Seanan McGuire

I loved this unique, sci-fi take on mermaids! Kept me turning the pages and wanting to know more.

A group of scientists and workers for an entertainment company set sail on the Melusine to find out what happened to the Atargatis 7 years ago, now a ghost ship due to a suspected carnivorous mermaid attack. And when they discover what lurks beneath the deep, they might have wish they hadn’t…

This is a far cry from the beautiful, curious mermaids who want to live with people of the fairytales we grew up with. These are alien-like, creepy, and they’re hungry for flesh.

The cast of characters is huge and I found all of them so interesting. You have Tory Stewart, a marine biologist who wants to avenge her sister Anne, who was on the Atargatis, who comes on board with her friend Luis. Olivia Sanderson is a news reporter for the entertainment company and Ray is her cameraman. Then there’s Dr Jillian Toth, who is a sirenologist and has come onboard to study the mermaids, followed by her estranged husband. Holly and Heather are deaf twin scientists who have come to learn how to communicate with the mermaids with their older sister Hallie. And Jacques and Michi Abney are a married couple of big-game hunters who have come for their greatest kills yet.

I loved the representation and diversity, in terms of ability, sexuality, and age and how all the characters are so distinct from each other. Not all of them are likeable, but they’re all well-written.

It starts slow, and there are news reports and quotes from the characters interspersed within the chapters, giving it a very realistic mock/documentary-like feel. But once it gets closer to the discovery of the mermaids, it ramps up and doesn’t let you go. I loved every second of it and was dying to know how it was going to end.

4 stars because I’m not used to the writing style and the head-hopping, but Mira Grant pulls it off without it all getting muddled in confusion. There were times when I got confused which character had what role up until the middle of the book because there were just so many of them. And it ends quite abruptly.

Still, I really enjoyed this book. I will be checking out Mira Grant’s other works!… (mais)

This urban fantasy is the first book I’ve tried by this author. I found it a fast and entertaining read.

I enjoyed the narrative tone that didn’t portray Verity and her problems too seriously. The light style made it easy to accept improbable aspects of the background and decisions that were (to my thinking) downright peculiar. There were interesting backstory snippets, but I didn’t feel terribly invested in the characters. In particular, I wasn’t keen on how the love interest developed: their encounters felt unnecessarily contrived (but you may remember I’m not big on romance anyway). There were also a lot of different mythical creatures/people/entities which at times just felt thrown in randomly. Perhaps they’ll return in later books.

Entertaining urban fantasy, though I’m not rushing to pick up the sequel.… (mais)