Beyond Reality discussion

Post here to discuss Into the Drowning Deep by Mira Grant. Spoilers ahead!

Honestly I found this one a big disappointment. It had potential, the sirens were fascinating, but it just kept seeming to devolve into a bad horror movie. Including the bad girls sneaking off to get drunk being among the first slaughtered.

I'm curious what others think.

I had high hopes for this; I’ve enjoyed many other books by Seanan McGuire and her alter ego Mira Grant. But I was disappointed. There were some high points; the sirens were interesting, and the personalities and interactions of the deaf siblings kept me engaged. But otherwise, this was a standard B grade horror flick. Too many tropes, too many one dimensional characters like the hunting couple. Too bad.

Chris wrote: "I had high hopes for this; I’ve enjoyed many other books by Seanan McGuire and her alter ego Mira Grant. But I was disappointed. There were some high points; the sirens were interesting, and the pe..."

I was about to ask. So this is not the usual prose of the author? I wanted to enjoy it as a fun-read but I couldn't stand the writing style, the characters were cardboard, the amount of background/flashback infodumping so jarring and the end so lame that I can't give it more than 2 stars.
This is the first book I read by this author and so I was thinking about shunning her in the future.

I'm relieved I'm not the only one. :)

I felt so passionate about this one that I actually wrote a review. That doesn't happen very often.

Characterization drove me nuts. I'm a stickler for characters need to be internally consistent. I feel like the author didn't even try.

Like Victoria and the reporter (I forget her name). They start off very badly, Victoria basically despises her. But yet, next scene they are behaving like highschool girls with their first big crushes. I accept that characters can change, but you gotta show the change happening in order for it to be believable. It wasn't believable, it felt like an attempt to have a same sex relationship in order to get sympathy.

Dr Toth was quite possibly the most annoying character in the book. As she seemed to do was stand around, sight heavily, and in a condescending way, explain that she could have told them it would happen if they had asked her.

Blackwell was supposedly in charge, but yet he pretty much did absolutely nothing through the entire book. He was a useless character beyond recruiting people to come in the first place. Oh and annoying Dr Toth.

The shutters, OMG the shutters. The stupid is so thick I can hardly breathe. They KNEW they were going into dangerous territory. They knew what had happened to the last ship. And yet they still sent out the ship with shutters that did not work. How were the shutters not a priority? And, to add to the fun, there wasn't even any surprise here. We knew they weren't working from the start. Could anyone with more than a single brain cell have not guessed what was going to happen from the very start?

The only reason I gave the book two stars was because the idea behind the sirens was pretty cool. The idea of deep sea amphibians was pretty cool. The idea that a species could have multiple languages was pretty cool. The idea that they not only had mimicry but could use it to communicate was awesome. The autopsy was really cool. For that reason, I gave it two stars. Otherwise I would have only given it one.

@Random: I agree with every single point you made. The shutters drove me nuts! It felt like they were mentioned a hundred times, I started feeling insulted as a reader in earnest.

Gabi wrote: "Chris wrote: "I had high hopes for this; I’ve enjoyed many other books by Seanan McGuire and her alter ego Mira Grant. But I was disappointed. There were some high points; the sirens were interesti..."

As Seanan McGuire, I am very fond of her action-forward October Daye urban fantasy series (think Dresden files but San Francisco). Her Wayward Children series is lyrical and unusual.

As Mira Grant, the Feed series gave me zombie lit that I actually enjoyed. The zombies are a fact of life, but the series is really more of a political thriller with journalists as the main characters.

So don't be afraid to try another series!

I don't read a lot of horror, but I read both this one and it's prequel. For me, the story cleared up some of the things that happened in the original novella -- for example, the fact that the 'Mermaids' were the males of the species, and the female was the deep one from below. I liked how she played with the 'Final Girl' trope and several other horror tropes, like the 'bad girls' of science that got killed, where their 'baddness' was related to insular selfishness rather than sex. I was surprised that many people survived. (I had been betting on the ex-husband injecting himself with the drug cocktail he takes to sacrifice himself and kill some of the sirens, saving his ex -- but that's not where she went, which was cool. I liked that he was sidelined and stoned, rather than being the savior of them all.) I was disappointed by the big game hunters, as while they are red shirts and clearly doomed from the start, I had hoped to see the two of them destroy several sirens together. Ah well. It's clear that this is book one of a series about the Mermaid/Sirens, and there are still mysteries to uncover. I'm interested to see where it goes next.

I just finished it and have mixed feelings about it. I have LOVED Seanan McGuire's work but this is the first I've read of her Mira Grant works, and there is definitely a difference in characterization and theme. I agree with all of the above about the novel's weaknesses. And yet, I have a degree in marine biology, though it's several decades old and I'm no longer in the field, and I was absolutely delighted by the science! She clearly did a LOT of research and I found that the science was much more plausible than the behavior of the characters.

And also, I know that GR has it labeled as fantasy, but I would definitely NOT categorize this as a fantasy novel. Horror for sure, and science fiction, but there's nothing fantasy about it. Thoughts?

I agree, this one is not fantasy but horror with a bit of sf thrown in.

I honestly don't have a lot of faith in how most GR members shelve books. Harry Potter shows up in science fiction as well as fantasy.

The sirens themselves were the one and only redeeming factor of the book in my eyes. I found the entire concept utterly fascinating.

Hmmm. I liked it because it is like a fun Syfy movie! I loved Sharknado too.

Bite me! Wait, that didn't come out right...

I just had to share that we watched The Little Mermaid for family movie night tonight, and I had to laugh to myself as I watched Ariel climbing up the side of Eric's ship and imagined how different the movie would be if she were one of the sirens from this book!

Shel wrote: "I just had to share that we watched The Little Mermaid for family movie night tonight, and I had to laugh to myself as I watched Ariel climbing up the side of Eric's ship and imagined how different..."

LOL! Now THIS would have been a Disney movie... makes me nearly want to see this version :D