Into the drowning deep

4/5

This was a fun and thrilling read, full of killer mermaids and a boat packed with scientists with very little self preservation instincts. It was almost comical how everything that could go wrong did go wrong.

I did enjoy the amount of research the author put into making the mermaids feel believable, and sprinkling in pieces to tie in real biology in ways that it almost felt plausible that they could live in the deep dark parts of the ocean.

The characters also felt very real and interesting, each with their own reasons for joining the crew but also flawed in their own way. There were many of them, almost too many, but they were all well done.

The thing I did not like though was that omniscient narration. It felt very jarring for me to head hop so much with no warning. I got confused many times as to whose head I was in all the way through the book. It worked in some sections but overall it was a bit of a struggle to keep shifting my mental image so much.

Overall though it was a fun read, even with a slower start and possibly going on longer than it needed to, I still enjoyed it quite a bit.

As mentioned before, this book feels like a throwback to that time in the 90s when everybody tried to emulate Michael Crichton - but in a good way. Maybe it is just a bit of nostalgia on my part, I loved those kind of books as a kid. But regardless, I found this book highly entertaining; a mix of plausible sounding marine biology jargon and some sciency sounding stuff I think is all made up (in good Crichton tradition); easily recognisable good guys and some cartoonishly stereotyped bad guys and not at least an almost human, still but wholly Other Big Bad. In other words, this is - in very broad strokes - a "Congo" set on the high seas.

I'm very forgiving when it comes to this kind of literature. It is pure entertainment, an action movie in book form. If there is is anything to nitpick at it is that some of minor details have aged poorly - so I prefer to think of it as set in a parallel universe 2022. There never was a pandemic, politicians seem to act on the climate crisis, Tesla's optimism re self driving cars were not a sham to lure investors etc... Perhaps the biggest departure from our reality (except the Big Bad) is an American built ship run by an American corporation with coed showers! What an absolute HR nightmare 🤣

[a:Mira Grant|3153776|Mira Grant|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1380320279p2/3153776.jpg] is the horror nom-de-plume of [a:Seanan McGuire|2860219|Seanan McGuire|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1245623198p2/2860219.jpg] — 3× Hugo-winner (and 20 more noms), 2× Locus-winner (7 more noms), 1× Nebula-winner, 2× Tiptree honouree, John W Campbell-winner, Philip K Dick finallist, 3× WFA nom’d, 2× Endeavour nom’d, 1× Sidewise nom’d, 1x BFA nom’d, 1× Shirley Jackson nom’d.

Normally, Mira Grant is someone who I buy the moment I see her work available for pre-order, since having discovered her work with her “political conspiracy theories with zombies and bloggers” novel [b:Feed|7094569|Feed (Newsflesh, #1)|Mira Grant|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1408500437l/7094569.SY75.jpg|7351419]. That said, a lot of her work gets published through Subterranean Press, who make beautiful books but which are expensive in print and not always available as UK ebooks. That is pretty much the only reason I can think that it took me until now to read her 2017 novel Into the Drowning Deep, which follows on from her 2015 novella [b:Rolling in the Deep|23634011|Rolling in the Deep (Rolling in the Deep, #0.5)|Mira Grant|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1417291618l/23634011.SX50.jpg|43239096], which I have also yet to read.

In the best of cryptid horror traditions, the Drowning Deep tales feature mermaids who dispense with the conventional beauty bullshit and concentrate on luring sailors to their deaths. To be clear, the luring is very much optional; they’ll absolutely come to you. Seven years after a reality TV network sent a mockumentary crew to the Mariana Trench to “prove whether mermaids are real” and the ship was lost with all hands, the sister of one of the crew joins a return to the Trench, aiming to prove that the loss of the Atargatis was not a hoax — and hoping not only to prove the existence of mermaids but to be able to study one.

Obviously, they discover that mermaids do exist — and that they are in no way friendly, as chai ♡ put it in their review, “the so-called lovely ladies of the sea exist, and they are out for slaughter” — because otherwise it would be a pretty dull horror story but, as with every Mira Grant tale that I’ve read, she excels at pacing the tension and slow-reveal of the details, so that you end the book not only having enjoyed the journey but also feeling like you’ve learned something, not just about the fictional world she’s created, but at the real world too. [a:Freya Marske|7106498|Freya Marske|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1588506273p2/7106498.jpg] put it well in her Goodreads review:

This book has my gratitude for managing to perfectly capture the way it feels to watch a Jurassic Park movie: you know from the opening moments there’s gonna be lots of science and musings on the hubris of humanity and also like 60% of the cast is gonna die bloodily.

I cannot recommend Mira Grant highly enough; if you are even slightly interested in intelligent horror stories, you should seek out and devour her every word. It had been far too long since I’d read any of her work and, while knowing she’s an absolute favourite author, I had forgotten quite how much starting one of her books was like falling into the arms of a friend for a reassuring hug. Albeit a hug with an alarmingly high body count and a lot of mortal terror.

Grant identifies as bi or pansexual and as demisexual; our main protagonist in Into the Drowning Deep is a bisexual woman and there is a romance with an autistic gay woman on-ship. Also, there are people of colour, most of the scientists are women and 2 of them are Deaf — accompanied by their also-PhD-qualified sister, who Sign-interprets for them — as well as a there being a wheelchair-using corporate rep in charge. (And there are some dolphins as PoV characters.) Seanan McGuire makes a point of writing very diverse fiction and it’s one of the many things I love about her work. I really must prioritise reading some of her fantasy works, which are published under her legal name.

CN: Lots of death: of humans and animals, with a healthy dose of mortal peril and injury detail on the way. Some ableism and sexism (and maybe also queerphobia, but I forget) from unsympathetic characters. And you might not be too keen on seagoing for a little while afterwards

Into the Drowning Deep reminded me in many ways of Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park, but instead of dinosaurs, there are killer mermaids. It's set in the very near future, enough to allow for some slight technological advances and a bit more damage to the environment. There's scientific speculation and an unnerving reminder than humans's place at top of the food chain is precarious.

The Atargatis set sail to film a mockumentary on mermaids in the Mariana Trench, only to never return. The only clues to what happened to them is their footage, which many dismiss as an elaborate hoax. Fast forward a few years and the entertainment company is looking to send another expedition to find the truth. Is it possible mermaids are real?

I loved all the marine biology sections and the Northern Californian setting of the opening chapters. The premise is that the "mermaids" have evolved in the deepest parts of the ocean, living separate to humans, but still affected by our actions on land. So much so, that their hunting patterns are changing. Mira Grant spends lot of time on the possible scientific explanations for the mermaids existence, physiology and behaviour.

It follows a similar format to her other books under the same pen name, with extracts from different characters' lectures, notes, etc. There is a big cast of characters, all with their own reasons for being on board. Tory both loves the ocean but wants to find out what really happened to her sister, who died on the Atargatis. There is the professor who has spent her career trying to convince the world that mermaids exist. Security is provided by a pair of big game hunters, with little patience for the scientists or the TV crews.

The deaf twins are not just there to represent disability but also that communication is more than just speech, and to attempt to understand the mermaids needs knowledge beyond spoken language. Just like in Arrival, we can't just expect language between two species who have never interacted to be simple.

Since finishing Into the Drowning Deep I've seen a few negative reactions to it, leaving me wondering if everyone read the same book (yeah that thing again, only roles reversed). OK, if I dissected it, some bits are silly and there are a lot of different elements, which means it's slower than an average horror. If you have zero interest in marine biology and evolution of potential creatures of the abyss, maybe sit this one out. I still stand by the fact that I loved it. And I can't really blame the mermaids for what they do...