The Deep

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Part of what made this book nice and scary for me was the bizarre world it brought me to. I had no idea what to expect, which is something I’ve come to appreciate in every book I’ve read by Cutter. It’s got some very interesting characters too. The scientists are without exception a trip to behold. That doesn’t mean it’s a bad book, or a bad ending. Overall The Deep is actually quite good; an effective horror yarn, well-versed in atmospheric tension and a good dose of mutation-style gore.

I was so worried about the dog in this story, literally the WHOLE TIME, that it made it impossible for me to enjoy it. This is a very dark book in tone and description. The plot might seem to be one thing, but it turns out to be another thing entirely. It’s about the grotesque fears we harbor as children and then as adults ; how we embrace those fears through memory and or forgetfulness. The novel follows a troop of Boy Scouts who must deal with not only the threats posed by killer tapeworms, but also the homicidal and sociopathic tendencies of one of their own. I know this is a personal taste issue and may affect others completely differently, or not at all. That is completely fine.John Carpenter's The Thing is sacred ground. The scene with the disembodied hand that had an arachnid-like appearance was straight out of the movie. Not a tribute. Just a repeat. I was more offended than disappointed. Luke mostly just yammers on about how awful it is being eight miles under the surface of the ocean, how much pressure he feels, how he feels like he's losing his mind. Oh, and he dreams about this fat, evil mother. She's really, really fat by the way. This fact is pounded into the reader's brain. (He also hears his fat, evil mother in his mind, sort of a fat, evil Greek Chorus. It gets old. Fast.) Luke's defining characteristic is that his five year old son disappeared in a park years ago and Luke has never recovered from that. All across the USA, people are showing up dead. The deaths don't appear to be connected in any way until one particular death occurs and gets the Secretary of Defense's attention. He arranges for a task force to investigate. You are a braver soul than I am. I’m not going near Cutter ever again, because I know my limits. This is why I skimmed after a certain point. I was a bit intrigued by the ending and the blatant Lovecraft influence but the journey was too much for me. So it succeeds at being utterly horrifying but personally, I need something more than just the utter bleakness that this book has to offer.

Allow me to introduce Luke. He’s not a fan of the plague. He’s watching the world around him run on fumes, like a whole society of alcoholics the morning after a bachelor party. He’s been requested by his brother Clayton, one of the scientists toiling in the submerged station. Thing is, Luke comes from a family that included an abusive mother who minced their emotional well-being. He hasn’t spoken to Clayton in years, and even when they were on less fist-fighty terms, Clayton wasn’t all that interested in Luke as a human, let alone a brother. The Deep has been hailed as the perfect mix of The Abyss and The Shining, so I was excited to ~dive~ into this one ( el oh el). I enjoyed what I read for the most part, especially how successful Cutter is at creating such an intensely claustrophobic sense of terror as the main character enters the underwater lab down in the Challenger Deep. Unfortunately I ended up DNF'ing at around 65 percent. I personally hate not finishing a book. Loathe it. And as such I very rarely do so, unless things are truly dire. Or, in this case, obviously leading to a brutal animal death. A mysterious disease dubbed “the ‘gets” is ravaging the human population. Starting off slowly, it hinders your ability to remember where you parked or where you left your wallet. In time, it advances to the point where you forget to breathe and your heart forgets to beat. 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).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. There was not one redeeming quality about him and if I were his brother, I would never have even bothered going to the Trieste in the first place.

He is working on a cure for the 'Gets. A plague that is sweeping and killing most of the country. You start not remembering little stuff, then the bigger stuff, then you just forget how your body functions and you croak.

Publication Order of Short Stories/Novellas

There are also a couple of other scientists involved but we barely see them which leads to more not caring.

Unfortunately, The Deep barely has characters much less ones I cared about when the horrible things happened to them. In fact, the book only has one character that we ever really get to know -- Luke -- and he isn't terribly interesting or memorable or clever. I'm almost at a loss as to how to describe this book. It's a claustrophobic nightmare of one man's sanity unraveling when confronted with an alien horror eight miles below the ocean's surface. It took me forever to get through because I could only handle so much at a time. It reminds me of John Carpenter's The Thing and James Cameron's The Abyss, with some Stephen King thrown in.

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Parental Incest: Clayton's mother controlled him by rewarding him sexually for doing her dirty work. Eventually it caused him to murder her via slow poisoning. I would have given my first born for an ARC of this book. Endless thanks to NetGalley for giving it to me for free in exchange for an honest review.