Into the Drowning Deep

Mira Grant has done something wonderful in this book. She's written a speculative fiction thriller that gives me all the things I liked most in the best Michael Crichton books: edgy but plausible science, a growing sense of doom, a big cast of characters to put in peril, really scary creatures and lots of tension-cranking, page-turning, how-will-they-get-out-of-that action. Then she's surpassed Crichton by giving the leading roles to a diverse set of credibly written women who do what needs to be done without becoming super-soldiers in a dress.

When I finished this book, I wanted to applaud, then I wanted to hear that the SyFy Channel is going to make this into a series with the same production standards as "The Expanse", then I wanted show more the next book to be available right now. For the moment, applause is all I can manage, so here I go.

The premise of the book is relatively straight forward: Magic, an entertainment channel for nerds, sets out to make a mockumentary about mermaids in the deepest part of the Pacific. All goes well until they find them and everybody dies in what is assumed to be a maritime disaster with some fake footage attached. Ten years later, Magic is sending out a second voyage in an attempt to retrieve its reputation by bringing back proof that we are not alone in the seas. What could possibly go wrong?

From the start, I loved the tense but unrushed feel of this book. Mira Grant has the self-confidence to let the situation unfold slowly while seeding a large set of characters interesting enough for me to become invested in. She's then bold enough to demonstrate early that she's willing to do terrible and irrevocable things even to characters I'm cheering for.

She eschews creature feature schlock horror for something more subtle, something that doesn't slash at the reader, summoning arterial sprays of horror, but sinks its many needle-sharp teeth deep into the meat of my imagination and then gnaws on me slowly.
The emotional impact of the book is powered by the struggles of the women at the heart of the story. They aren't soldiers. They have no super-powers. They are mostly scientists armed with nothing but knowledge, courage and an ability to work together. There are men in the story but they're largely there to provide an emotional context for the women or to do the stupid, venal, violent things required by the plot.

I enjoyed the way science was used in the story. I know nothing about marine biology but I never felt left behind, nor was I force-fed slabs of not-many-people-know-this research. By starting the story in the recent past and setting most of the action in the near future (2022), Mira Grant is able to use current research on climate change, oceanography and marine biology to set a context and can then stretch things a little to allow for future developments. Her version of "mermaid" is original, credible and very, very scary.

I listened to the, seventeen hour long, audiobook version of "Into The Drowning Deep", narrated by Christine Lakin, who does a wonderful job of bringing the wide range of characters to life and matching the pace of the storytelling. The only flaw in her performance is one of the worst Australian accents I've ever heard, but that was a minor distraction in an otherwise strong performance. Click on the SoundCloud link below to hear a sample of her work.
https://soundcloud.com/audiolibrary-a/into-the-drowning-deep-by-mira-grant-audio... show less

It's not your run-of-the-mill Lovecraftian horror, but I'm not a fan of Lovecraft. I am a fan of other writers who play in his world, most of whom have done a much better job at writing within it than he ever did.

That which Lovecraft described as "so horrible it can't be described in wordy-words," Grant takes as a challenge and prances on his grave. She actually shows us the monster with great descriptions, heart-pounding action scenes and in a scientifically imaginative manner.

The characters were well-written, the plot was solid, the dialogue was real and the creatures were sympathetic enough that your heart tugged just a little in the wrong direction occasionally. Fun!

No one does mermaids like Mira Grant.

(Full disclosure: I received a free electronic ARC for review through NetGalley.)

Did you really think we were the apex predators of the world?

“You still chasing mermaids, Vic?” he asked.
“I’ve never been chasing mermaids,” she said. “I’ve only ever been chasing Anne.”

I'm a huge Mira Grant/Seanan McGuire fan, and her mermaid stories are among my favorites. (Zombies are grrrrrrate, but no one does mermaids quite like Mira Grant.) When I saw the prequel to Into the Drowning Deep, a novella called Rolling in the Deep, I snatched it up...but, being a mere 123 pages long, it just left me wanting more: more science (fiction), more killer mermaids, more heart-stopping suspense, more blood and show more gore and viscera. Somewhere in between a short story and a full-length book, it lacked the crisp concision of the former and the delicious, drawn out horror of the latter.

Enter: Into the Drowning Deep, which is exactly what I was craving. Pro tip: read Rolling in the Deep as if it was a prologue to Into the Drowning Deep. It'll feel so much more satisfying that way.

