That one scene, a quarter into the novel, was unlike anything I have ever read. Meg becomes friendly with even more trees as the roots and branches manipulate Meg’s body through their own parodies of sex.

And this is where the story goes past the point of no return: Meg is forced by a tree to have sex with it. But Meg has friends watching out for her, including the mountain’s enchanted trees. Meg is able to escape from one Shaman who walks around with everything hanging out and becomes excited by the thrill of the chase. Even as Meg is taken there and “readied” by the other shamans’ handmaidens, Simeon tries to save her and find a way for them to be together.

Now Meg is ruined and cannot become a high priestess, instead becoming a sexual plaything for the shamans who live high on the mountain. The two lovers are separated when Meg’s Aunt Adelia finds her rolling naked in the surf and assumes she has given away her virginity. But since Meg cannot live underwater, he must decide if he will live above ground as a mortal or find a way for Meg to live with him even though she could die by drowning or be killed by his jealous selkie handmaidens. Meg is overcome by Simeon’s sexual skills and even though Simeon has had thousands of both human and selkie women alike, he is close to falling in love with Meg because he was able to taste her “sweet nectar” and she is not like the others, or so Simeon says. For the next few hours he and Meg have fun on a sea sponge. But as the virginal Meg cools off in the sea, Simeon, the Lord of the Deep, grabs Meg and takes her down to his kingdom.

Meg is incredibly turned on and ventures down to the shoreline after the orgy has finished and they return to their watery underworld. As she watches, she is in awe of their sexual antics, especially that of their leader, who has excellent mating skills. Meg is also quite the voyeur and one night she looks out from her bedroom window as the selkies come out of the ocean and shed their skins to become sexually insatiable human males and females. Meg is a simple girl who lives with her aunt and uncle on the Isle of Mists in an alternate universe called Arcus. I honestly will never view seals and trees the same way ever again due to their sexual interactions with the heroine.

What I found inside was a sexual odyssey I could have never foreseen. I should have realized what I was getting myself into by the almost naked man on the cover of Lord of the Deep.

Lord of the deep by dawn thompson