Merletta is an orphaned mermaid who has just turned sixteen, making her old enough to become a trainee record holder. She hopes to learn all about the history of her home, the triple kingdoms, but her teachers discourage her from asking questions and often tell her things she knows are untrue. Her curiosity leads her to seek out knowledge on her own time.
Heath is the youngest son of the Duke of Bexley in the kingdom of Valoria. His family has the ability to use magic, which causes tension among Valorian nobility, as the royal family sees magic as a threat to their power. Heath is less interested in family politics than in reading old books in the records room and exploring the Valorian coastline with his best friend, the dragon Rekavidur.
Heath, Reka, and Merletta discover the long-deserted tropical island kingdom Vazula, where according to legend magic users once lived in harmony with magicless people. Heath and Merletta investigate what happened to the inhabitants of Vazula as they start to fall in love.
The books in the series:
- A Kingdom Submerged
- A Kingdom Discovered
- A Kingdom Threatened
- A Kingdom Restored
The Vazula Chronicles contains examples of:
- Abandoned Area: When Heath and Reka discover Vazula, they find it full of old stone buildings that have been overgrown by jungle.
- Absence of Evidence: Reka finds Vazula covered in dragon magic, except for one rock in a particularly magical area that seems to have no magic at all. It contains the stored memories of one of the ancient Vazulan dragons, who hid the memories with concealment magic. The rock is actually the most magical thing on the entire island.
- Alliterative Family:
- Heath's cousins, the twins Bianca and Brody.
- The mermaid Sage has a little sister named Serena.
- All of the Other Reindeer: Merletta is looked down on for being an orphan from Tilssted. Of the five other trainees, Sage and Emil are reasonably friendly to her, but Oliver looks down on her and Ileana and Jacobi actively bully her. Even the teachers openly insult and patronize her.
- Asleep for Days:
- Heath is asleep for three days at the end of A Kingdom Submerged, after Ileana stabs him twice with a spear, he almost drowns before Merletta drags him onto the beach on Vazula, and Reka carries him back to Bexley Manor.
- In A Kingdom Discovered, after her bout of "land sickness", Merletta is given a sedative that keeps her asleep for two days.
- Beard of Sorrow: In A Kingdom Restored, Heath grows an uneven beard because the stress of dealing with both Percival's impending execution and Merletta's persecution by the government of the triple kingdoms is causing him to neglect to shave. After the situation improves, Heath decides to keep the beard.
- Berserk Button: Reka is highly offended by any implication that he's Heath's pet. When Lord Niel refers to him as a "beast" who comes at Heath's call, Reka roars and almost breathes fire at him.
- Big Bad: The Record Master of the triple kingdoms is not only a tyrant who secretly orders the execution of any merperson who defies him, but also has spent almost twenty years living part-time in Valoria trying to stir up discord between magic users and non magic users with the ultimate goal of getting the magic users wiped out, as he sees them as a threat to merpeople.
- Black Sheep: Andre's father and four brothers are all either guards or training to become guards, but he wants to be a record holder. He calls himself the albino dolphin of the family.
- Blow You Away: Bianca has this power. During Heath, Bianca, and Brody's expedition to Vazula in A Kingdom Discovered, she keeps the wind blowing in the direction of Vazula so their ship reaches the area in record time.
- Bottomless Pits: Merletta's second year test takes place partly in a trench. Merletta has to swim down until her head aches from the pressure, and she still can't see the bottom.
- Broken Masquerade: In A Kingdom Discovered, mer guards see Heath and tell the merpeople in the triple kingdoms that humans are real. As damage control, the government kills some of the guards and fakes the deaths of the others, then tells the merpeople that humans are murderous beasts and anyone who goes near land will fall deathly ill to keep them inside the triple kingdoms.
- Call Reception Area: The triple kingdoms are protected by a magical barrier that keeps predators out, and merpeople are strictly forbidden from going outside it, with the exception of hunters and guards. Merletta has also been told that if she pokes her head above the surface, she'll instantly dry out and die. Merletta has been sneaking past the barrier to explore since she was a kid. She's learned that although the open ocean is dangerous, it's not nearly as bad as she's been told, and that visiting the surface is perfectly safe as long as most of her tail is submerged. She discovers Vazula on one of her expeditions.
