The Deep

Starred review from September 22, 2014
Fans of unflinching bleakness and all-out horror will love this novel. Expecting to assist in the study of a miraculous cell-regenerating substance discovered deep undersea, veterinarian Luke Nelson descends eight miles to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. What he finds there, in a research lab warped by incredible pressure and trapped in utter darkness, is a mounting wave of physical and mental aberrations. Something down there is testing—or playing with—the scientists and their lab animals. Readers watch as Luke is unpeeled, layer by layer, and reshaped into something terrible. The novel’s horror is notable both for quantity and quality. Where some writers shovel gruesome details into their fiction, Cutter (The Troop) uses a front-end loader. However, his sharp observations and choice of details keep readers from getting numbed by the accumulation of catastrophes; each new shock is freshly disturbing. Genre fans will find this an admirable addition to the list of horror novels that share its title. Agent: Kirby Kim, Janklow & Nesbit Associates.

Narrator Daveed Diggs brings his unique voice to Rivers Solomon's collaborative novella, THE DEEP, inspired by a song of the same name, written by Diggs's band, Clipping. Diggs explores his multilayered world through the voice of Yetu, the historian of an ocean-dwelling people called the Wajinru, descended from pregnant African women thrown overboard during the transatlantic slave trade. Diggs brings different voices to the generations of characters but relies more on description than changes in tone to express emotion. While the story itself was inspired by music and is interwoven with music and sound, there is little reflection of this in the audio production. Although the lack of musicality seems like a missed opportunity, Solomon's words stand strongly on their own. H.C. � AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine