Into the Drowning Deep

This was fucking AMAZING! I feel like I can't really say anything about this book without spoilering the whole plot but OH MY GOD!

I am not easily scared by horror but this gave me the creeps. Mermaids, a diverse cast (lesbian, bi, deaf, autism, chronic pain and BIPoC representation to name a few), and a story set at sea were already enough to convince me to read this book. It took me some time to accustom to the many switching perspective and the sometimes omniscient narrator, and I wasn't able to develop a close connection to all of the characters, but I nevertheless was intrigued by their interactions. I wasn't exactly prepared for the amount of science but I didn't mind because it made this story feel so real. Tbf, I have at max basic understanding of biology, chemistry and any other scientific area mentioned here so you could probably just tell me anything and I would believe it to be based on facts but it still felt like I was part of this scientific discovery. Speaking about which, it was kinda funny how this book is set 2022 as a futuristic setting. The book was published in 2017 and to think that the idea was five years from then, we would have self-driving cars and advanced magical treatment and other choices felt ... the most unrealistic probably. However, this wasn't really about having a realistic idea of what 2022 (from a perspective of 2017) could have looked like, but rather a climate fiction that discusses the intersections between science, climate change, and human-made distaster, that discusses the sea as a place heavily influenced by human civilization and still a place that we barely know anything about. I loved everything about it - the sea, the sociopolitical commentary, the complexity that is so adequatly shown. (Sometimes, I feel like climate fiction tends to simplify things, and this might work for some narratives, but this story does not, it shows you exactly what damage humans do but also that the sea has more power in the end. Read this book.) Between all these scientific endeavors, the book manages to effectively introduce the horror. Sometimes, just two sentences managed to give me chills because of the horror they hint at. It feels like a nightmare where every discovery is more dooming than the one before, where the terror is waiting for you while everyone pretends that everything is fine, which made me be on edge the whole time.

Die Charaktere, die Atmosphäre und der Horror, alles stimmt. Am Anfang war es kurz etwas slow-paced aber nicht zu viel und nur am Anfang. Eines meiner liebsten Bücher ist "Der Schwarm" von Frank Schätzing und das hier hat mir einen ähnlichen Vibe gegeben, jedoch mit weniger Charakteren, etwas weniger wissenschaftlich und nur an einem Schauplatz. Ich hab die Diversity geliebt, queere Repräsentation, starke weibliche Charaktere, Menschen mit Behinderung, gehörlose Personen, super! Als Hörbuch hat es echt Spaß gemacht und war durchweg spannend, das Ende hat mir ebenso gut gefallen. Und die Vorstellung von diesen Wesen war großartig und ich wünsche mir ein bisschen, dass sie existieren.