I've loved discovering Poul Anderson's work. The Merman's Children is my least favourite of his work so far, but it's still compelling: easy to read, and you get through chunks of it without realising you have. It does have the occasional example of Poul Anderson's devotion to rendering accents phonetically, which can be infuriating to read, but most of the main characters do not.It's a sad and strange story, mostly about the passing of things. I love the way everything gets woven together toward the end, strands of the story that didn't seem as if they would come together.I wasn't so fond of the Christian parts of this. It mostly seemed to push just one true way, which is... totally not the way I think.