Into the Drowning Deep

Its a rare situation where a book drives me to write a review.

To start off, while I like horror, I am not a slasher/monster type horror. These subgenres bore me to tears. I am not a reader of action. Action scenes that drag on also bore me to tears, or more likely a nap. While I adore Science Fiction, the same aspects in it also put me to sleep.

Ideas people, IDEAS!

And, to start off, this book had ideas, and then it turned into a bad B horror movie.

So. The sirens were interesting. The fact that they appeared intelligent was interesting. The fact that they had not one language, but three, was interesting. Siren mimicry was interesting. The idea that they could use that mimicry for their own communication was fascinating. Siren autopsy, also quite cool (with an exception of Dr Toth). The idea of deep sea amphibians was cool.What was not cool? Everything else.Dr Toth's entire purpose was to stand around passively, sigh when something went wrong, tell everyone she could have told them that, and then go on to lecture (info dumps) in an overly dramatic and condescending manner.Mr Blackwell was incredibly passive. His entire job was to make sure no one got a couple brains cells moving and got the ship the heck out of there. Oh and to give something else for Dr Toth to be annoyed about.The relationship between Victoria and the reporter/personality (I forgot her name) made NO sense. They hate each other and then all of a sudden they are high school girls talking about how they have the hots for one another. And while blood shed and carnage goes on around them, go back to a cabin to have hot sex.Oh, and at the end of the book. They have just spent the last few days or so in hiding, being hunted, slaughter, dissolving bodies, horrors beyond belief, long swims in the ocean, trapped, almost drowning, and similar. And what do they do on the trip back to land? Have sex of course. Because everyone craves hot passionate sex immediately after this kind of emotional and physical trauma.Two female scientists, with the threat of siren attack imminent, abandon their deaf lab partner, go back to a cabin, get drunk on brandy with the door open, talk like 16 year old valley girls, and get slaughtered. Because the bad girls always die early in slasher horror movies. And this seemed to be the only reason for their very existence.I can't think of any character who wasn't flat or who actually followed any consistent behavior.Establishing communication with a Siren was cool. In a matter of a day or so be able to have built trust in that siren enough that it keeps the scientists from being slaughtered by others of its kind, communicate that it was a prisoner, and yet not have them even attempt to free it, was not consistent.And the shutters. Of course the shutters didn't work. They couldn't work. If they did, we wouldn't have as much of a bad B horror movie. Why the ship would be sent out with defensive shutters that did not work, I cannot comprehend. They knew what was out there. They knew what was very likely to happen. And yet, it worked 2 out of 5 attempts in testing, good enough!There wasn't even surprise about it. We knew the shutters didn't work as soon as we learned about the ship. In fact there was nothing surprising in the entire book. It was so obvious what was going to happen from the start.And we won't even go into the stupid. So many stupid things were done, just so we could make sure the siren attacks happened and kept happening. I hate stupid as an excuse. Its lazy. Characters make mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes. But OMG over and over and over, stupid after stupid after stupid.

Another frustrating part was that nothing was really answered. But, it looks like this is going to be a series, so I am more forgiving there. I'm assuming some answers might come later in the series. I have no desire to read them though.

Honestly, I'm giving this two stars because of some of the cool factors and could have been something more. Otherwise, it wouldn't even manage one star.