or . . . what was left of him?”
“I’m not tasteless. I did think about it, though.”
They headed toward the northern end, Nova gesturing to the idle soldiers on the beach to stand down. A tall cliff face was sheer on one side but appeared to be gradual on the other, and Yemaya thought it would be an ideal vantage point to get what she could of the island in the little time she had. She paused as they angled upward, contorting herself on small, slick spots of dark rock to get shots of interesting tree formations or glimpses of rodents hiding in coves and crags.
“How did you get here?” she muttered cheerfully to a tawny mouse standing frozen in the grass. She stood to continue the climb but stopped when she noticed the small smile on Nova’s face.
“What is it? I sit in something?” Yemaya asked.
“No, I just like when you like things.”
Yemaya rolled her eyes.
“Really,” Nova continued. “You take your job so seriously, which is great, but your whole life is the job.”
“I’ve had to be ready for it every day for eight years,” Yemi sighed, hoisting herself over a fallen tree.
“You’re right. I just appreciate the moments you forget about it sometimes.”
“Are you bored? You’re sentimental today.”
“Yemi, I’m so bored,” Nova groaned at the sky. “So bored. I have never liked boat days, I never will like boat days, and I think you know that.”
“Good thing for you that we’ll be trapped on the Rock soon enough, then.”
“You don’t have to be trapped in a palace the rest of your life. When you’re queen, you can change any tradition you want.”
“Tell that to the Kept. The people are barely fine with Mer blood on the throne. They’re not going to be excited about one of us picking it apart.”
“You going to let them marry you to a Drake, too?”
“The father or the daughter?”
“Excuse me?” Nova scoffed.
“Joking. I’m still fun.”
“What if we eloped?”
Yemi almost tripped. “Sorry?”
“The queen’s Day of Days is close. After that, we take off for a day or three on some fictional diplomatic whatever, do the thing, and spend the rest of the time in bed sampling pastries with my not having to worry that someone might be on their way to kill you.”
“Did you drink the seawater?”
“Wasn’t thirsty.”
“I don’t think royals can take time off.”
“If we do it before you’re queen, no one will even miss us.”
“The current queen would kill us both. Give me a boost.”
“I think she’d see the romance in it.”
Yemi paused in her climb to shake her head and kiss Nova quickly. They’d been planning their wedding casually over the course of the fourteen years or so they’d known each other, twelve of which they’d spent together as royal and guardian. But holy law dictated no marriage before ascension as a gesture to the Old Gods, that no human union could come before a sacred one. It was one of many painfully absurd rules Yemi found herself forced to adhere to or risk a third war over her right to the throne.
“I do love you,” she assured Nova. “We will be married, and you will be my queen. But if we arrange anything my mother cannot be part of, she will kill you first, and quickly, just because she likes you more.”
“Could be worth it,” Nova replied and hoisted Yemi onto the rock.
The top of the rise gave way to cooler wind and a view of the entire leeward side of the island. Much of it was covered in long, soft grasses and tall, thin trees. Yemi snapped the pictures that would help her piece together its topography later. It was a shame the excursion was so brief. She wouldn’t get all of it. Each click of the shutter felt like a successfully passed moment. It was an earned breath, a bookmark in some page of her life she could return to when times inevitably got worse. She found herself delaying going home whenever she could now, because those times promised to find her soon. She’d been fortunate to stave them off this long.
She sighed and scanned the island for anything remarkable she may have missed, when she caught sight of the bubbling sea beyond the tops of a cluster of trees near the opposite end. She squinted and made out what appeared to be a wide spot of thrashing white among the waves.
“Come up here,” she told Nova. “West, between those trees and the mountain. What is that?”
It took Nova a moment to find the spot, but after some time, she shrugged. “Something spawning?”
Yemi adjusted her camera lens as best she could and was able to make out broad tail fins before a trio of ostensibly human heads attached to mottled human torsos appeared. They seemed to be talking. With any luck, it wasn’t about the Ixian fleet.
“No. Mer,” she said grimly.
“That’s . . . not ideal.” Nova frowned. “Hell of a coincidence, though. Do we notify the commanders?”
“No. If that rumor about the body has spread through the ranks already, they’ll be looking to hunt. We can’t fight an ocean.” She stowed her camera and hopped down from her perch. “We’ll say nothing and hope they’re minding their business. But we should leave before anyone notices them.”
“What if they strike first? And the body was to lure ships here?” Nova asked as they headed down the hill.
“Then I did my best. But that’d solve your boredom problem.”
“Heh.” Nova smirked. “You’re not wrong.”
From the book: YEAR OF THE MER by L.D. Lewis Copyright © 2026 by L.D. Lewis. Reprinted courtesy of Saga Press, an imprint of Simon and Schuster.
The Year of the Mer will be released on April 7, 2026, but you can pre-order it right now.
Lacy Baugher Milas writes about Books and TV at Paste Magazine, but loves nerding out about all sorts of pop culture. You can find her on Twitter and Bluesky at @LacyMB
