★★★★☆ Finally, Mira Grant gets it right!

Into the Drowning Deep

Mira Grant

Mira Grant is, as we all know, one of Seanan McGuire's pen names. McGuire is an author I like a great deal, and when I like an author a lot, I often react by trying to read everything they have published (viz: Jane Austen, Patricia Briggs). So I have undertaken the project of reading everything McGuire has published. This is a big job, because she's prolific. Also, she publishes under at least three different names that I know of (Seanan McGuire, Mira Grant, A. Deborah Baker).

I'm currently working my way through the Mira Grant oeuvre. I started with her Parasitology series, which was dreadful: one to two stars. I then moved on to the Newsflesh series, which was ever-so-slightly better: two to three stars. At this point I was beginning to suspect that Mira Grant was somehow McGuire's toxic waste dump. I wondered if I should abandon the project. However, at this point I have already read most of the Mira Grant oeuvre. Moreover, my associates on Goodreads have intimated that the mermaid books are better.

I am happy to report that, indeed, they are. Or at least Into the Drowning Deep is. Into the Drowning Deep is a Good Book -- not a Great Book, but definitely worth a read, if this is the kind of book you're into.

Into the Drowning Deep is a plot book, not a character book. The plot, of course, centers on an expedition to find "ancient sea creatures of legend" (as the publisher's blurb says). I think I can, without spoiling anything, translate that phrase as "mermaids". It will also not be a spoiler to tell you that they find *something*. Finally, since Mira Grant is McGuire's horror brand, you will not be surprised to hear that the "something" found is scary. If you enjoy the frisson of horror, Into the Drowning Deep works -- it is scary and tense.

There are some well-drawn characters, particularly marine biologist Victoria (Tory) Stewart and sirenologist Jillian Toth. Tory Stewart is the closest Into the Drowning Deep has to a main point-of-view character. But the focus is not on character -- not on telling people's stories.

McGuire's treatment of scientists is better in Into the Drowning Deep than in her other Mira Grant novels. In particular, the scientists -- most of the characters of Into the Drowning Deep are scientists -- seem human. They're not all good or nice humans -- quite a few of them are real jerks. (Since I intend to post this review on Amazon, I'm avoiding stronger terms, but use your imagination.) That's OK -- scientists are human, and some real scientists are indeed colossal jerks.

The bigger problem is that the characters of Into the Drowning Deep are not scientists. Over and over, when I read Into the Drowning Deep (see my notes and highlights for examples), I found myself thinking, "No scientist I have met thinks or talks like this." But that's not quite true. There is one scientist I have met who talks and thinks like the scientists in Into the Drowning Deep: Jim Watson. James D. Watson is one of the men who received the Nobel Prize for working out the structure of DNA. He wrote a famous memoire, The Double Helix about his part in that work. I am willing to entertain the hypothesis that The Double Helix accurately depicts the thought processes of one scientist: Jim Watson. It is certainly not the way most scientists think.

The depiction of scientists in Into the Drowning Deep is what I might expect if someone read The Double Helix and took it as a true depiction of the way scientists think and talk. I am not saying that that's what happened -- I don't know if McGuire has ever read The Double Helix.

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