A review by callipsofacto
Mermaids and Other Mysteries of the Deep by Elizabeth Bear, Caitlín R. Kiernan, Neil Gaiman

3.0

I had a hiatus of nearly two years in the middle of this book, during which I read very little of anything. When I finally did resolve to finish it, I found it a bit of a trudge to the end. I find that strange, because I think most of these stories are good. A couple of them are very good. But to me, the anthology suffers a bit from the components being too much the same. While they are about slightly different creatures and mythologies (mermaids, selkies, rusalka, sirens, etc.), set in different places and times, and employ styles ranging from modern and realistic, to antiquated and fantastical, to outright poetry, the emotional tone of every story is almost identical. Melancholy, loss and regret dominate this book. And while it can be very effective for an individual story, when you string a dozen or more together, it becomes wearying. I suspect if I had used these stories as palate cleansers between other books, I would have enjoyed each of them much more than I did trying to power through the lot all at once (or twice, as it turned out).