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A review by maraharcher804
The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling
adventurous
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
I was really excited about this book. I heard about it on the Reading Glasses podcast and decided I wanted to read it because it was giving one of the hosts (Brea) nightmares. Maybe my expectations were too high.
1) The title of the book does not fit what the story is about. The book is pitched as being similar to the movie The Descent, but there are no zombies or creatures.
2) That being said, this book is never really scary. The book says at the beginning that there are no real dangers in the cave just perceptions of them...yep. And that makes the tension (which the whole book is based off of) weak and unrealistic.
3) The pacing is inconsistent: one slightly creepy thing would happen every two hundred pages (so twice). The rest was the same monotony of going back to the same camps and literally doing the same climbs and swims over and over and over again. It got boring, and I found myself reading for the sake of getting the book over with.
4) The rules of the world are inconsistent and keep changing.
a) I never really new what a Tunneler was until the end (worms from Dune).
b) I couldn't figure out if the first team had suits on or didn't. It seems that the team didn't wear
suits at the beginning of the climb but wore suits at the end when they died.
c) The fungi (THE WHOLE LUMINOUS THING) didn't have a purpose except I guess to psyche the
protagonist out.
d) The tiny clear bugs didn't have a point either.
e) There is a person that possibly hacked her suit, but that is never fully explained.
f) Her involuntary movements to "go back" into the cave didn't appear until the last quarter of
the book. This is not well established as a rule to the cave.
Overall, it seemed that the author had many ideas about the cave but didn't choose one thing to go with. So we're left with reading half ideas. If this author picked one thing (like someone hacked her suit i.e. ultimate villain or zombies) then the book would be more coherent. I was thinking these dead bodies would be transformed into luminous zombie creatures the whole time. I was waiting for all these solid nuggets of eeriness to pay off but they never did. Nothing ever really happened. It just turned into a fucked up love story. Good for them, but this book title and cover sells a story that it did not deliver.
5) The protagonist Gyre is really hard to like. For a caver trying to survive, she tries to kill herself several times for really no reason. She doesn't listen to the one person that was depending on her success.
6) If Em owned the best tech and could control everything from afar even to the extent of moving Gyre's suit at Camp Six, then WHY NEED A CAVER AT ALL? In the future, do they have drones? The conflict (what little there was) seemed unnecessary.
1) The title of the book does not fit what the story is about. The book is pitched as being similar to the movie The Descent, but there are no zombies or creatures.
2) That being said, this book is never really scary. The book says at the beginning that there are no real dangers in the cave just perceptions of them...yep. And that makes the tension (which the whole book is based off of) weak and unrealistic.
3) The pacing is inconsistent: one slightly creepy thing would happen every two hundred pages (so twice). The rest was the same monotony of going back to the same camps and literally doing the same climbs and swims over and over and over again. It got boring, and I found myself reading for the sake of getting the book over with.
4) The rules of the world are inconsistent and keep changing.
a) I never really new what a Tunneler was until the end (worms from Dune).
b) I couldn't figure out if the first team had suits on or didn't. It seems that the team didn't wear
suits at the beginning of the climb but wore suits at the end when they died.
c) The fungi (THE WHOLE LUMINOUS THING) didn't have a purpose except I guess to psyche the
protagonist out.
d) The tiny clear bugs didn't have a point either.
e) There is a person that possibly hacked her suit, but that is never fully explained.
f) Her involuntary movements to "go back" into the cave didn't appear until the last quarter of
the book. This is not well established as a rule to the cave.
Overall, it seemed that the author had many ideas about the cave but didn't choose one thing to go with. So we're left with reading half ideas. If this author picked one thing (like someone hacked her suit i.e. ultimate villain or zombies) then the book would be more coherent. I was thinking these dead bodies would be transformed into luminous zombie creatures the whole time. I was waiting for all these solid nuggets of eeriness to pay off but they never did. Nothing ever really happened. It just turned into a fucked up love story. Good for them, but this book title and cover sells a story that it did not deliver.
5) The protagonist Gyre is really hard to like. For a caver trying to survive, she tries to kill herself several times for really no reason. She doesn't listen to the one person that was depending on her success.
6) If Em owned the best tech and could control everything from afar even to the extent of moving Gyre's suit at Camp Six, then WHY NEED A CAVER AT ALL? In the future, do they have drones? The conflict (what little there was) seemed unnecessary.