Overgrowth is Mira Grant’s (the penname of Seanan McGuire) newest science fiction novel. We follow Stasia who has always said that she was an alien disguised as a human and the armada is coming. When an alien signal is broadcast people start to realize that she wasn’t lying and it may be too late.
As the story is told from Stasia’s point of view and she is one of the aliens she is a bit of an unreliable narrator. While this is a science fiction/horror novel it does focus on found family and caring for those who love you and you love but that can hurt you as well. Stasia wants her friends and family to be protected from the invasion but knows there is nothing that can stop it and nothing she can do. The invasion starts more as a back drop since Stasia cares more about how she and those she cares about are impacted vs humanity and the world as a whole. However, when the armada arrives we get an alien invasion that can’t be controlled or stopped by humanity.
I was not expecting how the alien invasion would go or be shown as mush more Invasion of the Body Snatchers than something like War of the Worlds. Many are killed but some are given the option to be assimilated and become a “plant” person so you are still you but also changed.
While I did love this it’s not my favorite Mira Grant work which is Into the Drowning Deep. However, with the attention that Overgrowth has gotten from the book box companies I hope more people will read and enjoy her other works. I would also recommend looking up trigger warnings as there are some scenes that I feel could be triggering to some including body horror and the death of a child.
Alien Echo by Mira Grant is a young adult book set in the Alien franchise and is cannon to the rest of the series. It follows the story of twin sisters, Olivia and Viola, on a new world where their parents work as xenobiolgists but when an Alien threat that no one has ever seen rips their world apart they must adapt to survive.
Rolling in the Deep by Mira Grant is a novella about a research vessel going to the Mariana Trench to find Mermaids. Commissioned by the Imagine Network (which feels to me like if you combined the Discovery Channel fake documentaries with Asylum the creators of Sharknado), the scientist think that the company sponsoring the trip is just going to film a mockumentary but they end up finding real mermaids who are not kind or beautiful. This book is technically a prequel to Into the Drowning Deep but it works as a stand alone. However, if you want to have no information about what the mermaids are like and the twist at the end of In to the Drowning Deep read the full length novel first. I didn’t know about the novella when I first read the novel so they work in either order. I didn’t connect to the characters as much due to how short the book is but what is there is great. It made me want more from this world and story.
Into the Drowning Deep by Mira Grant is a science fiction horror novel about a research ship going out to the Mariana Trench to find mermaids and what happened to the ship, the Atargatis, that went out seven years previously. This is a reread for me and I loved it just as much as the first time I read it. The characters are amazing and complex from the woman who convinced Image that mermaids existed, the sister of one of the missing from the previous expedition, two big game hunters and many others. The wonderful thing about McGuire’s stories is she adds diverse characters in a way that is natural, they are diverse because our world is, this includes deaf sisters and a journalist who is both a lesbian and autistic.
Parasite is the first book in the Parasitology trilogy by Mira Grant (aka Seanan McGuire). In the year 2027 humanity no longer deals with sickness and disease due the genetically engineered tapeworms created by SymboGen that everyone now carries. The story primarily follows Sally Mitchel who nearly died six years ago but was saved by the SymboGen tape worm. However, things are starting to go wrong with the tape worms and people are not acting like they should so Sally must figure out what is going on and her new place in the world.
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