Into the Drowning Deep

Written by Mira Grant

Narrated by Christine Lakin

New York Times bestselling author Mira Grant, author of the renowned Newsflesh series, returns with a novel that takes us to a new world of ancient mysteries and mythological dangers come to life.

The ocean is home to many myths,

But some are deadly. . .

Seven years ago the Atargatis set off on a voyage to the Mariana Trench to film a mockumentary bringing to life ancient sea creatures of legend. It was lost at sea with all hands. Some have called it a hoax; others have called it a tragedy.

Now a new crew has been assembled. But this time they're not out to entertain. Some seek to validate their life's work. Some seek the greatest hunt of all. Some seek the truth. But for the ambitious young scientist Victoria Stewart this is a voyage to uncover the fate of the sister she lost.

Whatever the truth may be, it will only be found below the waves.

But the secrets of the deep come with a price.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hachette Audio
• Release date: Nov 14, 2017
• ISBN: 9781478923466

Mira Grant

Mira Grant lives in California, sleeps with a machete under her bed and highly suggests you do the same. Mira Grant is the open pseudonym of Seanan McGuire, a successful fantasy writer and the winner of the 2010 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer.

[Jenna Vaughn · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Wow, not my typical read, but I completely enjoyed the book. Interesting characters and premise.

[cgalvin-774225 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Lots of blood and guts. And lots of fun.

[kalliegrace · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I loved this, and while it's quite long for a horror novel, I enjoyed the writing and characters and was getting along with story sans horror just fine until the first body drops. The tension stays high and no one is safe. Killer mermaids seem to be making the rounds as vengeful women stories, but this is so unlike those human-adjacent sea creatures. think of what lives at the bottom of Challenger Deep and give it the intelligence of a human and the bloodthirst of a mosquito and you're in trouble.

[nigellicus · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Moidah with moihmaids. Epic bit of floating sci-fi aquatic monster horror - the tight spaces of a sea ship and the tight spaces of a space-ship are similarly tight and claustropihobic when stalked by hungry things. Brilliant.

[spiritedstardust · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A bunch of human idiots take forks to a gun fight against killer mermaids.

[wyvernfriend · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Seven years after the Altardis went out to find mermaids and no-one returned alive leaving video that suggest some unknown creature killed everyone the production company who supported the previous expedition.. A team is being assembled and not everyone is going to survive.
I will admit that there were times when I felt no pity for certain members of the team but there were also times where I was really hoping that a few of the characters would get out.. It was an interesting read.

[lavaturtle · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I liked this a lot! It does a great job from early on setting the mood of creeping dread, as we know everyone is headed into a dangerous situation with dubious motives and laughably inadequate safety measures. Tory, Jillian, and Olivia are excellent main characters, and there are a bunch of other good characters too. Oh, and disability representation! I also loved the human relationships that exist alongside all the chaos and danger. And the ending was good.

[amymacevilly · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Very good read. The part that I found most unbelievable was the "luxury research vessel": that's an oxymoron. But, interesting biology underlying the story; suspense and some terror, but manageable for me. There were some descriptions of gore, but it was not overdone. I will also admit to being dissatisfied by the simplicity of the final save, but there it is.

[dinahmine · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I had a lot of fun with Into the Drowning Deep. The characters were all great (or wonderfully bad) and the story moved quickly enough that I was engaged for the entire book. No complaints, I enjoyed this!

[starknits_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Oh my goodness!

If mermaids were real this is most likely how it would go down. Bloody, crazy and scary with a tv station in charge.....

[nightlyfe · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I hate horror. I don't like being scared.

But I trust the author from her other work. And this book kept that trust in spectacular fashion. I may never swim in the sea again, but I'll read any books she writes about it.

[jlschilling · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Seriously scary

[tuusannuuska-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

3,8 stars

Took me forever to read this, but it was okay in the end. The problem I had with this was that I didn't really relate to any of the characters, nor did this really make me feel much of anything. I did like the characters and thought they were well written, but their fates didn't really move me. Might have been self preservation, though.