In 2015, the Atargatis set off on a scientific expedition to the Mariana Trench. Ostensibly, their mission was to find evidence of mermaids. Really, though, they were there to film a mockumentary on behalf of their employer, an entertainment network called Imagine (think: SyFy). The hoax quickly turned into a bloodbath when they discovered what they were/weren't looking for.

The Atargatis was found six weeks later, floating several hundred miles off course, completely devoid of human occupants. The only clue as to what became of her two hundred crew and passengers was a smashed up control room and shaky film footage showing what looked like - but couldn't possibly be - a mermaid attack.

Seven years have passed, and Imagine - led by its aging founder and CEO, James Golden - is determined to salvage its reputation ... and maybe even make a killing (financially) in the process. In the years since the loss of the Atargatis and the ensuing court cases, Imagine has quietly been assembling a new ship and crew. With the August 24th launch date fast approaching, Imagine - represented by Golden's right-hand man, Theodore Blackwell, estranged husband of none other than Dr. Jillian Toth, the sirenologist whose life's work birthed the first voyage - is about to recruit the project's star scientist.

After the loss of her older and only sister Anne at sea, Tory Stewart devoted her life - and scientific career - to hunting down the creatures who killed Anne, an up-and-coming reporter who hoped to use her time at Imagine as a springboard to better (and more SERIOUS) things. As a specialist in acoustic marine biology, Tory's expertise could prove invaluable in locating and communicating with the mermaids - and the salaciousness of her connection to the Atargatis can only boost ratings.

The crew is rounded out by a dizzying roster of scientists - deep-water explorers, marine biologists and botanists, sign language experts, geographers, you name it - as well as a security team recruited and trained by Imagine and led by infamous big game hunters Jacques and Michi Abney.

Though the Melusine appears more prepared than its predecessor, can one ever really be ready to take on killer mermaids on their home turf? (Especially with corporate interests at the helm?)

Into the Drowning Deep is a mermaid story with teeth. Needle-thin ones crammed into a mouth that stretches open wider than any mouth should. There are plenty of tense moments that explode into violence and carnage, interspersed with some pretty cerebral scenes. The science fiction elements are great, from the exciting - yet very modest and grounded - technological advances humans have made just five years into our future, to the specifics surrounding the mermaids' biology, evolution, and behavior. In this way, it has a lot in common with Grant's Newsflesh series; think of it as Feed, but at sea, and with mermaids.

As per usual, the cast of characters is large and compelling and fairly diverse. There's a F/F romance; one openly bisexual character; a television host who started cosplaying at the suggestion of her therapist, to combat social anxiety; a gross, stalkery Nice Guy (tm) who - spoiler alert - totally gets what's coming to him; three sisters - all of whom are scientists; two of them deaf - who speak ASL; and a number of POC. I especially loved the Wilson sisters (though their very similar names - Holly, Heather, and Hallie - while realistic, made them a little hard to keep straight) and the relationship between Tory and Luis, and Tory and Olivia (not a love triangle, don't worry!).

I'm a vegan, and so any stories that incorporate nonhuman animals pique my interest (and, let's be honest, usually my ire as well). Many of the scientists aboard the Melusine are conservationists; some, like Theodore and Dr. Toth, even have a background in animal activism, e.g. thwarting whaling ships (think: the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society). Though the Melusine is home to her fair share of doubters, once the evidence of mermaids becomes impossible to deny, arguments abound as to what they should do with this information: Wipe them out? Attempt to make contact? Turn tail and leave them be? Go home with irrefutable proof, to help with conservation efforts?

Of particular interest is the mermaids' language, of which they have three: They communicate via sign, as well as vocally, and also seem to "borrow" snippets of sound from other inhabitants of the sea. Some of the scientists, like Tory, argue that these forms of communication indicate intelligence, arguing from a pretty anthopocentric perspective.

Worse, Grant uses the terms "sentience" and "intelligence" interchangeably, though they are not the same thing: sentience simply refers to an animal's capacity for sensation or feeling. Intelligence is a much higher - and more subjective - bar.

“If they have a language—not just one language, but two languages, one spoken and one not—and if the complexity of their spoken language is anything like the complexity of their signing, they must be sentient,” said Tory. She sounded reluctant, like this was the last thing she wanted to be saying. “There’s no way they’re not.”

“Cats meow and know what they’re saying,” said Olivia. “Birds sing. That doesn’t make them smart.”

Cats and birds are sentient; so are the mermaids, regardless of whether or not they use language.