- Deceptive Legacy: Merletta has always been taught that she is a foundling whose parents are unknown. Late in A Kingdom Submerged, the head of the charity home tells her that her parents dried out. She thinks she was doing Merletta a favor by hiding the knowledge of her parents' "shameful deaths." When Merletta discovers that merpeople can survive drying out, she hopes her parents might be alive somewhere. But in A Kingdom Restored, she learns that that, too, was a lie. Her parents were murdered by someone who pretended they were killed by stingrays.
- Denied Food as Punishment: Once Merletta proved that the head of the charity home where she grew up was lying about mermaids drying out on the surface. The head made her go without supper for the next week as punishment for leaving the triple kingdoms.
- Expecting Someone Taller: In A Kingdom Threatened, a Tilssted mermaid meets Merletta for the first time and comments, "Scrawnier than I expected."
- Faeries Don't Believe in Humans, Either: Merletta has been taught that humans are mythical creatures. She's shocked when she first sees Heath walking around next to Vazula's lagoon.
- False Flag Operation: In A Kingdom Discovered, Percival is attacked by ten men in peasant cloaks. Reka sees what's happening with his farsight, and he and Heath arrive to chase off the attackers. During the fight, one man's cloak slipped, and Percival recognized the uniform of the royal guard. He thinks the royal family sent the men to attack him. But Heath senses that the men had magic, even though no one in the royal guard had powers. The Record Master of the triple kingdoms had his two bodyguards and a bunch of mercenaries dress up in stolen uniforms and attack Percival.
- Famed In-Story: In A Kingdom Discovered, Merletta finds out that she's a local hero in Tilssted as the first trainee from that city in generations. Whenever she swims through Tilssted or the farms where many Tilssted residents work, merpeople are delighted to recognize her.
- Founding Day: The merpeople's only holiday is Founders' Day, which is near the winter solstice and celebrates the establishment of the triple kingdoms. The charity home celebrated the holiday with games and a special meal. The Center of Culture hosts a much more lavish banquet and various athletic contests.
- Frame-Up: At the end of A Kingdom Threatened, Heath and Reka find King Matlock trapped in a burning storehouse. Reka lifts the bar blocking the door so the guards can run in and save Matlock. Then the guards find Percival asleep behind a nearby rock. Percival says he was knocked unconscious, but because the bar blocking the door was much too heavy for a normal man to lift, Matlock and his guards think Percival tried to assassinate Matlock. Matlock has Percival taken to the dungeon, planning to execute him in the morning.
- Getting Smilies Painted on Your Soul: A non-villainous example. Heath and Percival's older sister Laura has the power to make people feel happier.
- Godzilla Threshold: In A Kingdom Restored, Merletta decides that the threat of the dragons is so dire that her best option is to confess everything to the Record Master, the tyrant who runs the triple kingdoms like a Police State and secretly orders the execution of merpeople who defy him. Unfortunately, this just makes the situation worse, because the Record Master is only interested in his own survival and is happy to let all the other merpeople die as long as he and his helpers escape. He throws Merletta in prison to prevent her from warning anyone else.
- Green Thumb: Brody can make plants grow and move around.
- Hands-On Approach: In A Kingdom Threatened, Heath gives archery lessons to Merletta that involve touching her to position her correctly and teaching her how to hold the bow. He thinks that it could have been quite romantic, if not for August carefully watching them to make sure there's no impropriety.
- Happy Rain: One of Merletta's favorite things about the surface is being rained on. She teaches Heath to float under the water so he can watch rain hit the surface above him.
- Healing Factor: Percival's power allows him to heal faster than normal people, although it still takes him days to recover from most injuries.
- Healing Hands: Heath's nephew Germain turns out to have this power. Even at the age of one, he can heal Lachlan's nerve damage, which would have prevented him from ever using a sword again, by letting Lachlan hold him for a few minutes. However, it only works on people Germain likes.
- Hold Your Hippogriffs: Merpeople figures of speech include "hit the current swimming," "a lot of water to cover," "put all your pearls in one oyster," "in a clamshell," "as many lives as a catfish," and "albino dolphin."
