Deeper

July 30, 2007
Fans who hoped for a sequel to Long's 1999 bestseller The Descent may be sorry to have their wish granted, as this fumbling thriller fails to expand on the tantalizing concepts explored in its predecessor. Set 10 years after spelunkers stumbled into a literal Hell and later led a supposedly successful expedition to kill Satan, this story opens on Halloween, when underground creatures abduct dozens of children and slay any adults trying to stop them. Grieving mother and widow Rebecca Coltrane, the media-anointed public face of the disaster, makes clever political use of the publicity to launch a major military expedition underneath the Earth in search of her daughter and the other missing children. As war brews underground between the explorers and the quasi-human hadals, aboveground tensions increase between China and the U.S. The parallels to the current war on terror are too broadly drawn to be convincing, and whatever larger point Long seeks to make about the source of human evil is lost in numerous gory scenes of butchery.

July 1, 2007
Nearly ten years have elapsed since Long ("Year Zero") took us on an imaginative yet terrifying journey to the center of Earth in "The Descent". Apparently, this is the second novel in a planned "Descent" trilogy. We are reunited with linguist Ali von Schade a decade after she reemerged from the depths of Earth's subterranean world following her capture and assimilation by the indigenous species known as Hadals. Now von Schade devotes her life to the study of the artifacts, language, and peoples of that underground realm. When groups of children suddenly go missing and ritualistic massacres start happening, it becomes clear that the Hadals are responsible. Rescue expeditions ensue, and von Schade is drawn to the depths, haunted by personal demons made manifest by Satan himself. More horror/thriller in the tradition of Clive Barker than an intellectual tale of linguistics and symbology, Long's novel is extremely grisly and gory. Recommended only for popular fiction collections where the author has fans.Laura A.B. Cifelli, Ft. Myers-Lee Cty. P.L., Ft. Myers, FL

Copyright 2007 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from July 1, 2007
In The Descent (1999), Long introduced us to hell: not the biblical hell, but the actual place. Hell, it turns out, is an underground world where a nasty race of humanoids called hadals lived for millennia, occasionally coming to the surface and wreaking havoc. In The Descent, the hadals were wiped out, or so we thought. Now, 10 years later, humans have colonized the Subterrain, but theyre about to find out that some hadals have survived and that you cant really kill Satan. At least as exciting as its predecessor, this flashy, fast-paced sequel features a motley crew of charactersincluding one of the human survivors of the last novel, Ali Von Schade, who ventures deep into hell to rescue children who were abducted from the surface. In addition to Ali, the characters include a NASA researcher who spent two years exploring hell and who now has massive physical deformities, including a pair of horns; the mother of one of the missing children, whose journey into the Subterrain takes an unexpected toll on her; a filmmaker who disappeared into hell several years ago and who seems to have survived its perils; and a Navy SEAL sniper. Long has a knack for telling stories with inherently over-the-top premises, but he tells them so well and with such passion that we are brought totally under his spell. His characters are real and complex, his dialogue sharp, and his narrative stylish and frightening. This is one case where readers should be enthusiastically encouraged to go to hell.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2007, American Library Association.)