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A review by bookph1le
Into the Drowning Deep by Mira Grant
2.0
2.5 stars
I have mixed feelings about this book. Typically, a book that's about killer mermaids wouldn't be something that would interest me, but because I love Grant's (aka Seanan McGuire) Wayward Children series so much, I was eager to read this one.
And here's where I think the crux of the problem lies: I think I like her writing better when she's doing short form literature. Wayward Children is so lyrical and beautiful it's like a feast for the senses. Pretty much every sentence is exquisite, and when I read those books I marvel over how much emotion the author can capture in such little space. With Into the Drowning Deep, however, the author has a lot more space, and I'm not sure it's to the book's benefit. There are passages where people wax poetic at times that just did not seem appropriate to me, such as when they're running for their lives. I found a lot of their conversations strangely long-winded, given the dire peril they're experiencing. I also found the book more dense with scientific jargon than I wanted it to be, and I found it odd the way scientists explained things to one another (science-splaining?).
The characters in this book are well done, something I've pretty much come to expect with this author's works. Plus, she bakes diversity into all her narratives in a way that's so effortless other authors ought to take note. Writing about non-white, non-binary, non-heterosexual characters doesn't have to be hard, 'mkay? You just write them like they're people. Astonishing, I know. This is a thing that McGuire/Grant understands implicitly, and it elevates all of her fiction. Her stories' diversity never strikes me as tokenism, and her marginalized characters always have roles to play, not because they're marginalized people, but because they're humans with backgrounds and motivations and knowledge. I cannot applaud this enough and I sincerely hope more SFF authors will follow this author's example.
Yet as diverse and great as the characters are, they still didn't feel as full of depth to me as the characters in her Wayward Children series. This may be because of the psuedoscience babble or the weird habit they have of talking and talking and talking when they ought to be running for their lives. I mean, she does develop them, but for some reason I don't feel like I understand them on the same level as I do her Wayward Children series characters. Again, this may be due to what I feel is a tendency for this book to be overwritten. Maybe the heart of the characters is getting too buried in the narrative for me to see it as much as I do in her other series. I fully admit there were times when I could feel myself kind of glazing over and skimming rather than reading attentively, as I do when I'm digging into one of the Wayward Children novels.
I'll definitely give Grant credit for her "mermaids". They are creepy and sinister, and yet she also gives them a lot of nuance and depth--in fact, I think I felt they were the most faceted characters of all, funnily enough. I was amazed at how one second I could be repulsed by them as horrific monsters and the next reflect on how nature, how lions aren't murderers because they eat antelope, are they? After all, to lions antelope are food, the same way lots of humans love steak. I assume most of us don't kill cows because we hate them but because we think they're delicious. The same held here with the mermaids/sirens. It was very interesting to me.
Still, I don't think I'm going to read the next book. I admire what she did here and was at times very engrossed in her world, but overall I just wasn't as into this book as I am her other series. That I will definitely continue to read.
I have mixed feelings about this book. Typically, a book that's about killer mermaids wouldn't be something that would interest me, but because I love Grant's (aka Seanan McGuire) Wayward Children series so much, I was eager to read this one.
And here's where I think the crux of the problem lies: I think I like her writing better when she's doing short form literature. Wayward Children is so lyrical and beautiful it's like a feast for the senses. Pretty much every sentence is exquisite, and when I read those books I marvel over how much emotion the author can capture in such little space. With Into the Drowning Deep, however, the author has a lot more space, and I'm not sure it's to the book's benefit. There are passages where people wax poetic at times that just did not seem appropriate to me, such as when they're running for their lives. I found a lot of their conversations strangely long-winded, given the dire peril they're experiencing. I also found the book more dense with scientific jargon than I wanted it to be, and I found it odd the way scientists explained things to one another (science-splaining?).
The characters in this book are well done, something I've pretty much come to expect with this author's works. Plus, she bakes diversity into all her narratives in a way that's so effortless other authors ought to take note. Writing about non-white, non-binary, non-heterosexual characters doesn't have to be hard, 'mkay? You just write them like they're people. Astonishing, I know. This is a thing that McGuire/Grant understands implicitly, and it elevates all of her fiction. Her stories' diversity never strikes me as tokenism, and her marginalized characters always have roles to play, not because they're marginalized people, but because they're humans with backgrounds and motivations and knowledge. I cannot applaud this enough and I sincerely hope more SFF authors will follow this author's example.
Yet as diverse and great as the characters are, they still didn't feel as full of depth to me as the characters in her Wayward Children series. This may be because of the psuedoscience babble or the weird habit they have of talking and talking and talking when they ought to be running for their lives. I mean, she does develop them, but for some reason I don't feel like I understand them on the same level as I do her Wayward Children series characters. Again, this may be due to what I feel is a tendency for this book to be overwritten. Maybe the heart of the characters is getting too buried in the narrative for me to see it as much as I do in her other series. I fully admit there were times when I could feel myself kind of glazing over and skimming rather than reading attentively, as I do when I'm digging into one of the Wayward Children novels.
I'll definitely give Grant credit for her "mermaids". They are creepy and sinister, and yet she also gives them a lot of nuance and depth--in fact, I think I felt they were the most faceted characters of all, funnily enough. I was amazed at how one second I could be repulsed by them as horrific monsters and the next reflect on how nature, how lions aren't murderers because they eat antelope, are they? After all, to lions antelope are food, the same way lots of humans love steak. I assume most of us don't kill cows because we hate them but because we think they're delicious. The same held here with the mermaids/sirens. It was very interesting to me.
Still, I don't think I'm going to read the next book. I admire what she did here and was at times very engrossed in her world, but overall I just wasn't as into this book as I am her other series. That I will definitely continue to read.