Sirens of the Azores
Of the Water · 9 Sereias dos Açores
Book by Tiger Lee
Description:
Of the Water · 9 Sereias dos Açores is a work of faux-nonfiction by Tiger Lee: a 544-page illustrated account, in the form of a memoir, of the four years an American in his sixties spent on the north coast of São Miguel in the Azores being told the history of nine immortal guardians of the Atlantic. It is built like a work of natural history — photographs, maps, archival documents and dossiers set against the text. The island, the harbor, the villa and the people in it are real and can be visited; the museum the book exists to build opens in 2030; what to make of the nine is left to the reader. The last third turns into a biotech thriller about genetic sovereignty. It is not a fantasy novel and it is not a romance.
What is this book?
A man in his sixties moved to a volcanic island in the middle of the Atlantic to slow down. In May of 2026, at sixty-three, he saw something in the water at a closed harbor below his house. He went back the following week, and the week after that, and for the next four years he wrote down what she told him.
What she told him was twelve thousand years of the Atlantic from underneath: the ships, the eruptions, the raids, the drownings, and the nine women who have been quietly rearranging the outcomes since before there was a Portuguese language to name them in.
The book is his record of it. It is not a novel about mermaids. It is a man's account of being told a history he could not verify, by someone he could not explain, in a place you can go and stand.
Is it a fantasy novel?
No. There is no invented world, no magic system, no quest, no chosen one. The setting is São Miguel in the Azores, which is a real island with a real bus timetable. The history is real: the 1522 landslide at Vila Franca, the 1755 earthquake, the 1618 corsair raid, the 1957 Capelinhos eruption, the whaling economy, the transatlantic cables.
The nine are the one thing in the book that is not documented elsewhere. Everything else can be checked, and the book expects you to check it.
Shelved as magical realism.
Is there a romance?
No, and this is the question we are asked most, so here is the honest answer.
There is a relationship between the narrator and the oldest of the nine, and it runs the length of the book. Nothing happens. There is no consummation, no declaration and no resolution, because a structural fact stands in the way that neither of them can move — the nine cannot be the eight — and both of them know it from early on.
What the book has instead is restraint: two people who are careful with each other for four years, and one moment in a cave where a forehead touches a forehead and nothing is said.
If you came for a love story you will be disappointed. If you have ever liked The Remains of the Day, you will know exactly what this is.
Why does this book exist?
To build a museum.
Sirens of the Azores · Casa das Sereias e Piratas is a real project on São Miguel, owned by a community association rather than by the author. It opens in 2030, with a theatre beside it from 2032 — sixty-five seats, an underwater stage, and choreographed mermaid shows several times a day. The book is the instrument for funding it and for building an audience who will come.
That is not a disclosure made reluctantly. It is the design brief. Every copy sold builds a building.
Who is it for?
Readers of Life of Pi and The Mermaid of Black Conch. Anyone who has been to the Azores or is planning to go. The Azorean diaspora, around two hundred Holy Spirit festivals a year in the United States and eighty-seven in Canada, and this is the island most of those families left. Readers over fifty-five, because the book's real subject is what a life amounts to in your sixties. Anyone who liked Circe or The Island of Sea Women.
Not for readers who want a fast plot in the first hundred pages. The first two-thirds is a man being told stories at a harbor. The turn comes at Chapter 26 and it is a real one, but it is earned rather than promised.
Which edition should I buy?
If you read on an iPad or a Mac, buy the Deluxe Edition.
If you read on a phone or a Kindle, buy the Reader's Edition.
The text of Of the Water is identical in both. Neither edition is missing a chapter, a scene or a fact the story depends on.
The Deluxe Edition · $15.99
The book as it was designed: 544 fixed pages, set in large type in two columns, with each photograph placed beside the sentence it belongs to.
It carries twice the images of the Reader's Edition, with captions that say what you are looking at, where it is and when it was taken.
It is made for an iPad or a Mac, where the page appears at the size it was drawn. Because the page is fixed, the type cannot be resized. On a phone it is small.
On Apple Books and on this site.
The Reader's Edition · $9.99
The same text, reflowed to fit your screen, at whatever type size you choose.
It has twenty-seven color images: the nine portraits, two maps and sixteen photographs. Each one opens its chapter or sits beside the sentence it proves.
It is made for the phone, which is where most people read now. On a black-and-white Kindle the images appear in gray.
On Amazon Kindle and on this site.
Where can I buy it?
Until 9 April 2027:
Coming 9 April 2027. Tell me when. [email sign-up]
From 9 April 2027:
Deluxe Edition $14.99 for the first nine days, 9 to 17 April. $15.99 after. [Buy here] · [Apple Books]
Reader's Edition · $9.99 [Buy here] · [Amazon Kindle]
Buying here leaves the most money for the museum.
A color hardback from Letras Lavadas, the Azorean publisher, will follow.
The author
Tiger Lee is the pen name of Anthony W. Liu. For twenty years he ran the largest pirate store in the world, ten blocks from the Fountain of Youth in St. Augustine, Florida. In 2024 he crossed the Atlantic to São Miguel, where he renovated the Golden Mermaid Villa — built in 1929, and the only house on the island with its five-petal balustrade — and, with the people of Ribeirinha, is building Sirens of the Azores · Casa das Sereias e Piratas. He writes about longevity, community and the sea. He lives on the north coast, and walks down to the water when the bird tells him to.
What is it like?
Life of Pi: A credible narrator reporting one impossible thing, and leaving you responsible for what you believe
The Mermaid of Black Conch: A mermaid book written for adults, literary and island-set
Piranesi: A chronicler whose records outlast his understanding
The Remains of the Day: What restraint costs, told by a man reconstructing his own past