- Interrupted Intimacy: In A Kingdom Discovered, Heath and Merletta are about to share their First Kiss on the beach of Vazula when Reka tells them he senses that Percival is in danger. Heath and Merletta still share a kiss before Heath and Reka fly back to Valoria, but it's a much quicker one than it would have been.
- Interspecies Friendship: Heath, a human, spends most of his free time with his best friend Rekavidur, a dragon.
- Killed to Uphold the Masquerade: At the end of A Kingdom Submerged, some guards from the triple kingdoms see Heath. When they get back to the triple kingdoms, the villains feed them a kind of bream that causes hallucinations and blame the resulting illness on "land sickness," a made-up disease that afflicts anyone who goes near land, in order to discourage other merpeople from visiting Vazula. Three of the guards survived, escaped the triple kingdoms, and have been moving from one hideout to another in the open ocean ever since. The government still told everyone they died. When Merletta starts showing signs of land sickness, Sage and Emil take turns watching over her to prevent murder attempts.
- Lighting Bug: The Center of Culture is mostly lit by lanterns of bioluminescent plankton, but some street corners use cages of jellyfish instead.
- Living Lie Detector: Dragons have this ability, as does Heath's father Norik. Norik can detect both deliberate lies and unconscious Lying by Omission, in either speech or writing. With effort, he can even briefly pass his ability on to other people, such as when he shows King Matlock how the Record Master has been deceiving him in A Kingdom Restored. He describes being lied to as a bitter, acrid sensation somewhere between taste and smell. Heath keeps Vazula a secret by simply not answering Norik's questions about where he and Reka go on their journeys.
- Long Last Look: As Merletta is about to swim to the Center of Culture to apply to become a trainee, she pauses for a last look at the charity home.
- Magic Pants: When a merperson turns into a human, some of their scales stay wrapped around their hips and upper legs, taking the form of a skirt for mermaids and shorts for mermen.
- Magikarp Power: At the beginning of A Kingdom Submerged, Heath is believed to be a Muggle Born of Mages. The only unusual ability he has is good eyesight. Over the course of the series, he discovers that he has a number of powers related to seeing or knowing things. He has farsight, the dragon ability to spy on familiar people or places from afar. He can also detect people's emotions and mental traits and, eventually, see through concealment charms that are impervious even to dragons. Reka tells him he has some of the most powerful magic Reka has ever seen in a human.
- Make It Look Like an Accident: Jacobi and Ileana's attempts on Merletta's life include a venomous box jellyfish that "accidentally" got into her hammock, poisonous pufferfish served to her because of a "mistake" in the kitchen, and almost choking her to death during training in a way that could plausibly have been an accident.
- Making a Splash: Princess Kiana, Heath's relative in the neighboring kingdom of Kyona, has this power. She demonstrates it for a group of Valorian visitors by making water rise out of pitchers, shaping it into a giant, floating flower, and dropping it back into the pitchers without spilling a drop.
- Masquerade: Inverted. Ordinary merpeople are told that humans are nothing but an old legend. After a few years of education in the Center of Culture, young merpeople are taught that humans are real, but only a tiny minority of merpeople apply to train there, much less get in.
- Mathematician's Answer: Dragons are very literal-minded and often give these. In A Kingdom Threatened, Heath jokes that Reka sounds like he's planning to murder him, and Reka answers, "Impossible. Even if I were to kill you, it would not be a murder. There is no consequence among my kind for dragons killing humans. Only for showing aggression toward one another."
- Mega Maelstrom: One of Vazula's protections from outsiders is a giant whirlpool a few miles away from the island. When Heath, Bianca, and Brody travel to the area on a ship staffed by a non-magic-using captain and crew, they almost get sucked into the whirlpool. Bianca summons wind to blow them away from the whirlpool and Brody makes the seaweed form ropes to pull the ship to safety. Merletta also visits the whirlpool during her second year test, and finds that it goes all the way to the ocean floor.
- Memory Palace: Most merchildren are taught to build mind palaces. Education at the charity home was poor, and when Merletta first arrives at the Center of Culture she struggles to remember everything she's taught because she never learned that memory technique. Wivell tells her that she must base her mind palace on her childhood home, but she hates having to think about the charity home every time she wants to remember a piece of information. Eventually she decides to use a memory journey instead, with pieces of information arranged along the route from the triple kingdoms to Vazula.
