A review by hannanni41
The Deep by Nick Cutter

dark mysterious 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? It's complicated

2.5

I really wanted to love this book. The description of the book made it seem like exactly my kind of thing: a mysterious evil lurking in an underwater lab that's 8 miles below the surface in the Marianas Trench. I had seen comparisons with The Abyss, The Shining, Alien, Sphere, Event Horizon, and Solaris. 

Unfortunately the story has absolutely zero slow burn and cranks up to an 11 almost immediately (and stays insane the whole time with no regard for pacing) and it felt like it was mostly just flashbacks and rarely creepy underwater lab.
Flashbacks to the protagonist's awful, abusive childhood with his evil fat, super fat (did I mention she's fat? The author takes every opportunity he can to remind us) mom. Flashbacks to tell us more about his sociopath scientist brother that we're supposed to care about saving. More flashbacks to the protagonist's son being kidnapped and his marriage falling apart. Other people describing their flashbacks to the protag or him reading about their flashbacks in journals. Flashbacks!


There are a few genuinely good moments that unnerved me, like
the stuff with the bees
, but not enough. Most of the parts that were supposed to be scary either felt like an exercise in how much misery the author could put the characters through or were derivative of the (much) better works this book gets compared to. The inciting incident of the nonsense pandemic doesn't even end up mattering to the story. It just gets shoved to the side with all the other nonsense plot points.

Also, there is so much description and talk about a millipede incident. It goes on for so long that it stops being scary and is just really gross. Please stop talking about the millipede.

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