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dknippling 's review for:
The Deep
by Nick Cutter
The world is ravaged by a strange disease called the Gets that causes memory to break down--even the memory of things like how to breathe. And at the bottom of the ocean floor is humanity's last, questionable hope.
On the plus side - the writing is really good. The small-scale choices are all enjoyable and gripping. On the minus side - the story was predictable and felt like a "Okay, I've read some horror, what elements should I include in my story?" checklist. Fear of the dark? Mysterious plague? Messages scrawled in blood? BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE! We have abusive parents, giggling evil children, fingers reaching out of sewer grates, bugs, characters with a dark past...and I'm not even hitting major plot points yet. And I found it really annoying when a tense scene was interrupted by a long flashback and having the narrator "oh!" himself back to the main plot all the time. Tension? What's that...and the ending has very little to do with the beginning. Given the concept of the book, it felt like a broken promise. The end that resulted was the end I guessed after a couple of minutes of story.
A couple of really solid creepy moments. I feel like I'll be back to the author to see what else he's doing; I get the feeling that he'll start writing work that's less "all the things!!!" and more personal pretty soon, at which point I'll probably like it a lot.
I listened to this on audio and liked the reading quite a bit.
On the plus side - the writing is really good. The small-scale choices are all enjoyable and gripping. On the minus side - the story was predictable and felt like a "Okay, I've read some horror, what elements should I include in my story?" checklist. Fear of the dark? Mysterious plague? Messages scrawled in blood? BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE! We have abusive parents, giggling evil children, fingers reaching out of sewer grates, bugs, characters with a dark past...and I'm not even hitting major plot points yet. And I found it really annoying when a tense scene was interrupted by a long flashback and having the narrator "oh!" himself back to the main plot all the time. Tension? What's that...and the ending has very little to do with the beginning. Given the concept of the book, it felt like a broken promise. The end that resulted was the end I guessed after a couple of minutes of story.
A couple of really solid creepy moments. I feel like I'll be back to the author to see what else he's doing; I get the feeling that he'll start writing work that's less "all the things!!!" and more personal pretty soon, at which point I'll probably like it a lot.
I listened to this on audio and liked the reading quite a bit.