It’s a shame, too, because the horror could’ve been so effective, if delivered another way.
These ended up robbing the mermaids - and therefor the attached story - of most or all of the horror she worked so hard to develop. Mostly, this was in her method and style of storytelling, especially relating to character arcs and stakes. While the mermaids were suitably imposing and terrifying, the author made other choices that caused it to fall flat. But, nonetheless, the premise is solid, as is the horror, the plotting, the research, and the characters.Īnd yet, despite all those positives, I found myself despising the book as a piece of horror literature. Grant’s imagining of them does not play with the same kind of horror, instead opting for a somewhat Lovecraftian “fear of the unknown in the sea” angle, which feels more prescient and modern. Presumably during a time when women were thought to exist for the pleasure of men. They were once terrifying monsters of temptation, similar to sirens, which tempted men at sea to their deaths.
Mermaids were not always beautiful princesses and dying races. Which, on its face, is a fantastic premise, and not too divorced from their historical frames. It is a tale which reframes mermaids as horror-worthy monsters. There has been some buzz about Mira Grant’s novel, Into the Drowning Deep.
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