Born from the Waters by Aurora Seldon

[reviews_and_ramblings]

There were two reasons why I wanted to read this novella: first it’s from a new epubs, so new that they have only few titles available, and second since Aurora Seldon is a very active writer in the M/M community, but till now she has only published in Spanish. A lot of her fiction is free, and I was really interesting in have a taste of it, but Spanish was not one of the languages I was able to understand.

She tried her hand with English (meaning that someone else translated the story for her) with a fantasy novella, a retelling of the old fairy tale of the Little Mermaid. Thor is the love child of a Danish woman; no one knows who his father is, and his mother died when he was only a little child. Before dying, in an asylum, she was always telling him that he was different, that he was born from the waters. And Thor is well aware that his mother was not mad, that he is indeed different, since not only he has almost an ethereal androgynous beauty, but his own body is different, the skin, the hair, even the genitals.

To add difference to difference, Thor is also soon aware that he is attracted by boys; it’s strange, but his insecurity when he is only a teenager is not due by his homosexuality, but by his own awareness that he is not like the other boys; on an external eye, Thor instead is so beautiful and aloof that no one is harassing him, on the contrary, everyone, man or woman, wants to be the chosen one, the one to whom Thor will give himself.

But Thor’s fear of rejection is too big; he is unable to relate with other people, any small sign of rejection is seen like a big ostracism. Thor has to find his own way in the world, he is unable to live a normal life.

There are of course some faults in the story, more due to the translation than to the story itself. Sincerely, since I’m no a native English speaking, I didn’t find them so unsettling, but maybe for someone else they could be a distraction. The story has also a Young Adult/Coming of Age feeling: the narration starts when Thor is only a child and ends when he is an “adult”, but I think a barely one, probably 18 or so. Due to that, sex is a bit awkward, the awkwardness of who still doesn’t know what he is doing, and if you add to that the mutation in Thor’s body, well, you can understand that Thor is not exactly eager to share his body with someone else, I felt a little embarrassed myself.

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