Reviews tagging 'Fatphobia'

Mélység by Nick Cutter

89 reviews

esslesmcgee's review against another edition

dark mysterious sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Incest, Fatphobia, Animal cruelty, Injury/Injury detail, Death, Gore, Emotional abuse, Body horror, Blood, Grief, and Confinement

Moderate: Pandemic/Epidemic, Cursing, Medical content, Murder, Suicidal thoughts, Sexual assault, and Kidnapping

Minor: Body shaming and Bullying

cattaylor's review against another edition

I already couldn't get into it, and then the very overtly fatphobic descriptions kicked in and I simply couldn't continue. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty and Fatphobia

jessie_deee's review against another edition

challenging dark sad tense slow-paced

• Loveable characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

Weird and dreamlike, which I usually enjoy but here I found it tough to follow.

Unlike everyone else, I enjoyed the first half more than the second half.  

Gory, but that's not surprising for the horror genre.  I would probably enjoy this more as a tacky B horror movie than I did as a book.

There was more gory animal violence then I was expecting.  I agree with other reviews about the writing being grossly fatphobic.  Also, some repeated factual errors (like describing millipedes vs. centipedes) made it tough for me to fall into the story.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, and Gore

Moderate: Child abuse, Fatphobia, and Sexual assault

gewidder's review against another edition

1.75

Man. There are some good aspects to this novel. The idea of setting it in a research station deep down the Mariana Trench is great because that in and of itself provides a lot of tension and creepiness. Some plot points and some scenes are sufficiently scary. The writing is extremely reminiscient of Stephen King, whose writing I like, and it works here for the most part.

However, and for fucking fuck's sake, is this book - and therefore the author - ever fatphobic. Glaringly so. Offensively so. Now I know that nearly everything and everyone is fatphobic, though that's not to say it should be excused. But this novel really lays it out for all to see, practically parades it in front of the reader. The fat evil character is a tiring stereotype, but I can't imagine how you write a character like this protagonist's mother and not realize you are pouring all your hatred for fat bodies and fat people into it, and that maybe you should take a step back and examine that particular issue. "Hmm, maybe I have an extreme bias that manifests in some real hate?" I can only hope someone told him, though apparently no one who edited this or otherwise read this before it was published had any objection significant enough to filter this out. (Unless it was worse before, which is a terrifying thought.) 

That's my biggest issue with the book, everything else - a bad ending, endlessly repetitive scenes, annoyingly written diary entries by a character, stupidly stereotypical characters - all pale in comparison. They affect my rating and enjoyment, sure, but they are stylistic things, harmless things. The fat hate is not harmless. What's worse, the book makes a point about kindness and empathy toward others and specifically to animals, yet it is deliberately unkind, and even more so hostile, to fat people. 

So, trigger warning.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Fatphobia

chemicallykat's review against another edition

1.75

I'm an absolute sucker for the deep sea. Anything set on the sea floor is automatically on my tbr regardless of genre or quality. If anyone has any recs... let me know!!

Sections of this bored me and other sections seemed like they were just there for shock value. 

This was creepy, dark, and graphic. The beginning was slow but introduced some neat concepts. The middle lost me a bit. I wanted to know what was going on and I was not getting answers! The way this book is written is confusing. Half the time I couldn't figure out what was real and what wasn't.

The writing wasn't to my preference - some scenes felt unnecessary, and the characters and dialogue drove me nuts.

The author tends to make a lot of comparisons, "it looked like a glob of partially set Jell-O" and sometimes these came back-to-back and felt redundant. If you say something is colorless, you don't also have to make a comparison to something colorless in the next line.

The way the main character kept describing his mom weirded me out. Every time she was mentioned, even in passing, he'd make a comment to remind us his mom was fat. In general, character descriptions and characterization were sorely lacking. Characters seemed like they were only there for the plot. There's no development and I could not tell you a single thing about any of them beyond factual things like "scientist" or "father."

Beyond that, the plot was THIN. Chapters are repetitive and everything was predictable. Throwing in a "magical" element felt like a lazy way to skip explaining anything properly, and quite frankly, I don't get it.

The child SA was so unnecessary and didn't add a single thing - so why was it included? There are a million other things that could have been included instead. It didn't add to the creepy/horror factor the book was developing and felt like shock-value because it's thrown in and never dealt with properly.In general, the sexual stuff seemed like it could have been cut. At multiple points there's a paragraph or two detailing how hard a man's dick is. What was the relevance? Am I missing something?

I was intrigued by the mysteries of "the Gets" and the ambrosia, but I don't feel like any of that was wrapped up or handled properly. Instead, this became an intentionally confusing gorefest that had a... weird ending that very much didn't satisfy me

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Confinement, Death, Rape, Blood, Body horror, Death of parent, Fatphobia, Gore, Incest, Medical content, Murder, Animal death, Child death, Child abuse, Sexual assault, and Violence

mexcryptid's review against another edition

dark mysterious tense medium-paced

4.0

Terrifying and oppressive. The Deep scratches so specifically an itch for unsettling isolation horror. The body horror of The Thing meets the scientific mystery of Sphere. While I didn't always appreciate the author's crude choices for thematic imagery (

for example, fixating on the mother's obesity to accentuate the reach of her harm

) I found myself engulfed by the book's steady march of ever intensifying nightmares and, in the name of science, its "progress" towards its final, inevitable conclusion.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Child abuse, Fatphobia, and Animal death

marthadude's review against another edition

challenging dark mysterious sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Body horror, Animal cruelty, Death, Gore, Kidnapping, Torture, Confinement, Death of parent, Fatphobia, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Animal death, Cursing, Emotional abuse, Child abuse, Pandemic/Epidemic, and Violence

Minor: Incest, Physical abuse, Sexual content, Pedophilia, and Cannibalism

Heavy triggers for animal cruelty and fatphobia.

The dog dies/ meets a gate worse than death and it’s really sad and disgusting.

Also if you’re squeamish about bees/insects there’s a lot of that in here.

karmachamillionaire's review against another edition

adventurous dark medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No

3.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Fatphobia

aparker89's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional mysterious sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.25

A titillating journey into the Mariana Trench and the mind. Be prepared for the monsters in your closet to come put to visit as you dive deep into the realm of horror! A well written story that leaves much to the tortures of your imagination! 
Find yourself stuck in a loop of endless and increasingly terrifying nightmares with Luke who just wants to help save mankind... don't look to hard at the shadows, they might be looking back!

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gaslighting, Gore, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Domestic abuse, Child abuse, Medical trauma, Fatphobia, Addiction, Animal cruelty, Blood, Body shaming, Bullying, Confinement, Death, Emotional abuse, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Body horror, and Eating disorder

Moderate: Self harm, Suicide attempt, Cursing, Physical abuse, and Incest

Minor: Adult/minor relationship and Pandemic/Epidemic

duckleberryferry's review against another edition

dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

5.0

What WAS that? 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Blood, Dementia, Emotional abuse, Gore, Pedophilia, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Child death, Kidnapping, Physical abuse, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Body horror, Incest, Injury/Injury detail, Animal death, Fatphobia, Vomit, Adult/minor relationship, Sexual violence, Suicide attempt, Torture, Violence, Body shaming, Cannibalism, Pandemic/Epidemic, Pregnancy, and Self harm