The Tail of Emily Windsnap
core novel 2003 Emily Windsnap
Record
| First published | 2003 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 3.93 (29,856 ratings, collected 2026-09-09) |
| First-edition ISBN | 9781842552711 |
| Internal chronology | 1 |
Synopsis
The Tail of Emily Windsnap opens the series and introduces thirteen-year-old Emily, who has spent her whole life aboard a boat with her mother and has always been kept away from swimming lessons for reasons she does not understand. When she finally joins a school swimming class, her legs transform into a tail, and she realizes she is half mermaid. Trying to make sense of this secret, she befriends a young mermaid named Shona Silkfin, who introduces her to the hidden underwater world of Neptune, the Sea King. Emily gradually learns that her long-absent father is a merman who has been imprisoned because Neptune forbids marriages between humans and merfolk. Determined to understand her divided identity and free her father, Emily and Shona set out on a journey that will take them beneath the waves and into open conflict with Neptune's law.
Where it sits
- Universe: Emily Windsnap
- Series: Emily Windsnap core; position 1 of 10 in the series' recorded order
- Author: Liz Kessler
Notes
- From the series record (Emily Windsnap): A large tier of companion material (early-reader collections, short-story anthologies, boxed-set repackagings) exists alongside these 10 numbered novels; kept out of Core as supplementary, non-numbered material.
Neighbouring works
Publication order and internal chronology are tracked as two separate orderings, but they resolve to the exact same sequence for this book, so one combined line is shown instead of two identical ones.
- Reading order, within the series Emily Windsnap: position 1 of 10: next Emily Windsnap and the Monster from the Deep (2004)
Sources
← Emily Windsnap dossier · All universes
Part of the Library. Fields without an identified source are omitted, never guessed.