Into the Drowning Deep

While this author writes very interesting and original stories, I just can't with the repetition. How many times do we need to be told a character dresses like Emma Frost, how scientists can be obsessive about their research, that it was so unlikely that two characters would become friends and did so against the odds, and pretty much every other character trait or thought? We get it, that one guy has a bad leg. And did you know that deep ocean depths can crush you? Well no need to worry if you don't, because the author hammers it into your head repeatedly over the course of an entire chapter. None of these repetitive points are included to further the plot, drive character development, or even investigate the point in more detail. No. They're just the same thing repeated again, as if the reader won't remember the fact on their own. If the repetitions were removed (which would seriously help the pacing and story overall), the book would probably have been a third shorter.

As for the good, there's a lot of diversity that is easily woven into the story without feeling contrived. The science talk was fun and most likely easy for most people to understand, if a bit fudged at times to make the story work. It felt a lot like Jurassic Park (the book, not the movie) with the cast of characters and multiple perspectives. It's an easy read and definitely a page turner with creepy and scary vibes at times. There is quite a bit of suspense and really interesting interactions with the mermaids. It's a fun twist on the mermaid myth, though the end was a bit boring. Kind of like Mira Grant wasn't sure how to finish everything once she wrote the “big reveal” (which wasn't big nor a reveal given all the repetition of a particular fact about the mermaids prior to that, and it was a huge stretch). She may as well have written “and then they found twenty dollars. The end.”

I keep holding out hope that one of Mira Grant's books will completely work for me. Three stars is fun! It's good, I enjoyed reading it and would recommend it to some people, but I don't want to waste time on an author that always underwhelms me when I'm so excited for the premise. The stories and characters have so much potential, but the writing itself feels like a drag. It's like she gets in the way of her own good ideas. I want her to have more faith in the reader to remember things she's told us already, and I want her to really push these fantastic ideas she has to the absolute limit.