Tuesday, December 5, 2017

SciFi/Fantasy/Horror Book Review: Into The Drowning Deep by Mira Grant





Into the Drowning Deep is a member of a genre which is generally not my thing:  it's not just a SciFi Novel, it's a Horror Novel.  Indeed, "Mira Grant" is the well known pseudonym for insanely productive SFF author Seanan McGuire, which she uses for her Horror books instead of her real name.  I'm a pretty big fan of some of McGuire's works (inCryptid, October Daye), and hadn't read a Mira Grant novel before this one, so I wasn't sure how I'd enjoy one of these works - especially again as I'm not much of a horror fan.  But after completing this book, I can say for sure that I'm really not into this genre, as while this book was certainly solid, certain clear genre tropes bugged me enough to keep me away from the genre for the future (barring certain exceptions).

Into the Drowning Deep has a pretty fun horror premise: our main characters are on a ship that is searching for killer mermaids that previously killed off all of the members of a prior exhibition.   As you might expect, they find those killer mermaids......and the killing commences.  The resultant story is pretty solid, and most of the main characters are nicely three dimensional (or at least two dimensional), but eh, again, the horror genre may just not be for me.

One quick note before the jump:  The book takes place after a novellette/novella ("Rolling in the Deep") previously published by the author, which describes the first exhibition to find mermaids.  I haven't read the prior story, and no prior knowledge is needed - the book describes what happens adequately enough.



-------------------------------------------------Plot Summary-----------------------------------------------
In 2015, schlock-entertainment company Imagine Entertainment sent off a ship named the Atargatis to the Mariana Trench, for the alleged purpose of finding and filming mermaids.  This was a stunt for TV purposes, though the ship carried a few genuine scientific researchers to give it some credibility.  There was one problem:  when the ship was found a few weeks later, none of its crew was found alive.  Footage found onboard the ship seemed to show actual mermaids slaughtering the crew, but due to Imagine's reputation, the world mainly decried the footage as a hoax.

7 years later, Imagine has decided to send another exhibition to the Mariana Trench in order to prove the existence of mermaids.  Onboard the ship are a number of researchers with particular ties to the hunts for mermaids: such as Tory, whose sister was the "journalist" onboard Atargatis and whose entire career has been based upon proving the mermaids exist and were the ones who killed her sister, or Jillian Toth, a researcher who has for years tried to claim mermaids must exist and that they are killers, and who feels guilt for having explicitly declined an invitation on the Atargatis.  But the ship also contains other researchers on the ship solely to take advantage of the ability to do research in the deep seas, who don't really believe that the mermaids are real.  And then there are the two big game hunters, who are onboard to kill any mermaids who do showup, as well as the journalist there to document the exhibition.

But the mermaids are real, and the real question for the exhibition may simply be "Will any of them survive to tell of it?"
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Into the Drowning Deep is a book with a LOT of characters.  We probably spend the bulk of our time with Tory and Jillian, but we also spend a lot of time reading from Olivia (the "journalist" there to document the exhibition), Mr. Blackwell (Imagine's enforcer), the two deaf Wilson sisters and their interpreter sister, the two big game hunters....etc.  You get the point.  Most of these characters are pretty well developed.  As this is a horror book, not all of them will get out of this story alive, but well, you should know that going in.  Still, most of these characters are actually pretty well done - even the big game hunters you'd think would be the evil jackasses marked for death of the piece.

For the most part the horror is well done.  A premise like "killer mermaids" sounds like it could be camp, but it really isn't.  Once shit hits the fan, things go at a pretty breakneck pace, with danger at every corner for our characters.  The relations between the main characters for the most part is pretty well done and believable, especially for the pair who get into a romantic relationship amid the crisis and the feuding Toth and Blackwell couple, but also for the Wilson sisters.

That said, not all of it is quite as well done.  Maybe this is my dislike of the genre creeping in here, but there are way too many characters with "Too Dumb to Live" moments (and yes, most of these characters die as a result).  Several of these characters are at least believable in their genre blindness, but one of these characters basically has no other purpose than to be an asshole for two short segments, and then to die as a result of his idiocy.  He basically exists to be a bad guy for a short bit and then die and it just feels kind of pointless, especially because he's so obviously gonna die from the start of his story.

I'm also not sure the ending quite works....it's a bit too easy after a situation where pretty much everything seems to be going desperately wrong.  Also some events that lead to characters staying alive are never explained - some of that may be the book leaving some things for the sequel (this book does set up a sequel) - but it's a bit weird in the moment for these things to be never explained.

Overall if you like horror books, this is probably a good book for you to pick up - some really well done characters, some excellent scares and different deaths, and some pretty nice surprises make this a well done horror story.  But since I don't particularly love the horror genre, I guess it's a sign that I don't need to read any more of those books. 
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