This is a pet peeve of mine, since sentience is the foundation for my own (and many others') argument for animal rights: "The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?."

The result is a somewhat convoluted but wholly expected view of nonhuman animals; one that purports to be welfare-based, but isn't really. This is perhaps best exemplified by the three dolphins secretly recruited by Imagine to help locate and communicate with the mermaids. Raised in captivity, Twitter, Cecil, and Kearney have been promised their freedom in exchange for their cooperation - a term that, time and again, Theodore uses to justify their exploitation (and near-certain death). Yet this assumes that the dolphins are negotiating from a position of equal footing, when they're not. They're slaves. Property. Captive animals making a dangerous trade to regain their own self-agency, which shouldn't be up for dispute to begin with.

To add insult to injury, there's this passage, written from the dolphin's perspective:

Dolphins were good. Humans had the potential for good, although they did not always make the effort. But the creatures born from blending the two, the claw-and-tooth children of the deepest depths...they were not good. They had never been good, would not know how to be if the opportunity was offered to them. They existed only to catch and snatch and devour. They sang no songs of their own, only songs stolen from the victims of their hunger. They were voiceless and cruel and terrible, and if not for them, the dolphins would never have needed to seek the shallows, or put themselves into the path of men, or choose the safety of cages over the freedom of the sea. Mankind could go hunting for mermaids as much as they liked. The dolphins had known where to find them all along. [...] and when the human ship had come to catch and keep them, their response had been gratitude. Humans meant safety. Confinement, but safety.

Self-awareness and reason? Good. Happiness in slavery? Not so much.

Honestly, it just makes me feel yucky inside.

In summary, the many discussions about nonhuman animals are kind of a mixed bag. Some will have you pumping your fist while others might cause you to throw your Kindle across the room in disgust. Unless you're like 96% of Americans, in which case you won't see anything amiss here.

Also, what's up with the date in the epilogue? Either my ARC has a pretty major typo, or there's some wacky time travel stuff to be explored in the sequel!

http://www.easyvegan.info/2017/11/14/into-the-drowning-deep-by-mira-grant/ show less

This book is so far out of my comfort zone. However, it's really well written (as long as you're okay with Grant's semi-documentary-style approach to the book) and I did binge the last half of it or so because I had to finish reading if I wanted to get any sleep tonight.

I read the novella, Rolling in the Deep, first. I am personally glad I did; it convinced me that this was a level of horror that I could handle. (I neglected to remember how much longer this book was than that one, and therefore how much more of everything there would be.) It also provided a lot of backstory that was doled out in pieces. You can easily read this book without having read the novella, but if you do be prepared for major spoilers for the novella that comes show more before. (If you want to read them both, start with RITD and then read ITDD.)

Now: about the science and the ship. Are the accurate? No, not really. But, if you're willing to suspend disbelief, I see no reason why you can't imagine this as being possible a few years into the future. Granted, it's only a very few years into the future, and so in a couple of years the suspension of disbelief might be harder.

In general though, I liked this book, I'm glad I read it, and yet I'll probably never go back to read it again. If this genre was something I enjoyed more, I might re-read it. There are probably subtle hints in the beginning that I missed which could be fun to pick up on during a re-read. But this is not my genre, and usually when I venture into the horror genre it's to attempt something new. show less

This review and others posted over at my blog.

If I trust anyone to write a story about bloodthirsty mermaids it’s Mira Grant (Seanan McGuire) and she didn’t disappoint.

If you love mermaids, being creeped the fuck out, nautical stuff, science facts, LGBT rep, possibly having nightmares, and horrible things that lurk in the great depths of the ocean, you will probably love this book as much as I do. If you love the ocean, it might make you not love it any more! Good thing for me, I already hate water and most of what’s in it.

I know basically nothing about science. So I can’t speak to the factualness (yep, going with that) of the science that went into this book. However, it’s convincing as fuck to a plebe like me! I’m willing show more to bet that Mira did her research based on the way she writes and the fact that she loves animals and also really creepy stuff. In order to write about creepy horrors that lurk deep in the ocean, you have to at least know a little about the creatures that already live down there. Mira built a mermaid that could believably lurk in the dark, highly pressurized depths of the ocean. She somehow managed to craft a monster that I imagined to be both beautiful (though not remotely close to the usual mermaid standards, ie: Ariel) and terrifying. Their teeth. Oh, gourd, their teeth!

