Mira Grant’s fiction often straddles a line I enjoy, finding the time to explore the science behind her horrors as well as the emotional states of the characters. A couple of years ago, I read Grant’s Subterranean Press original novella, Rolling In The Deep, and enjoyed it immensely. A fun take on mermaids as seen through the eyes of a SyFy Channel type network (Imagine) and a bunch of researchers, mermaid-costumed entertainers and crewmembers aboard the vessel Atargatis. It turns out real mermaids are alpha predators hanging out around the Mariana Trench, and that research vessel had no idea what to expect when it plied those waters. Gory mayhem ensued, leaving not even a single Ishmael to tell the tale.

The same year I read and reviewed the novella, author Mira Grant (aka the prolific Seanan McGuire) released a full-length novel set in that universe. Since I enjoy the hell out of her take on aquatic horror in the novella, I have been looking forward to reading the novel. That time is now.

After a brief catch up following the events of the shorter tale, including some “leaked footage” from the slaughterhouse that research ship became (the delivery of which is accompanied, at least in my head, by the song “Put On Your Sunday Clothes” from Hello Dolly because I am an odd duck), the novel picks up seven years later in the year 2022. Victoria “Tory” Stewart is a marine biology grad student, a woman born on the California coast with “the taste of salt on her lips and the sting of sea spray in her eyes” (5). Instead of playing the research game, she spends her summers giving whale-watching tours. Or at least Tory did until giving in to the impulse to plead her case about Orcas to tourists, damning places that would imprison such creatures. This momentary lack of judgment ends up with Tory getting fired. But that is a good thing in her case. It gives her free rein to join up with a follow-up mission to the Mariana Trench, following up on the Atargatis‘ doomed mission. That’s right. Imagine Entertainment wants to go back out there. They have more information about the menace. They will be far safer this time because there is no mystery. Well, there’s less mystery about what they will find. In fact, a ton of mystery still remains to be explored and exploited in their cryptozoic documentary style. And then, there are the unknown unknowns . . .

Tory has an ax to grind with Imagine, the Mariana Trench and the mermaids who hunt there. You see her sister Anne was the Imagine Entertainment video girl at the time . . . Anne went out on a simple gig and never came back. Tory wants a little revenge. She is also a scientist, which means she wants data.

Tory is not the only guaranteed ratings coup member signed up for the mission. Dr. Jillian Toth is a researcher who has dedicated her life to exploring real mermaids. Needless to say such a topic has left her career on shaky ground. Her theories led to the original Imagine venture, and though she did not go then she has signed up to go this time. She is negotiating for the data she accrues and the subsequent publication rights from a place of strength; the previous trip had an information lockdown, and this one not-so-much.

However, there is a boatload of researchers, security personnel, crew members, Imagine Entertainment mouthpieces, documentary crew, and even wild game hunters joining them on the mission to the Trench. Some are believers, some are highly skeptical (but in love with the remuneration aspect), and some are just along because they don’t really have other viable options.

In the mix, we have a few standout personalities. Luis is a born cryptozoologist and the son of Silicon Valley money; he is Tory’s coresearcher and pal. Olivia Sanderson is the new hostess of the doc, a woman who relies on her cameraman Ray to help her through crowds; although never specified, she shows signs of having Asperger’s, which makes her job tough, but she looks convincing in Emma Frost cosplay, which makes her job far, far easier. There’s a couple of surly ship engineers Gregory and Daryl (who take their names from author Daryl Gregory, a gent who not only writes well but does a killer Flipper The Dolphin imitation; I know having heard it at a World Fantasy Convention some years back); they are tasked with getting the unreliable shipboard defense system of armored shutters working. There’s rude principle investigator Dr. Lyons, who routinely steals his grad student research for his own. There’s jackass Jason, Tory’s ex-boyfriend and aspiring rude principle investigator if he could only get some good research of his own. There’s Theo Blackwell, who reads to me like a more compassionate Carter Burke from James Cameron’s 1986 classic sf-horror flick Aliens (I even hear Paul Reiser’s inflections when he talks, which is fun). There’s the deaf redheaded twins Holly and Heather Wilson as well as their older sister and translator Hallie, who are all quite different from one another, including in scientific pursuits. There are Jacques and Michi, the French Canadian and Japanese-Australian wild game hunters who are here to kill them some motherfucking mermaids! There are dozens of others as well, ranging from pure secondary characters to helper-guides along the way.

Only a handful of them really expects to find anything. Surely the mermaids (or sirens as they come to be known) have moved on to another area. They must be nomadic, following food sources. Surely . . . Well, there’s no surely about it. The mermaids are there, they are hungry, and they know no fear.

