Reviews tagging 'Sexual content'

Into the Drowning Deep by Mira Grant

36 reviews

beccaand's review

adventurous dark tense medium-paced

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

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Body horror, Death, Gore, Gun violence, Violence, Blood, Medical content, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Ableism, Confinement, Drug use, and Panic attacks/disorders

Minor: Biphobia and Sexual content

lockerific's review against another edition

dark fast-paced

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

2.75

You knew every single time that a character was going to die, because you'd get a whole chapter from their POV that would give you their whole life story that would let you know how sad/great it would be if they died. Characters didn't feel like they were getting time to be fleshed out, but rather rushed lore dumping right before their deaths to make it feel like they had meaning. Also, the fact we didn't get to see the queen at the end basically at all was such a disappointment.

Fun ride, questionable ending, and I've got issues with the character development.
This honestly felt like a film adaptation where the author tried to show every inner thought from a movie character when that couldn't be seen on film. I think this would make an AWESOME movie!

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gore

Moderate: Sexual content

devynvictoria's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

I love all the representation in the book. The last 150-ish pages had me so enthralled I couldn’t put it down. My only critique is that is was really slow to get through at times and took a long time to pick up, I don’t think it needed to be as long as it was. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Ableism, Body horror, Chronic illness, Death, Violence, and Blood

Minor: Biphobia, Sexual content, Toxic relationship, and Alcohol

lynxpardinus's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Ableism, Animal death, Death, Gore, Gun violence, Violence, Blood, Medical content, and Grief

Moderate: Animal cruelty, Confinement, Drug use, Mental illness, Misogyny, Sexual content, and Toxic relationship

Minor: Biphobia

queenpebbles's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious tense fast-paced

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

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Body horror, Chronic illness, Death, Gore, Gun violence, Violence, Blood, Grief, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Ableism, Confinement, Cursing, Medical content, and Alcohol

Minor: Drug use and Sexual content

kingcrookback's review against another edition

adventurous mysterious tense medium-paced

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

3.25

I can't quite put my finger on exactly why, but even though the story felt pretty decidedly medium-paced, this book felt long. Maybe it's the amount of exposition and introspection that's included. It's kind of an odd feeling, especially since I feel like this story could be pretty neatly (and entertainingly) encapsulated within the time constraints of a feature-length film.

First, the positives. With all the exposition, the premise feels sufficiently grounded in modern-day science and technology, even though this is very clearly science fiction. (Warning, though: if you have any climate anxiety, this book might exacerbate that.) Grant's pretty good at building tension, especially via dramatic irony. While the story is generally told in third person limited POV, sometimes the perspective will "zoom out" at the end of a passage and you'll get a glimpse just outside of the characters' perspectives. It feels very cinematic. I also appreciated that Grant wrote ethnic, queer, and disabled diversity directly into the story--and my appreciation for this is twofold. On the one hand, as a woman of color, I liked that some of the diversity had absolutely nothing to do with the plot. People in real life aren't non-white/queer for "a reason," and for too long creators have hidden behind narrative relevance as an excuse for not being diverse in their depictions. And on the other hand, as a disabled person, I also enjoyed that some of that diversity served a narrative function.

...however. There are some things about this book that I didn't enjoy, the pacing being one of them. The semi-epistolary introductions for each of the "acts" of the novel were interesting...for maybe the first half. After that, they didn't have much of an impact. I didn't feel a connection to any of the characters--which is not to say that I didn't like them. I just didn't care enough about them to form any feelings for them either way. (Except for Jacques Abney. His self-aggrandizing internal dialogue grated on my nerves. Points to Grant for that one, I guess.)

There were also some scenes/character actions that strained my credulity to the point of annoyance. I don't mean the suspension of disbelief necessary that allowed me to buy into the story's basic premise: sirens in the Mariana Trench; that part's fine. But some of the characters' internal dialogues and interactions just struck me as kind of weird. For example, sure, conventionally attractive people are generally aware that they're conventionally attractive and that there are both privileges and expectations associated with that, especially if they're women. It signals a sense of both self-awareness and social wariness for a character to be aware of that--but it felt so weird for characters to think and say it so explicitly and in such a blasé way. It doesn't hit the ear as natural-sounding dialogue or natural-feeling social interaction. Some of the minor characters' logic is also completely opaque to me. Specifically,

when Daryl, the younger engineer, somehow came to the conclusion that the sirens had "someone on the inside" helping them with the hunt/slaughter. Try as I might, I can't fathom what path of logic would have led him to that assumption. Even hysterical panic, which he did not seem to be in, doesn't explain it, in my opinion.

This is one of the few books I'm actually giving a star rating, and that's because I didn't really enjoy it all that much. With most of my other reads, while I can detect their flaws, I can usually find some kind of value in them (ex: it speaks to the times, the social climate, etc.). The flaws in this book just got on my nerves.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Gore, Blood, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Child abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Gun violence, Homophobia, Medical content, and Grief

Minor: Ableism, Biphobia, Misogyny, and Sexual content

some sections might trigger fear of drowning; much of the book, especially the first half, might aggravate climate anxiety

singalana's review against another edition

adventurous dark tense medium-paced

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

3.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Body horror, Death, Gun violence, Violence, Blood, Medical content, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Ableism, Drug use, Sexual content, Grief, and Alcohol

jjjreads's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark informative mysterious tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Ableism, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Body horror, Confinement, Death, Genocide, Gun violence, Misogyny, Toxic relationship, Violence, Blood, Vomit, Medical content, Grief, Cannibalism, Medical trauma, Murder, Abandonment, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Body shaming, Drug use, Eating disorder, Fatphobia, and Panic attacks/disorders

Minor: Cursing, Sexual content, and Alcohol

chrisljm's review against another edition

dark mysterious tense medium-paced

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

3.5

3.5 stars; What I liked about this book was that it felt like a movie. I enjoyed the storytelling as well as the format Mira Grant utilized. I also appreciated the themes she touched on within the book. However, there was just such a lack of urgency surrounding the character’s behaviors, and the groups of characters were also way too isolated from each other in my opinion. You planned to be on a ship surrounded by violent creatures and you didn’t implement better communication features? Like not even some walkie-talkies?? 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Body horror, Death, Gore, Gun violence, Violence, Blood, Murder, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Ableism, Biphobia, Child death, Confinement, Cursing, Drug use, Misogyny, Toxic relationship, Excrement, Medical content, Grief, Fire/Fire injury, and Alcohol

Minor: Sexual content

silene's review against another edition

dark mysterious tense slow-paced

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

5.0

Chilling and spectacular with vibrant characters, a clear plot, and distressingly plausible science. While nothing is supernatural, take the horror warning seriously.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Cursing, Death, and Gore

Minor: Sexual content