Her characters, per usual, are on point. Mira writes strong women very well. I love her focus on science and women in the field. Five of the main females in this book work in the science field and they know their shit. These ladies are diverse, smart, and believable. They’re not just caricatures of strong women; they have faults and flaws. They are sometimes annoying or make bad decisions. There are certainly main male characters too, but it feels like they very subtly play second fiddle. It’s hard to describe, but the way it felt for me was that Mira was able to pull of having the female cast be the focus of the novel without demeaning the men in any way. The cast is diverse too, including two deaf characters, a character dealing with paralysis and bisexual and lesbian characters.

Despite this book being a chunkster, it never felt slow. Despite this book containing a lot of science, I never felt bored. Despite this book containing a lot of scary scenes, I never felt…oh wait, I was definitely scared! Mira is a master of what I’ve dubbed the “subtle freakout”. She uses little snippets and quick details to build an incredible sense of foreboding in me. Having read her work before, I know that something creepy is coming, or characters will die, or horrible things will eventually be lurking around the corner, so when she gives these little clues I’m immediately on high alert. I LOVE IT.

Sort of side note, one of the things that freaks me out the most is when I read about technological failures that occur without notice, or with little notice – you know it’s totally going to fuck something up later, and yet people are just going on with their merry lives, while the little failures happen in the background. I CAN’T EVEN! If, like me, you enjoy this type of detail, Into the Drowning Deep has it.

Mira Grant (and, subsequently, Seanan McGuire) is quickly becoming an all-time favorite author of mine. I still need to dive into more of her fantasy works, and read her Newsflesh series, but she’s already on my auto-buy list and I’m going to build up my collection of her already published works as soon as I can.

If you like strong female characters (written by a badass, strong female), diversity and LGBT rep and horror with a heavy dose of science (but written in an accessible and totally creepy way) then I highly recommend any of her work. If you love tales about flesh-eating monsters that dwell in the depths of the ocean, I highly recommend Into the Drowning Deep! show less

Mira Grant, as far as I am concerned, is the queen of horror. Her novels never fail to scare the bejesus out of me at the same time keeping me absolutely glued to the page. With her latest novel, she capitalizes on people’s general uneasiness with the ocean’s depths and the unknown creatures it holds to generate that fear. That and she creates an indelible new image of mermaids that will have you thinking of the Disney princess Ariel in a whole new light.

One of the many ways which makes Into the Drowning Deep so terrifying is its plausibility. The arguments the characters make for the existence of killer mermaids logically hits all the right notes. It becomes difficult to argue away their points especially when there are so many show more things about the ocean that we just do not know. So the story becomes something that could realistically occur.

As with her other novels, the characters in Into the Drowning Deep are mesmerizing. Flawed and human, they cross the gamut from autistic Internet celebrity to a big game hunters to scientists who believe to crew members who doubt. No matter how briefly they may appear on the page, Ms. Grant finds ways to create their humanity, to make them more than one-dimensional descriptions but real-live people with emotions and family and backstories we can only imagine. This helps not only keep a reader’s interest but also enhances the scene when the blood starts flying.

A horror story is only as good as the anticipation built before the monsters make their debut. With Into the Drowning Deep, that anticipation is high indeed. As mentioned earlier, Ms. Grant uses the innate fear of the unknown and of the ocean to build suspense and create tension before anything really occurs. She continues to utilizes these fears and adds others to the mis as the story progresses. She manipulates these fears to such a degree that she primes readers to anticipate the danger, ratcheting the tension ever higher. Once contact is made, Ms. Grant keeps her foot firmly in place, never allowing the story to lose steam or readers to lose that anxiety, keeping it finely tuned until she allows readers to take a breath and relax.

Mira Grant knows how to write a horror story and with Into the Drowning Deep she shows off her talent to do so. Her control of the tension and of readers’ emotions is beyond excellent, and her writing style is such that it becomes way too easy to forget that the novel is fictional. She is so successful at this that the thought of taking a cruise into the open ocean scares me to no end. After all, who really knows what creatures exist in the unexplored depths of the ocean? show less

I liked this a lot! It does a great job from early on setting the mood of creeping dread, as we know everyone is headed into a dangerous situation with dubious motives and laughably inadequate safety measures. Tory, Jillian, and Olivia are excellent main characters, and there are a bunch of other good characters too. Oh, and disability representation! I also loved the human relationships that exist alongside all the chaos and danger. And the ending was good.