The Deep
- Brand: Unbranded
Description
Cutter throws all kinds of horror tropes at the reader - a pandemic, body horror, extradimensional gates, ancient evil/Lovecraftian creatures, The Thing-like creatures that pull themselves together after having limbs or heads cut off, self-mutilation, insane ramblings in diary entries, Stephen King-like horrible parents, scary boxes and crawling body parts, eeeeendless hallucinations that might not be hallucinations, an abducted child, wanting sex while terrified (that said, it's never actually done, which makes a change). Cutter reels you in slowly, a bit at a time, you manage to swallow some pretty foul tasting medicine but you keep going, venturing forward-- and then, when you're nice and hooked in the lip-he rips you the rest of the way through the book! The Hesperus has received a transmission from Clayton asking for Luke to come home. An animal doctor who is estranged from his gifted brother, Luke's presence on the Hesperus is nevertheless seen as critical. His escort is Lt. A scientist who escaped the Trieste is found to have attempted suicide by cutting. Since he's infected with the ambrosia, he heals almost instantly, and his body is left a mass of scars. At least he stopped when rapid ascent turned his bones into jelly. This one had quite a bit more. If you are like me and sensitive at all to that type of content, tread with caution.
One warning: As with the other book that I have read by this same author, there are many scenes of animal mutilation and experimentation, etc in here. Some are hallucinations of a character, perhaps, while others, eh, ?? Either way, they are very graphic and very disturbing to animal lovers. That is why my stars are reduced in part.
The beginning was alright and the ending was stupid. That's really all you need to know, but I'll keep going. Then there is Clayton, Luke's older brother, and his defining and really only characteristic is that he's a sociopath who only cares about science. When we see him, it's just so he can be superior to his brother and act smug and provide some plot exposition. Frankly, even as a sociopath he isn't a very interesting one. Scientists are at the bottom of the ocean looking for a cure to a disease called the 'Gets (short for Forgets). Don't worry about knowing anymore since the Gets since it doesn't really matter and is never explained. The scientists are looking for a miracle substance called Ambrosia that can cure pretty much anything except boredom for the reader. What is Ambrosia exactly? Where does it come from? Don't ask because you won't find out except some vague allusions toward the end.
But hey, Clayton’s in the watery beyond, calling out for Luke. So, he heads on down, more out of curiosity than necessity. A morbid curiosity, as he’s interested in what good could possibly come of it. But as he looks at the world around him, he figures it couldn’t be much worse below sea level. Plus, he’s escorted down there by Alice Sykes, a US Navy Lieutenant Commander who isn’t hard on the eyes. And if we’ve learned anything from horror books and movies, we know that the odds for a sexy rendezvous are not beyond reason. Determined to simulate a true-to-life remote island scenario, Tim makes sure to remove any form of communication to the mainland. However, he does bring along a radio because there had been warnings of a potential storm. On the first evening of the trip, Tim notices a boat arriving on the island. Not expecting visitors for another two days, Riggs is wary of the stranger, who, upon inspection, is inhumanly malnourished but otherwise non-threatening. The stranger tells Tim that he needs help and is ravenously hungry. After deliberating, Tim allows the man to rest on the couch inside for the night, but not before telling the boys to stay in their room. the only disappointment i had with this book is that we didn't get more about the 'gets - the plague that inspires the whole undersea research situation in the first place. because that's what fascinated me from the beginning - the symptoms of the plague that had me rapid-fire self-diagnosing:
but something in this book was always doing something weird to my thoughts, when i went deeper, i only concerned with LB, that petite chocolate lab
Well, the scariest part of this book was when the damned submarine descended into the water. I've never really thought about how scary it would be to travel miles underwater and then just hang out at the bottom of the sea. I don't even like snorkeling or scuba diving. I'm not really much of a fish fan either. Hell, why did I even read this book?I hated Clayton with every single fiber of my being. And while I do not need to like every character, any character, actually, this went above and beyond. Speaking of which, the overall plot was a bit all over the place with multiple stories taking place and different timelines going on. It wasn’t too confusing or anything but just a bit much. Again, if Cutter focused more on just one specific aspect of this novel to really hammer it home as seen with “The Troop” this would have been another horror masterpiece. I was so worried about the dog in this story, literally the WHOLE TIME, that it made it impossible for me to enjoy it. What worked about The Troop was that it had characters you cared about. That seems like a pretty crucial aspect of a horror book because if you don't care about the characters, then no matter how horrible the things are that happen to them then, well, it isn't very horrifying IMHO. (Yes, there are exceptions to the rule where you aren't supposed to care about the characters. This isn't one of them.) Yes there are plenty of descriptions of gross things, but when you don't care about the characters, the gross things are far less interesting. Writing about gross things is easy. See this book for that. Writing about characters you care about is a lot harder. See Stephen King for those.
- Fruugo ID: 258392218-563234582
- EAN: 764486781913
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