Tag Archives: lgbt

Book Review: Into the Drowning Deep by Mira Grant

Posted on by CM Schofield

Getting this bit out of the way first..

THAT’S NOT HOW MASS SPEC WORKS. HOW DID YOU EVEN SEPARATE THOSE COMPOUNDS? WAS YOUR SPECTRUM JUST A SOLID BLACK RECTANGLE?

ALSO WHY DO YOU HAVE AN ORGANIC CHEMIST DOING THOSE THINGS? THAT’S NOT WHAT THEY DO.

Aaaaand I can breathe now. I’ll put the angry chemist in me away.

Believe it or not, I really enjoyed this book. I felt it had pacing issues (the start was slooooow) and I didn’t really like any of the characters (and felt like a few had great potential but were a bit wasted), but even that didn’t detract from this super fun monster book. It was, very clearly, written with a sequel in mind, which is unfortunate as said sequel does not currently exist, however if you enjoy some good monster horror I would definitely recommend giving this a read.

Cover of Mira Grant's Into the Drowning Deep, featuring some spooky looking red seaweed to look like a flame and a pair of wafting pale hands.

Grant’s Into the Drowning Deep starts off telling us about a ship that went off hunting for a legend and then showed up with no crew and footage of some very bitey-looking mermaids aboard. Seven years later, a new crew and a new ship are heading back to find out if the footage was a hoax, as is what is most commonly believed, and to definitively prove the existence of said bitey-looking mermaids.

Sounds like a terrible plan, right?

This book was predictable in the way that this type of book should be. It was written so that a well-seasoned horror enjoyer knew exactly what the characters were walking into, and had the tension and dread of watching them do it. The slow pacing at the start particularly helped this (even if, in my opinion, it went on a little too long), and for me it really built up to the payoff I was waiting for.

The mermaids themselves were wonderfully written and the author went into such interesting detail about them. I was absolutely fascinated every time we learned something new about these creatures. Honestly, I could read about them all day and am really hoping that we do get that sequel eventually.

Recommended for anyone who likes a monster story that doesn’t rush but also doesn’t keep secrets.

Don’t just take my word for it, but also that of the person at my book club who tried to read this in the bath and, upon finding themself at a particularly creepy part, decided that they were clean enough.

Book Review: River of Teeth by Sarah Gailey

Posted on by CM Schofield

So, I was browsing the transgender fantasy section of my local queer bookshop and happened across a book about killer hippos in Louisiana. Naturally, I bought it immediately and I have no regrets.

Book cover for River of Teeth, featuring a host of characters riding through a calm swamp on hippo back.

River of Teeth by Sarah Gailey was, by all accounts, a mad and ridiculous book in which our heroes are tasked with clearing out the feral hippos from a section of the Mississippi. It’s a year long gig, but our man Winslow plans on getting it done in a weekend. Good for him. Absolutely nothing will go wrong.

No book is perfect and I did feel that there were points where characters were inconsistent and some things didn’t make a huge amount of sense, but sense was the last thing I was looking for when I picked up a book about murder hippopotami in the United States. The flirtation between the main character and his love interest was slightly too much for me, but to be fair was I chomping at the bit to see some hippos eat someone every time we were on a non hippo-eating-people scene.

This book was great fun. I read it in two sittings, which is lightning fast for me. There was action, there was murder, there was both hippo and non-hippo related mayhem. There was a fat Frenchwoman meteor hammering things from the back of a trained hippo. There was Ruby the Stealth Hippo. It was, most definitely, an operation and not a caper. I’ll be picking up the sequel for definite.

Recommended for anyone who is looking for a quick read filled with action, who appreciates that sometimes things in books can just be that way because it’s cool.