- Mind over Matter: Heath's cousin Jasmine has this ability, although it only works on small objects at close range. When the power users meet up outside Bryford, Jasmine telekinetically clears a path through the snow and turns a snowdrift into a statue of a dragon.
- Never Found the Body: Elric and Merminia were "killed by stingrays" while traveling outside the triple kingdoms with their infant daughter Merleisha. Their bodies were recovered, but Merleisha's never was. The merman sent to kill the three of them took pity on the infant and took her to the charity home in Tilssted instead, where she was raised as Merletta.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: In A Kingdom Threatened, Merletta goes to Wyvern Rocks to look for Reka. Many dragons think mermaids are abominations — monsters created when a dragon commits suicide by expelling all its magic into an animal's body — that must be destroyed. Her visit alerts the dragons to the existence of the triple kingdoms, and despite Reka's attempts to persuade them that mermaids aren't abominations, the other dragons decide to find the triple kingdoms and kill everyone there.
- Nobody Likes a Tattletale: At the charity home, merchildren who tattle are hated and bullied by the other children. During her years there, Merletta learned never to tell an adult about her problems, and she learned it so well that even when someone at the tries to trick her into eating poisonous pufferfish at the Center of Culture, she doesn't report it.
- No One Could Survive That!: At the end of A Kingdom Submerged, Merletta drags herself well past the water line onto the beach with the injured Heath, sacrificing herself to save him, or so she thinks. Ileana swims back to the triple kingdoms, secure in the knowledge that Merletta will soon dry out and die. Merletta spends the next month either on land or in Vazula's lagoon, during which Ileana thinks she's dead. In A Kingdom Discovered, Merletta finally decides to return to the triple kingdoms, where Ileana stares at her in shock and horror.
- Only Friend: Merletta's only friend at the charity home was Letitia, who became an apprentice shellsmith after she reached the age of majority. After Merletta leaves the charity home, she gets so caught up in training and her romance with Heath that she almost never visits Tish, which she feels a little guilty about.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: At the beginning of A Kingdom Discovered, Heath recklessly challenges a magicless archer to a contest in which they fire arrows at branches in a swift-moving stream and try to haul them onto the bridge. The weight of Heath's branch almost pulls him off the bridge and over the nearby Inevitable Waterfall. Percival demands to know why Heath, who is normally more cautious, would do something so dangerous for no good reason. The reason is that Heath thinks Merletta is dead, but he's keeping her existence a secret, so he can't answer Percival's question.Percival: I don't need you to tell me I've done stupider things for the sake of competition. But this is you, Heath. You're smarter than this.
- Overpopulation Crisis: The triple kingdoms are becoming increasingly overcrowded, and Tilssted is starting to encroach into the kelp farms to the north, even though much of the merpeople's technology depends on kelp leaves. Merletta wonders if dry land holds knowledge or resources that could help with the crisis. In A Kingdom Restored, she learns how the triple kingdoms have traditionally dealt with the problem — by inciting a "cull," or a war between the three cities.
- Over-the-Shoulder Carry: In A Kingdom Restored, when the magic users break the Record Master out of the dungeon so he can face justice in the triple kingdoms, Percival carries him over his shoulder.
- Painful Transformation: "Drying out" doesn't kill a merperson, but turns them into a human. They can transform back by going into the water. Merletta's first transformation into a human is excruciatingly painful. Her later transformations involve a similar feeling of prickly heat, but are more uncomfortable than painful.
- Photographic Memory: Dragons have the ability to magically reconstruct a memory in photographic detail so they can remember things they didn't notice the first time.
- Protection from the Elements: Merpeople have adaptations to survive the cold at the bottom of the ocean. Merletta finds the cold uncomfortable and prefers the heat of the surface, but she's not in danger of hypothermia like a human would be. When she and the guards transform into humans on the coast of Valoria during winter, they feel truly cold for the first time in their lives.
- Reverse Arm-Fold: In A Kingdom Restored, Merletta meets the Record Master, the de facto ruler of the triple kingdoms, who floats with his hands folded behind his back.
