Lucas Blogs About Into the Drowning Deep

Huh, some idiot covered part of the author's name.

All right, full disclosure time. I didn't finish reading this one.

Whoa! Seriously, you're going to review a book that you didn't finish reading?

Yeah, I mean, it's not like anyone's paying me to do this. Also, I thought maybe we could talk about whether you have an obligation to finish a book you're not enjoying.

I'll allow it, but make sure you go somewhere with this.

Thanks, Hypothetical Reader. You're the best.

So, let's put in a little backstory. I enjoyed Mira Grant's Newsflesh trilogy from a few years ago (Feed, Deadline, and Blackout). The books are fun and feature engaging narrators in Georgia and Shaun Mason, the adoptive siblings who become embedded bloggers on a presidential campaign in a world in which the zombie apocalypse has become the status quo and ultimately end up uncovering a massive conspiracy. They've got a kind of late 90's Josh Whedon-y vibe that blends humor, horror, and pathos.

Into the Drowning Deep, Lucas, you're blogging about Into the Drowning Deep!

Right, I'm just bringing up Newsflesh to explain why I wasn't as enthralled by Into the Drowning Deep. The setup is good. In the near future of, uh, 2015, a film crew goes missing near the Marianas trench while making a mockumentary about mermaids. Only it turns out that mermaids are real and that they killed everyone on board. Seven years later, in the actual near future of 2022, the entertainment company behind the original expedition bankrolls a second expedition, this one featuring an army of scientists hoping to either make earth-shaking discoveries (you know, that we're sharing the planet with another sentient species) or further their own research (you know, if mermaids turn out to not be real).

And the mermaids are like fish monsters?

Well, more like amphibians (if that's not spoiling anything). As the premise for a sci-fi horror novel, it's not bad. While reading, I felt engaged with the story. Grant (the horror pseudonym of urban fantasy novelist Seanan McGuire) is a good writer. She rarely missteps on character motivation or world-building. Sure, her dialogue tends toward the arch and her books can slide into protagonist-centered morality, but she made me care enough about Shaun and Georgia Mason to make me cry at the end of Feed.

And you don't feel that way about Into the Drowning Deep?

Nope.

Would you care to elaborate?

The reader knows too much about what's going on. In Newsflesh, the first person POV limits the reader's perspective. And this isn't to say that the problem with IDD (we're all on the same page about turning it into an acronym, right?) is the fact that the novel has an omniscient third person narrator. The problem is that Grant uses IDD's omniscient narrator to give the reader too much information about what's going on. As the narrator zooms back and forth between the perspectives of the research teams, the ship's maintenance crew, the expedition's corporate overseer, and even the mermaids themselves, the reader gains too complete a view of the characters' impending doom to actually feel any suspense about their fate.

And the most frustrating thing about this is that I like several of the characters. The deaf twins and their sign language interpreter/older sister, the obsessive grad student studying sonar readings to figure out what happened to her older sister on the previous expedition, her wealthy lab partner who funds scientific research to further his own interest in cryptozoology, the pugnacious scientific pariah who's been propounding her theories about mermaids for decades. They all feel like real people (albeit real people who talk like they've watched a few too many Buffy reruns). Though the two big game hunters who want to be the first people confirmed to kill (and eat?) a mermaid do come across as cartoonish.

It seems like you made it pretty far into this book, where did you give up?

I made it to page 342.

Out of how many?

438.

And you didn't just push on through?

Whenever I read the book I found myself enjoying it, but every time I put it down I felt less and less inclined to pick it back up. I guess by the time I reached the point where

WARNING: The following section of this blog post contains teh SPOILARZ!

they have a captive mermaid onboard, the ship's security systems are failing, and other mermaids are pulling themselves up onto the deck to drag people overboard or just straight up eat them in their cabins,

SPOILARZ completed!

any suspense I felt evaporated. I realized that I wasn't getting anything out of the book anymore. So one day instead of grabbing IDD to read in the break room, I took another book to work instead.

Whoa! I just hi-lighted those spoilers and it sounds to me like you're complaining that the plot got too exciting.

That's my point, I was reading about an objectively awesome and terrifying scenario and didn't feel anything. That's why I haven't finished it.

So you let the book defeat you?

See, I used to think of it that way, too, Hypothetical Reader. As I've gotten older, I realized that by continuing to read a book that I'm not enjoying, I'm only defeating myself.

Gross. Just tell me you're not going to wimp out and end this review with some kind of equivocating bullshit after claiming that you gave up on the novel due to terminal indifference?

But what if Grant turns it around in the last 96 pages?

Lucas!

You're right, HR. This book just didn't work for me, and I think I gave it a pretty fair shake. I don't recommend it.

Into the Drowning Deep by Mira Grant, Orbit Books Hardcover edition, November 2017, 438 pages, pairs well with caviar

Links:

Mira Grant's website, if you're into that kind of thing.