Merciless Mermaids: Tails from the Deep
by Kevin J. Anderson, Kevin J. Anderson, Allyson Longueira
Why You'll Love This
These mermaids aren't granting wishes — they're settling scores, and thirty authors take turns proving how dark the water gets.
- Great if you want: dark, varied fantasy that weaponizes folklore against your comfort
- The experience: anthology pacing — episodic, punchy, each story a fresh plunge
- The writing: thirty distinct voices spanning myth, horror, and literary fantasy
- Skip if: anthology format frustrates you — no single throughline here
About This Book
Forget the gentle, wish-granting creatures of fairy tales — the mermaids gathered in these pages are something far older and far hungrier. Edited by Kevin J. Anderson and Allyson Longueira, this anthology dives into the shadowed waters where desire curdles into obsession, loneliness hardens into menace, and beauty becomes the sharpest kind of trap. With thirty stories and poems drawing from Japanese folklore, bayou mythology, cosmic horror, and corners of human darkness you didn't know needed a name, the collection asks an unsettling question: what if the thing watching you from beneath the surface has been there all along?
What makes this anthology worth reading cover to cover — rather than dipping in and out — is the remarkable tonal range its contributors sustain. Writers like Mercedes Lackey and D.J. Butler bring distinct voices that keep the collection from ever settling into a single register, while the editors have sequenced the pieces with genuine care, letting dread build, release, and rebuild across the book's full length. The result is an anthology that reads less like a sampler and more like a complete, shaped argument for why these particular myths still have teeth.