- Seashell Bra: All mermaids wear a pair of large seashells. Poor mermaids like Merletta wear only that, while wealthier mermaids can afford more elaborate coverings and jewelry. Mermaids only take off their shells when exchanging them for new ones, and an adult mermaid can wear a pair of shells for years.
- Sneaking Out at Night: At the charity home, Merletta regularly sneaks out at night to explore the open ocean. When she becomes a trainee, she's delighted to learn that she'll get an entire day off once a week, removing the need to sneak out. She discovers Vazula on her first day off.
- Super Registration Act: The royal family is considering ordering all power-wielders to be registered. Most power-wielders are opposed to the idea, especially Percival, who thinks it would make them like cattle. There are rumors that once the power-wielders are registered, they will be forbidden from using their abilities without the king's permission.
- Super-Speed: Heath's cousin Max can run as fast as a galloping horse.
- Super-Strength: Heath's older brother Percival has the strength of five men as his magical gift. His athletic abilities have made him popular with the public, and he becomes even more so after he saves a peasant child from being crushed by a boulder. He is very upset when the king bans him from competing in the annual tournament on the grounds that he has an unfair advantage.
- Surprise Multiple Birth: Laura spends most of A Kingdom Threatened heavily pregnant. The doctor says she'll have only one child, but late in the book she has twins, Jacqueline and Germain. Jacqueline turns out to have concealment magic, which is why the doctor couldn't detect her.
- Switching P.O.V.: In A Kingdom Submerged, Merletta narrates odd-numbered chapters, and Heath narrates even-numbered chapters, both in the third-person limited. In later books, both of them narrate multiple chapters at a time. Rekavidur also becomes a narrator in A Kingdom Restored.
- Tampering with Food and Drink:
- In A Kingdom Submerged, someone tries to serve Merletta poisonous pufferfish, which merpeople normally use as pest control. Sage recognizes it before Merletta can eat it.
- In A Kingdom Discovered, the villains feed hallucination-inducing bream to merpeople including Merletta.
- A Taste of the Lash: In A Kingdom Threatened, the increasingly paranoid and magic-hating King Matlock orders that Heath's infant nephew and niece, Germain and Jacqueline, be separated from their mother so their powers can be assessed. Heath refuses to pledge loyalty to a king who would break up a family and treat two infants like criminals. For his defiance, Matlock sentences Heath to five lashes at the public flogging post.
- Threatening Shark: Merletta often has to dodge these in the open ocean. She usually carries a stone weapon she can use to fight back if necessary.
- Underwater City: The triple kingdoms consist of Tilssted, Hemssted, and Skulssted, which were once separate cities but have merged into one large metropolis. Merpeople in all three mostly live in stone houses similar to the ones found on land. Merletta trains in the Center of Culture, a complex of spectacular underwater skyscrapers in the center of the triple kingdoms. To her underwater cities are normal, so when she first discovers Vazula she's astonished by the sight of stone buildings far away from water.
- Underwater Ruins: At the beginning of A Kingdom Discovered, Heath is puzzled by the sight of underwater ruins just off the coast of Valoria. It turns out they were built long ago by merpeople who tried to settle outside the triple kingdoms, but were wiped out by dragons.
- Vengeance Feels Empty: By the end of the series, Merletta and Ileana both want revenge on the government of the triple kingdoms, Merletta for the secret executions and Ileana for failing her from the program. In A Kingdom Restored, the Record Master is indirectly responsible for a massacre of merpeople by dragons based on the dragons' incorrect beliefs. When the dragons realize this, one of them executes the Record Master by burning him to death, then throws his charred corpse back into the water. Merletta and Ileana both find the sight more upsetting than satisfying.
- Victoria's Secret Compartment: In A Kingdom Threatened, Merletta has missed months of training and is going to be expelled from the program. She finds a record that says trainees can be forgiven for missing more than five days of training only with the approval of one of the instructors, so she plans to show the record to Agner, the only instructor who wants her to succeed. But first she hides it in one of her shells so it won't be confiscated by one of the many merpeople who want her to fail.
- Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Merletta has been afraid of jellyfish ever since being stung by one as a child. She makes the mistake of mentioning this fact in front of the other trainees. One of the other trainees "pranks" her by putting a highly venomous box jellyfish in her sleeping hammock.
