The cast of characters can also feel too big, with some characters introduced for the express purpose of having them killed – this works great on cinema, but in my opinion not so well in writing where we expect every scene to advance the plot somewhat and gratuitous deaths just feel like a detour.

This makes for a very, very slow start to a novel that perhaps shouldn’t take so long to get going, something I’m sure has made it lose readers. The first 100 or so pages are basically backstory, and the actual adventure doesn’t start until well after that.

Mainly, it feels too long for what it is – it just takes too long to find its footing. For all its achievements, the novel does have its flaws. Grant can develop characters nicely (while using a notoriously diverse cast, including two LGBT characters, an autistic character, and two deaf characters,) and, for most of the book, it is easy to understand the characters’ plights and motivations, which eases us into reading the at times overtly long expository paragraphs. Now, even when it reads a lot like a b-horror film it is at least a very well written one, at least for b-horror film standards. Grant ever set out to reinvent the wheel here. Even the characters themselves are standard horror fare because, well, I don’t really think Mrs. Expedition goes out to the sea to find mermaids. The setup is a standard for horror, particularly horror films: A motley crew of characters gathers for an expedition. It might even make a better film than a novel. The result is a novel that, while not a movie script, wouldn’t be all that difficult to adapt. In that way it’s different from any books I’ve read before, as most of the Horror literature I’ve been exposed to had markedly different pacing and tropes than what we usually find in movies, while here Grant feels content with embracing horror b-movie standards.

That’s the main thing I can say about Mira Grant’s Into the Drowning Deep: It feels, and reads, very much like a horror film. Review rating 4/5 A horror film disguised as a book.

Mira grant rolling in the deep series