Wow. This is one of my favorite books of the year, and probably ever. The scientific aspect of it was so neat to me and I want to try more books like this so if you know of any, please let me know.
Synopsis
New York Times bestselling author Mira Grant, author of the renowned Newsflesh series, returns with a novel that takes us to a new world of ancient mysteries and mythological dangers come to life.
Seven years ago, the Atargatis set off on a voyage to the Mariana Trench to film a “mockumentary” bringing to life ancient sea creatures of legend. It was lost at sea with all hands. Some have called it a hoax; others have called it a maritime tragedy.
Now, a new crew has been assembled. But this time they’re not out to entertain. Some seek to validate their life’s work. Some seek the greatest hunt of all. Some seek the truth. But for the ambitious young scientist Victoria Stewart this is a voyage to uncover the fate of the sister she lost.
Whatever the truth may be, it will only be found below the waves.
But the secrets of the deep come with a price.
Review
(Slightly spoilery. I knew ahead of reading this book what would be encountered during this voyage and I refer to that at some point in the review.)
Even before I decided to dive deeper into the horror genre, this book had me intrigued. I was too nervous about giving it a try before but once I committed to trying more scary (to me) books, I knew this one had to come up eventually.
Despite it being a relatively slow story overall, it was interesting right from the start and kept me engaged the entire time. The quotes, articles, journals, and other snippets at the beginning of each section added interesting tidbits that always made me continue reading even when I said that I’d go to sleep at the end of each section.
The cast was constantly growing larger and while I wasn’t always sure who was who right away (I’m terrible with names), the text was good at reminding me pretty quickly so I wouldn’t actually ever feel lost or confused. The large cast also worked really well for this book because we were able to get many interesting scientific details that way. While some of the emotional development felt a bit more rushed than I’d like, there was still decent character development for this large a cast and with such a heavy scientific focus in the book.
Some books sort of ease into violence, especially when the plot is rather slow. That was not the case here. This book drops you right into the deep end. There were no warning feints from the terrors of the deep. They were out to kill and as apex predators, they knew exactly what they were doing. Having everything analyzed scientifically though made it both less and more scary to me, because it gave it such a realistic feel.
I’m not usually a fan of omniscient narrations but that was also something that worked really well for this story. It supported the scientific feel of it when it jumped from character to character and gave us insights for each that we wouldn’t have gotten with close first or third narration. Those little details that helped to get a better feel for the bigger picture made this even more interesting and sometimes also more terrifying. There were also some sections that weren’t human or creature, giving us a look inside the body that would’ve felt really out of place in another book. But all of these varying POVs combined to create a picture that felt incredibly realistic. It made this story feel like it could actually happen in real life, which adds a very different fear factor to a story. I loved that.
My only big complaint is that the ending felt very abrupt. Some of it was okay because it fit in with the style of the story, but other things were left more open-ended than I would’ve liked. I don’t need a bow on everything at the end of a book, but after having so many things analyzed in this one, there was too much curiosity left to be quite satisfied with how it left off.
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