The new ship is bigger, outfitted with weapons as well as state of the art science toys, as well as a theoretically impervious security system (the aforementioned armored shutters . . . that don’t work). It is a floating party boat, in some ways, at least until people start dying.

Mira Grant balances equal parts science fiction, science fact and action-horror in this lengthy homage to many inspiring sources, not the least of which is Cameron’s Aliens. While reading along, I could not help but see some of the elements she has taken from that flick and applied to her story. From plotting that follows a more-or-less four act structure (instead of the more traditional cinematic model of three acts) to individual moments. For example, in Aliens, the android Bishop maneuvers through some tight space tunnels as a safe means of passage between the colony building and a satellite relay station where he can radio the orbiting ship for help. One of the characters in Into The Drowning Deep does likewise, shimmying through a tight passage between a siren-compromised deck and their one hope for survival. Even the mermaids/sirens themselves take elements of H. R. Giger’s aliens in their interaction. They have lips that part to reveal horrible teeth. They lunge lightning quick. They leave slime everywhere. They communicate via an almost impossible method to grok. They work together in a hive-like fashion, but not in a perfectly harmonious way. They drag their victims away into the dark, dark places for unknown purposes. Their blood has toxic defenses. They have elders who are much, much, much larger than the warriors . . . Obviously, the mermaids have differences to the H. R. Giger designed biomechanical monstrosities and the mythology around them, but those weird horrors are referenced in Mira Grant’s own designs for her critters.

As someone who has long loved the Alien franchise of films (well, the first four of them at any rate), I see these call outs as fun Easter Eggs. In my review of Grant’s novella In the Shadow of Spindrift House, I mentioned how this author seems to write books that appeal to many of the things I loved as a wee sponge of sf/horror/dark fantasy entertainment. Into the Drowning Deep is another case in point.

Needless to say, I am not surprised Grant got a chance to write a novel in the Alien universe, a book I hope to check out for June.

Mira Grant really makes the material her own when she tackles the science behind her creations. Not content to give us some glossed over “findings” or some half-understood jargon, she delivers plenty of real world echoes. As a scientist herself, Seanan McGuire has the background to make sense of the stuff she is playing with. Her talent comes in synthesizing disparate elements and delivering the material in ways her non-science audience can get behind. The ideas on display are pretty dazzling, whether this takes the shape of the creatures’ biology or the ecosystem they are a part of or even some of the background material on other terrestrial life forms, readers are treated to some out there ideas that mesh together in unexpected ways.

The writing is a tad repetitive at times. Grant delivers doorstop entertainments. Her books are lengthy, and this can lead to reuse of certain pet phrases (she echoes T. S. Elliot through her use of “in the dark, dark, dark” a few times in the first half of the book) as well as conversations between different characters conveying the same information to we readers. Sure, it might show how researchers come to the same conclusions from different directions, but one or two examples of this would make the point.

Grant’s characters here too often fall into the publish or perish driven mold of general assholes. As someone who has worked in research labs, I know this personality type is a one of the more common ones. However, if my eight-year tour of duty as a Lab Tech/Lab Manager in the University of Massachusetts Medical School taught me anything, there are also some generous, community-minded, friendly folks to be found in research. They aren’t all cold fish like Dr. Toth. Or assholes like Dr. Lyon, Jason, or numerous others. Some are open to collaboration or shared “fishing expeditions” (aka ventures that will last a few weeks or months that might collect useful data or not), not terrified of getting scooped or skunked. Those researchers have multiple year grants, of course, but they aren’t anywhere close to the sorts of soulless-science villains found in Michael Crichton’s thrillers (yet another inspiration behind this book, I’d say). I wish there was a bit more diversity in the scientists given page time here. In general, they are jerks apart from a very tight circle of close acquaintances.

That said, Into the Drowning Deep is a fun little foray into terror and thought experiments from a writer whose work I routinely enjoy. Is this the last view we have into this particular world? I hope not. I am sure Mira Grant (and her flipside Seanan McGuire) could come up with some more engaging adventures involving killer mermaids. Sorry, sirens.

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Into the Drowning Deep is available in eBook, paperback and audiobook editions from Orbit Books.

Next week, we leave the ocean behind us to venture into the sexy, surreal and chilling worlds of Gemma Files, as we consider the stories in her collection Spectral Evidence. Grab a copy in eBook or paperback and indulge your darkness.

The title for this article comes from lyrics to Blue October’s “Into the Ocean”, available as a single or on the album Foiled.

WORKS CITED

Grant, Mira. Into the Drowning Deep. Orbit: 2017.

“Into the Ocean, End it All: Mira Grant’s Into the Drowning Deep” is copyright © 2020 by Daniel R. Robichaud. Quotes and cover image taken from the paperback edition.

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