[catseyegreen · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

the book starts out okay with a mockumentary about mermaids that ends in disaster. Several years later, the company decides to send a follow-up mission to discover what really happened. The middle of the book is mostly involved with the large cast of scientists and their relationships. The last third involves the discovery of the mermaids and the really bloody aftermath. This was seriously violent and I almost abandoned the book here. The ending feels abrupt and leaves lots of questions to be answered- perhaps this is the beginning of a series.
The action of the book is supposed to take place in 2022 but was written in 2017, which leads to an odd disconnect because obviously no mention is made of the events of the last couple of years.
I am rating with 3 stars mostly because I really do not care for most horror, the writing is reasonably good.
library book read 1/4/2023

[gypsysmom_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

If I had known this book was as much horror as science fiction I might have given it a pass. I really don't do horror but I do like science fiction especially when there are strong female characters. Don't think I'll be reading any more from this author unless I am assured it is strictly

Seven years ago a science fiction.vessel was sent by an entertainment firm (Imagine) to explore the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean. On board were a number of scientists and one of the research goals was to see if there was any truth to the rumours of mermaids there. Video was was sent up to the cloud confirmed that mermaids did exist and had come onto the ship. Later the ship was found drifting with no-one on board. Anne Stewart was one of those lost and her younger sister Victoria (Tory) who is a specialist in underwater sonar is looking for proof of the mermaids. She and her lab partner get offered a place on a new ship built by Imagine that is going back to the Mariana Trench region. Lots of scientists are on board including the foremost expert about mermaids, Dr. Jillian Toth. From Imagine there is the on air personality, Olivia, and her camerman, Ray, and a corporate executive, Theodore Blackwell, who is married to but separated from Dr. Toth. A trio of sister, two hearing impaired (Holly and Heather) and their older sibling, Hallie, make up te important personages to the story. Heather, a submersible operator who goes deep, into the trench, is the first victim of the monsters that are called mermaids. Many more follow. Predictably most of the good guys" survive. That's just one of my objections to horror fiction, it's very predictable.

I see a movie has been made of this book which may explain why there were so many holds on this 2017 novel. Obviously, I won't be seeing it.

[mutantpudding · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Engaging and real bloody.

[ericlee_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Mermaids are lovely, aren’t they? I’m thinking the 1989 Walt Disney cartoon or Daryl Hannah in the 1984 comedy ‘Splash’. Well, Mira Grant, the author of staggering number of horror novels, some of which I’ve read and were quite good, has a rather different take. In this entertaining story, mermaids are super-predators with razor sharp teeth, and they hunt in packs. Their prey this time are the people trapped on board a cruise ship sent out into the Pacific Ocean to find evidence of mermaids (as if the video evidence from the previous voyage, which showed mermaids devouring everyone on board weren’t enough). It’s a great idea for a story (possibly even a film), but Grant sorely needs an editor. The book is over-long and repetitive, and with such a large cast, it became quite difficult to remember who was who — for example Holly, Heather and Hallie are sisters (two of whom were deaf, two — or maybe all three — were scientists). All the main characters, or at least the likeable ones, are women. But the mermaids turn out to be … well, I don’t want to give that one away. I can only add that if this ever did become a film, it would probably have the same effect as ‘Jaws’. No one will want to go anywhere near the water ever again.

[librolindsay · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This was so much fun! I am always down for mermaid stories--particularly primal, dangerous mermaids--and I really enjoyed all the marine biology and linguistic aspects that went along with this story. It was perhaps just a liiiiittle bit too long, but otherwise, a great horror story through and through.

[wishanem · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

If you want to read a mermaid horror story, this is one.

Jurassic Park with mermaids.

Event Horizon with sirens.

Deep Blue Sea with a deeper bluer sea.

A documentary crew looking for mermaids found them, and were all eaten. Years later a better prepared crew of scientists and entertainers deliberately seeks out the same killer mermaids, with somewhat predictable results.

The characters were more nuanced than a typical Sci-Fi story, the scifi was more plausible than a typical horror story, and the deaths were less predictable than a typical slasher.

Unquestionably fun to read.

[writersaurusrex · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I'm fast becoming a big Mira Grant/Seanan McGuire fan. (Actually, I've been a fan for a while, but everything of hers I read just cements her place on my list of "I really need to buy anything with her name on it" authors.

