Mira Grant aka Seanan McGuire is one of my favorite authors and these books are no exception. Under Mira Grant, McGuire writes Science Fiction and Science Fiction Horror novels which if your a fan of Michael Crichton I feel like you will love.

Rolling in the Deep by Mira Grant is a novella about a research vessel going to the Mariana Trench to find Mermaids. Commissioned by the Imagine Network (which feels to me like if you combined the Discovery Channel fake documentaries with Asylum the creators of Sharknado),  the scientist think that the company sponsoring the trip is just going to film a mockumentary but they end up finding real mermaids who are not kind or beautiful. This book is technically a prequel to Into the Drowning Deep but it works as a stand alone. However, if you want to have no information about what the mermaids are like and the twist at the end of In to the Drowning Deep read the full length novel first. I didn’t know about the novella when I first read the novel so they work in either order. I didn’t connect to the characters as much due to how short the book is but what is there is great. It made me want more from this world and story.

Into the Drowning Deep by Mira Grant is a science fiction horror novel about a research ship going out to the Mariana Trench to find mermaids and what happened to the ship, the Atargatis, that went out seven years previously. This is a reread for me and I loved it just as much as the first time I read it. The characters are amazing and complex from the woman who convinced Image that mermaids existed, the sister of one of the missing from the previous expedition, two big game hunters and many others. The wonderful thing about McGuire’s stories is she adds diverse characters in a way that is natural, they are diverse because our world is, this includes deaf sisters and a journalist who is both a lesbian and autistic.

The best way I can describe it is the book is everything I didn’t know I wanted out of murderous mermaids. These are not the pretty ladies of the sea but monsters from the deep that humanity has long feared. The character that you dislike or hate have a reason to be there and get what they deserve and those that you love must survive horrible circumstances to make one of the biggest discoveries of the world. The ending is left open ended enough for a possible squeal but doesn’t leaving anything hanging. I absolutely love these books and hope that a squeal will happen.