Into the Drowning Deep by Mira Grant is a horror story that upends the notion mermaids are cute, singing princesses who just want to be a part of our world.
Seven years ago, the Atargatis set off on a voyage with a crew of scientists to the Mariana Trench – the deepest spot in the ocean. Imagine Entertainment was filming a documentary/reality show about the search for mermaids. The ship was lost at sea with no survivors. Film was recovered showing the gruesome last moments as the crew and cast were viciously ripped apart and eaten by creatures beyond comprehension. Or was it all just a hoax?
Imagine is assembling a new crew on a state-of-the-art ship equipped with everything that will keep the scientists and crew safe form anything or everything lurking in the ocean’s depths. Imagine needs a financial success, but some aboard the ship are there to atone for what happened seven years ago. For all the scientists involved, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity to test their hypotheses and secure their names in history.
Victoria Stewart is on board to find closure. She’s a talented scientist, but more importantly, her sister was aboard the Atargatis. She’s spent seven years devoted to studying the ocean. She believes something sinister happened to the Atargatis crew. She thinks the answers will be found deep below the waves, and she believes mermaids are responsible for the tragedy that took her sister.
The truth will be revealed but at a high price.
Pros And My Favourite Parts
While there is a romantic subplot central to the book, Into the Drowning has a broad range of characters. There are a handful of scientists there for their own personal gain, an academic who wants to salvage her career, corporate heads looking to refurbish their reputation, and hunters who are looking for an exotic kill. Often with such a large cast I have trouble keeping track of everyone, but Grant does a fine job of developing each character enough for them to stand out.
Grant keeps the plot moving nicely. Since there are so many characters, we’re provided with events that are happing concurrently aboard the ship as well as the same events as experienced by specific characters.
Cons And Heads Up
The book ends abruptly. I think it could have used an additional chapter or perhaps an epilogue. The overall journey compensated for this.
The Conclusion
Into the Drowning Deep was so much fun. Eighty percent of my reading is romance, but I love to mix it up with a horror story from time to time. Of course, this does have a romantic subplot, but it’s all edge of your seat fright as character after character is slaughtered by the sirens emerging from the deep sea. I’m afraid of the open ocean so this story was particularly terrifying. I loved it.
Excerpt from Into the Drowning Deep by Mira Grant
And yet it was impossible to look at the lists of disappearances in the vicinity of the Mariana Trench—so many that they rivaled the fabled Bermuda Triangle—and not see the claw of some unknown predator at work. The number of people lost in that slice of the sea was startling, but the ocean had never been gentle where humanity was concerned; sailors were forever being washed overboard, passengers were forever being surrendered to the weather. Ships sank in storms. The seas of the world were a vast and interconnected graveyard, every inch riddled with bones and haunted by the ghosts of the lost. Every mile of every ocean could be marked as the site of some “surprising” or “unexpected” death; humanity sailed, and the sea punished it for its hubris.
And yet. The number of whales, dolphins, and other marine mammals lost in and around the Trench was more than startling; it was unreal. Older pods tended to avoid the waters around the Mariana Trench, unless blown there by bad weather. Even some of the older sharks would go miles out of their way to avoid swimming through those waters. It was difficult to say what sort of memory a shark had, but they knew enough to stay away.
Something was down there. Something that could slaughter sperm whales and leave research vessels floating abandoned and unmanned. Something that mimicked the sounds it heard, using them to lure its prey. Something that defied belief. And whatever it was, Tory was going to find it, and make it pay for what it had done to her sister.
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Series
Rolling In the Deep
Prequel: Rolling in the Deep
Into the Drowning Deep
Bits and Bobs
ISBN number: 9780316379403
Publisher: Orbit Books
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