Reviews

A mysterious meditative cult within a bizarre once-abandoned amusement park? A strange ‘accident’? A swirling undercover dive into an eccentric community? I’m into it.

Seraphina spends her days working as a party princess and her nights snuggling her cat Heracles - but when her free-spirited sister Eff has a strange accident and falls into a coma, she jumps into action. Phina has to infiltrate the last place her sister lived (a goblin-themed amusement park that houses a cult) in order to discover the truth.

It was so weird. It was quite clever. It was often whimsical.

Shipp’s skill is in their masterful world-building. The park was truly a character. The descriptions were so good; so imaginative; so detailed. The imagery was crystal clear.

Seraphina’s narration also had a distinctive style that I found interesting, unique, and inviting. It was all just so inventive! I loved the specificity of each oddball character and the ways they nudged Seraphina along in her journey.

I also enjoyed the humor (both in narration and in dialogue). I totally “got” the tone and jokes and playfully burgeoning romance and it felt very casually real.

I was ready for more horror, actually. The narration has a very light, almost cheeky tone – and we never quite “dropped in” to full spooky madness.

I also wished there was a bit more resolution. I don’t mind a mystery, but the ending felt very abrupt and didn’t hold as much care as the rest of the book.

But truly - I loved The Merry Dredgers. It was sharp and honest. It celebrated the ferocity of sisterly love, and delved deep into grief, and explored vulnerability and trust and embracing the quirky and bizarre.

CW: drugging, violence, domestic abuse, animal cruelty, animal death, grief, injury, gore, car accident

Follow me on TikTok for book recommendations!

(I received an advance reader copy of this book; this is my honest review.)

poisoned_icecream's review

Go to review page

dark emotional tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

Content Warnings

novelbloglover's review

Go to review page

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.75

Book Review

Title: The Merry Dredgers by Jeremy C. Shipp

Genre: Mystery, Science Fiction, Horror

Rating: 3.75 Stars

A mystery, horror about a cult living in a renovated amusement park might sound right up my street but mystery and thriller books are ones I rarely reach for but I have read other books from the publisher and been surprised by them so I am excited to give this a go. We are following, Seraphina as she learns about this cult after her sister, Eff, is in a coma after an “accident” at this amusement park. Right off the bat the book was engaging and I was intrigued by how the cult, the amusement park and Eff’s coma all tie together.

Seraphina in a decidedly bad move decides that the best way to get the information she wants about the accident is to infiltrate the cult and find out what happened and who is responsible for Eff’s accident. From there it gets a little strange as you meet these eccentric cult members and their leader, Ernie who gave me the creeps from the very beginning. As Seraphina gathers small pieces of information we also learn more about her and her sister from the traumatic past they have and the intense desire to connect that Seraphina feels which was something I could personally relate to.

One thing Jeremy C. Shipp executes very well is his use of imagery throughout the book especially within the amusement park as these are meant to be places where everything is out of proportion or distorted. The horror element is also very subtle so if you’re the opposite to me and dislike a lot of gore or body horror then this will definitely work for you but I did feel these elements could have been enhanced more especially with the unique setting.

The ending while it was done very well was something I struggled with because the spiral narrative can become very disorientating if you aren’t paying 100% attention to the book at times. At times it almost felt like a story within a story which isn’t something I do well with as a reader but that is me personally. I also felt that Shipp’s writing was a little too light for me especially when pitched as a horror mystery. I wanted something more aggressive along the lines of King or Joe Hill which left me feeling a little disappointed at the end. Overall, The Merry Dredgers was an enjoyable and fun read with darker twists and turns as the novel progresses leading to a shocking ending that I couldn’t have predicted while keeping the horror elements to a minimum.

caracabe's review

Go to review page

adventurous dark emotional fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

The author displays their usual inventiveness and heart.

sharron_joy_reads's review

Go to review page

5.0

Following an accident Eff is in a coma, her sister Seraphina, suspicious of the circumstances joins the cult she was part of to find out what happened. The community lives in an abandoned theme park that holds a dark secret.

The imagery in the theme park is all creepy goblins, distorted mirrors, twisted attractions, gruesome animatronics, it is both strangely magical and macabre. I found Eff annoying and selfish but she is determined to find the truth of what happened to her sister. The cult members are all interesting characters and the dialogue is bizarre, there is a striking hallucinatory quality to the way they think, Eff included, like their minds live outside reality, it’s an interesting subtext. Dreams seeping into the real world, the real world dreamlike.

This is a psychological horror but also veers into cosmic and fantasy territory. The writing is surreal and weird, it squirms like a worm in your brain forcing you towards the twisted ending and leaving you wondering what you just read.

Jeremy is an audacious original voice in horror, this is a great story.

The Merry Dredgers is published on 25th April 2023 by Meerkat Press, thank you to Jeremy for the e-arc for my honest review.

b_does_books's review

Go to review page

2.0

*Book provided as an eARC by NetGalley* (Publish date April 25, 2023)

{2.5/5}

I feel like the sum totality of this book can be described as: What the hell? Originally I was going to give it a 2, but the last chapter or so really added some oomph, hence the final rating.

Seraphina’s sister has somehow managed to join a cult and end up in a coma. Seraphina is convinced that someone in the cult hurt her sister, despite the police’s assertion that it was an accident, so she decides to do some investigating of her own.

Have you ever seen those hyper realistic pieces of artwork that make the subject feel too zoomed in and really gross? And the whole thing is just really overblown and off-putting? That’s what this book felt like. It’s marketed as horror/sci-fi fantasy with the potential for some psychic powers, but I feel like it missed the horror mark and just relied on weirdly gory descriptions to try and cover it.

MC has a vivid imagination, which is great, but it feels like she makes a bunch of leaps based solely on that imagination. There’s little to no foundation for her to assume her sister’s accident was malicious, she has no investigative background, and the whole thing just felt weirdly trippy. It seems like MC has a hard time distinguishing between real life and dreams or imagination; the book really doesn’t clarify anything either. The ending is weird, abrupt, and left me with more questions than I had initially. I large portion of my notes for this book just say “girl, are you alright?” (MC is not, in fact, alright)

If you like books that feel like experimental films coupled with what I imagine a bad acid trip feels like, then you might enjoy this one. It’s a total miss for me, though.

car_theauthor's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous funny lighthearted mysterious fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

More...