I should have realized what I was getting myself into by the almost naked man on the cover of Lord of the Deep. What I found inside was a sexual odyssey I could have never foreseen. I honestly will never view seals and trees the same way ever again due to their sexual interactions with the heroine.

Meg is a simple girl who lives with her aunt and uncle on the Isle of Mists in an alternate universe called Arcus. 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. As she watches, she is in awe of their sexual antics, especially that of their leader, who has excellent mating skills. Meg is incredibly turned on and ventures down to the shoreline after the orgy has finished and they return to their watery underworld. 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. For the next few hours he and Meg have fun on a sea sponge.

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. 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.

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. Now Meg is ruined and cannot become a high priestess, instead becoming a sexual plaything for the shamans who live high on the mountain. 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.

Meg is able to escape from one Shaman who walks around with everything hanging out and becomes excited by the thrill of the chase. But Meg has friends watching out for her, including the mountain’s enchanted trees. And this is where the story goes past the point of no return: Meg is forced by a tree to have sex with it. Yes, a tree. Meg becomes friendly with even more trees as the roots and branches manipulate Meg’s body through their own parodies of sex.

Sex with a tree. That one scene, a quarter into the novel, was unlike anything I have ever read. In addition to this over the top scene, Meg is being constantly chased, abused, and forced to have sex with everyone and everything. She really has no say, even with the hero, but she doesn’t mind being dominated by him because, well…he is the hero. And when Meg is captured to be used by the shamans, their women use their own talented ways to prepare her for them.

Every other page is sex, or the thought of sex, or a character’s body part hanging out. Everyone runs around naked and aroused and stops what they’re doing when the need to have sex hits, at which point they engage in some sort of sexual act to give them release. I find myself at a loss for words about this story of Meg and her fun seals and plants. For some readers, Meg’s “friendship” with a tree may excite, but I found myself disturbed by the whole notion.

Simeon and Meg’s relationship is somewhat better. Simeon does become monogamous the moment he realizes Meg is the one for him, so he is at least redeemed in that sense. When the story focuses on these two lovers, I found their interactions fairly erotic, if a bit purple. But yet again, their relationship is more of a sexual (and messy) one than an emotional one.

Lord of the Deep is full of improbable characters in an improbable world performing improbable acts. There is even a character by the name of Gideon who transforms into a bird, only to become aroused when Meg mistakenly touches his wings. Perhaps that’s the best metaphor for my reaction to this book: It’s for the birds.