expertbooksmuggler's review against another edition
challenging
dark
tense
medium-paced
3.0
God surveys his crew and sees that they are good.
After reading Mira Grant’s Into the Drowning Deep I have been searching for mermaid horror like crazy. I never knew how much I needed Mermaid horror! I’ve had Maiden on my TBR and was so excited to see it available on NetGalley!
The Pepper Kay is a crabbing ship heading out to the Bering Strait in search of Dungeness crab with mostly inexperienced crew. If that isn’t enough of a problem, her new captain has brought along his violent right hand man referred to as The Empty One. And soon, they are joined by the Nameless ones coming up from the depths of the ocean.
Maiden is told to us through multiple POVs including the ship. Yes, she is some sort of sentient ship! That didn’t prove to be the problem I thought it would be at first. What proved to be the problem was experiencing Nash’s POV.
This man is naaaasty enough that our sentient ship refuses to call him by his name! Reading his chapters was extremely difficult because if you haven’t guessed it yet- the real monsters are often human.
Nash is a violent rapist with a history of murder thrown in on the side. He does not refer to women as women, but instead calls them ‘gashes’ and spends time reminiscing on his previous assaults. Still, the captain (AKA God… yes he calls himself God) keeps him on and it isn’t long before he’s causing problems with the only female crew member, Charlie and eventually Jordan (I found his scene with Nash very difficult due to the homophobia too).
That’s the story he’ll be telling himself, to keep his own engine running when he comes at her: that’s she not a real woman, not in the way he understands a woman ought to be. Because if she’s not a real woman, then she’s not a real person, right? And if that’s true, then what the fuck does it matter what he does to her?
We get a solid amount of insight into each of the characters enough so that the book just feels heavy. A large focus of this book is spent on tension between the crew as lives are lost and mermaids are making themselves known. The mermaids are there and all, but they are not really the focus of the book.
Overall, I do wish that there was more focus on the mermaids and less focus on ensuring we know who is actually the bad one.
Don’t get me wrong, this book filled me with rage and I think it was meant to. But it felt a bit gratuitous in regards to Nash’s lack of hygiene (and soul) and the amount of sexual assault talk. He was written well enough that you KNOW what kind of man he is and the efforts to make sure we understood that were a bit much.
I’d likely recommend this to someone who enjoys both creature features and human monsters. It’s a fast read that will for sure give you some anxiety as you read and I think it does isolation very well.
After reading Mira Grant’s Into the Drowning Deep I have been searching for mermaid horror like crazy. I never knew how much I needed Mermaid horror! I’ve had Maiden on my TBR and was so excited to see it available on NetGalley!
The Pepper Kay is a crabbing ship heading out to the Bering Strait in search of Dungeness crab with mostly inexperienced crew. If that isn’t enough of a problem, her new captain has brought along his violent right hand man referred to as The Empty One. And soon, they are joined by the Nameless ones coming up from the depths of the ocean.
Maiden is told to us through multiple POVs including the ship. Yes, she is some sort of sentient ship! That didn’t prove to be the problem I thought it would be at first. What proved to be the problem was experiencing Nash’s POV.
This man is naaaasty enough that our sentient ship refuses to call him by his name! Reading his chapters was extremely difficult because if you haven’t guessed it yet- the real monsters are often human.
Nash is a violent rapist with a history of murder thrown in on the side. He does not refer to women as women, but instead calls them ‘gashes’ and spends time reminiscing on his previous assaults. Still, the captain (AKA God… yes he calls himself God) keeps him on and it isn’t long before he’s causing problems with the only female crew member, Charlie and eventually Jordan (I found his scene with Nash very difficult due to the homophobia too).
That’s the story he’ll be telling himself, to keep his own engine running when he comes at her: that’s she not a real woman, not in the way he understands a woman ought to be. Because if she’s not a real woman, then she’s not a real person, right? And if that’s true, then what the fuck does it matter what he does to her?
We get a solid amount of insight into each of the characters enough so that the book just feels heavy. A large focus of this book is spent on tension between the crew as lives are lost and mermaids are making themselves known. The mermaids are there and all, but they are not really the focus of the book.
Overall, I do wish that there was more focus on the mermaids and less focus on ensuring we know who is actually the bad one.
Don’t get me wrong, this book filled me with rage and I think it was meant to. But it felt a bit gratuitous in regards to Nash’s lack of hygiene (and soul) and the amount of sexual assault talk. He was written well enough that you KNOW what kind of man he is and the efforts to make sure we understood that were a bit much.
I’d likely recommend this to someone who enjoys both creature features and human monsters. It’s a fast read that will for sure give you some anxiety as you read and I think it does isolation very well.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Rape and Sexual assault
Moderate: Murder, Misogyny, and Homophobia
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