content warnings: death, violence, gore, body horror, animal cruelty, ableism
representation: bisexual main character, hawaiian main character, physically disabled side character with chronic pain, autistic lesbian side character, deaf side characters, latino side character, japanese-australian side character, side f/f relationship, side interracial relationships, other side characters of colour


“What you have to understand about the mermaid legend is that it's universal. No matter where you go, the mermaids got there first. Even inland, if there's a big enough lake, I guarantee you there's a local community with a story about women in the water with beautiful voices who lure men to their deaths.

Where there's water, we find mermaids. Maybe it's time we started asking ourselves exactly why that is.”


It's official, Seanan McGuire/Mira Grant is one of my favourite authors. The fact that she's able to write such different stories, full of fascinating characters, compelling plots, and important themes that are always handled delicately, makes her one of the best authors working today.

I know that the premise of this book is slightly ridiculous: killer mermaids sound silly, I get it. But this book is genuinely terrifying. Not necessarily in a traditionally scary sense, more in a getting chills, feeling uneasy, not wanting to ever go past your knees in the ocean ever again, kind of way.

Grant doesn't just understand how to write chilling scenes, though, she also understands what makes horror work at its best, which is investment in the characters. Despite, in my opinion, this book having two main characters in Tory and Dr. Toth, this book is also undoubtedly an ensemble. This is fantastic storytelling because it makes you care about every character, therefore making the books' stakes 10x higher. There are realistically too many characters for me to shine a spotlight on all of them, so I'm just going to mention the ones who are (in my opinion) the most important.

⇢ Victoria "Tory" Stewart, a bisexual scientist who specialises in studying acoustic marine biology and whose sister was on the original mission to the Mariana Trench. Seven years later, she decides to do the mission partially for closure, partially to prove that the mermaids exist and avenge her sister in whatever way she can.
⇢ Dr. Jillian Toth is a Hawaiian marine biologist who has dedicated majority of her life to proving that mermaids exist, making her a joke among most of the scientific community and the world.
⇢ Olivia Sanderson, an autistic lesbian nerd who is Imagine's news personality, taking over the job which Tory's sister had on the original mission. Along with her is Ray Marino, her closest friend and cameraman.
⇢ Theodore Blackwell is Jillian's almost-ex-husband (separated but not divorced) and is a high-up executive at Imagine who is tasked with overseeing the mission. He is physically disabled from an incident in his past and suffers from chronic pain due to this.
⇢ The Wilson sisters, Hallie, Holly and Heather, are all specialists in different areas. Hallie in communication, Holly in data analysis, and Heather in deep sea exploration. Holly and Heather are twins and have been deaf since birth, and Hallie has acted as a translator for them their entire life.
⇢ Jacques and Michi Abney are a married couple who are famed hunters, French-Canadian and Japanese-Australian respectively, and are only on the mission so they can have the honour of killing a mermaid and more than likely eating it.
⇢ Luis Martines is Tory's best friend who specialises in essentially proving that things like the Giant Squid and Loch Ness Monster are real, and his rich family has funded so much important scientific discoveries that it doesn't matter how crazy what he does is.

As you could probably tell from the descriptions I just gave, this book has fantastic diversity, as much of Grant/McGuire's work does. Things such as race, sexuality, disabilities, etc. inform some of what makes a character who they are, in equal measures with their passions and histories, which in my opinion is the perfect balance to strike.

I also loved the way Grant approached the world of this book. It's set in 2022, so there have been some technological advancements, but only ones that make sense. Such as technology being far enough along that Theo was not paralysed from the waist-down after his accident, but not so far along that there were no lasting consequences.

Finally, on a super irrelevant note, I would highly recommend listening to the Venom score while reading this, especially in the second half.

All in all, his book was amazing! The only books of McGuire/Grant's I still desperately want to read is the Newsflesh trilogy, and after the amazing track record I've had with her work I'm even more excited.