Drowning in the Deep is my first Mira Grant novel. And it is a banger, as the young'uns say. It has a very Jaws-Jurassic Park feel to it. It has a slow build through the first three-fourths of the book, but it's not boring by a long shot. The author introduces us to a lot of characters, each of which are individuals; the only ones that are cookie-cutter are the ones that are supposed to be (the "pretty-boy" security team that was hired more for their photogenic looks than their actual skill at their job). And I was invested in every one of them. That doesn't mean I liked the character as people, but they were all fantastic characters. I found myself hoping that they would hook up, or that she got the closure she was looking for, or that they got their faces eaten.

Something else that the author did very well was how she handled the narrators for each chapter. Every chapter is told from the character's point of view, a different angle for each one. Third-person limited, but there was a lot of parenthetical character exposition in their. It's kind of hard for me to explain right now, but it was very well done. A few of the chapters were surprising in the POV character choices, in that they weren't human. One of the chapters was the three dolphins that were brought along to help find the mermaids. (Side note: in the Deep-verse, dolphins are recognized as intelligent beings with rights.) And it was interesting. Especially the one who knew he was probably going to die a horrible death but didn't care because it got him out of the tanks. And at least two chapters had the mermaids as the POV characters. These chapters did a very good job of not humanizing them at all.

So. Yeah. I was all set to give Drowning in the Deep the much-coveted "It was amazing!" score. And then. The finale happened. To me, it felt a little flat and...not really anti-climactic, but underwhelming.

But even with that, it's still a really good book, and possibly the best book I've read so far this year. I highly recommend it.

[kakadoo202 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Not usually my genre and some of it was written like a movie script but definitely a page turner. A few loose ends though

[bookbrig-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I looooved this. Monster disaster stories are some of my very favorites (see: Jurassic Park), and this has a wonderful cast and truly amazing killer monsters. There's romance and gore and science! It's great! My one wish was that the denouement unspooled a little bit slower, but that's a minor quibble. 10/10 would recommend if you're in the mood for something funny and unsettling.

[glennis.leblanc · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

If you haven’t read Rolling in the Deep, it doesn’t hurt you at all to read Into the Drowning Deep. This book is set seven years after the novella where everyone is killed by the mermaids that no one thought were real. It isn’t a spoiler since they tell you right from the beginning that everyone dies on the first page of the story. Knowing that happened to the last crew there are people that still want to go back and prove that the mermaids are real and possibly bring them back to shore. Not every scientist onboard the ship believes but the chance to get some data from the Mariana Trench has them agreeing to this mission. The same film company that funded the previous trip is bankrolling this one and they are taking some safety precautions including a husband and wife team of big game hunters.
The story is great and the tension is constant once contact is made. The science to the mermaids is well thought out and even still you want to know more about them. A great story and plenty of room left for more tales in this story universe. Hopefully there will be more.

Digital review copy provided by the publisher through Edelweiss

[jonez-6 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

4.25

Very well written. Thoroughly entertaining. Interesting characters (though a bit cliche). Aspects of the ending left a little to be desired, but overall it was a very enjoyable read.

[viragoreads · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This started out good, which is why it got the two stars.

This was a great idea and concept, which was poorly executed in the end. There were characters that were likeable enough that their deaths were dramatic and upsetting. The dolphins... It was just gratuitous animal death for the sake of it. That pissed me off to no end. So I finished listening just to see if everyone deserving got their comeuppance and of course not. The asshole big game hunters got theirs and the douchey ex died horribly. But the asshole who was responsible for the dolphins, he lived.

And the Doctor we liked and thought was the conservationist was actually an asshole who wanted to wipe the mermaids, who were actually sirens, off the face of the earth. The ending was unsatisfying and I'm so disappointed that it started off good and interesting and ended so badly! I mean it was like WWE Creative got a hold of this story and spun their magic. And anyone who is familiar with WWE in recent years knows they start off a storyline great but it always ends in disappointment.

Ugh I'm so angry I'm definitely returning and getting my Audible credit back.

