Rolling in the Deep

A television company, the Imagine Network, charters the cruise ship Atargatis and aims it at the Mariana Trench. The goal is a documentary about mermaids. On board are camera crews, scientists and sailors, along with a troupe of professional performers hired to play the mermaids on screen.

The voyage is planned as entertainment. Down in the water, though, something is hungry and has no interest in being filmed, and the ship is never seen again.

The novella is horror at sea, written under the pen name Mira Grant, which belongs to Seanan McGuire. Its chapters are short, and each one opens with a passage from a later documentary that looks back on the disaster, so the reader knows from the start how the voyage ends.

The mermaids here are intelligent, efficient predators, a long way from fairy-tale beauties. Subterranean Press first published the book in 2015, and it is the prequel to the novel Into the Drowning Deep.

Expect a story that moves in quick, short chapters, with the dread of a known catastrophe hanging over a crew that believes it is making a light piece of television.