[fred_mouse · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is an amazing piece of horror writing -- the kind of story I wish I could watch, because it is so visually written, but which benefits so from the writing of the characters and their motivations.

Some thoughts, in no particular order or coherence - contains generic but not specific spoilers:
* The TV reporter who trades on her looks knows she is doing this, and it is written as a strength, not a weekness
* more than one queer character whose contribution to the story is not their sexuality; more that one disabled character whose contribution to the story is not their disability. In both cases, these inform aspects of the story, but because they are integral parts of the individuals.
* really interesting development of the biology of the monster. Across multiple scenes.
* I want to say 'no gratuitous death scenes', which isn't quite right, given it is a monster horror story. More, there are no death scenes where the only goal is the reader's reaction.

[reading_fox · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Odd. Starts well, with an interesting middle but kind of fizzles a bit at the end. Also let down a bit by a few errors in basic science - not the mermaids themselves but simple things like a conduit being baffled for radiating sound but still being able to hear incoming sound. I was also somewhat surprised by the talons being able to penetrate sheet steel, (and why the shutters any different?) Boat hulls are normally strong enough to avoid damage during collisions and the mermaids don't have enough mass/energy to generate that kind of force.

Jillian Tosh has long believed the ocean's been hiding secrets in it's vast depths and seldom tracked remote areas. None are more remote than the Marinas Trench. A film company thinks that it can make a good hunt the monster series and sets out for the Marinas trench with a boat full of personalities. It is discovered drifting without a soul on board. The leaked footage is hotly debated as a hoax, but no-one is ever heard form again. This is the story of the 2nd boat, launched seven years later "fully aware" of what they're up against. A crew of 500 hundred people make it more of a liner than a 'boat' a mixture of scientists and professionals the only lightweights are the security staff because despite the videos no-one really believes in anything lurking in the deep. I still don't get the rationale for this and it's another of the slight errors that makes this less wonderful than Feed.

We follow a few scientists - again Grant has gone for the exotic rather than the mundane, and in my experience there's no one more mundane than a bunch of scientists. We have deaf twins; bisexuals; and women. Any of which may be reasonably present in a grouping of 100 or so, but it's quite unlikely that they'd all be there. There are no people of colour on board at all. However the mermaids don't care who you are, only that you can sate their hunger. I did like most of the details provided about the mermaid culture and biology, it's clear Grant has thought a bit about what might be plausible, and overcome the obvious difficulties. It was shame more wasn't done with the language and culture because first contact is always an interesting problem. As the story progresses and the scientists race against time to understand what they've come up against it becomes clear that Grant's had this clear idea about the monsters, but then only superfluously added the rest of the plot around them which is disappointing. She's a sufficiently talented author that it remains interesting and enjoyable to read, but something is lacking and the ending is distinctly rushed - the scientists discover a solution in time for some of them to survive (some more believably than others) and that's it.

If you haven't already read Feed, go and read that it's so much better, but if you've read everything else by Grant this will pass the time for a couple of hours pleasurably enough.

[marsenault13 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

this book. Let me tell you. It is deliciously creepy, and a real page-turner. The premise of Killer Mermaids is fascinating! The way they've wrapped it around as a reality show gone wrong, entwined all the characters throughout the story, and gotten us hooked so easily ( heh, see that sea-term I used there?) is great. Seanan McGuire is the author behind the Mira Grant label, and I've been on a total kick of her writing lately. I really enjoyed the interactions between all the characters, it's like the author actually KNOWS scientists and what socially awkward weirdos they can be ( said in a loving manner) I will be recommending this book to anyone that wants a great read.

[dcoward_6 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I REALLY enjoyed this one. Reading it reminded me of the suspense and science of a Preston and Child or Michael Crichton, but adding in quality characterizations, a strong female lead, and diverse characters. Oh, and the book is about murderous mermaids, so it has that going for it too.

[lauranthalas-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Although a little long, I found this horror/science fiction book quite enjoyable and well written. It played out like a movie and was very detailed.

Victoria lost her sister 7 years ago when the ship she was on disappeared while filming a “mockumentary” on ancient sea creatures. Now Victoria is part of a new crew that is setting out to find out what happened. But the truth comes with a price.