Reviews with content warning for Domestic abuse - The Deep

A titillating journey into the Mariana Trench and the mind. Be prepared for the monsters in your closet to come put to visit as you dive deep into the realm of horror! A well written story that leaves much to the tortures of your imagination!
Find yourself stuck in a loop of endless and increasingly terrifying nightmares with Luke who just wants to help save mankind... don't look to hard at the shadows, they might be looking back!

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szyca's review against another edition

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adventurous dark tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.25

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shetland_pone's review

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challenging dark funny mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

This was really good and terrifying until somewhere close to the end where it crossed the line into so absurd it's literally hilarious. Like I don't even know what to say. At some point, maybe around 75%, I've honestly forgotten, it just started to go off the rails.

Clayton's hand falling off like a lizard's tail and groping Luke.
That moment when the scientist guy described his raging boner and mentioned how even his kinky ex couldn't make him that hard.
The hand then sprouting another 7 hands and then spider scuttling over to a keypad and opening a door.
Pretty much everything involving the bees.
Clayton having an Einstein poster to cover up the hole.
Luke dragging Clayton's unconscious body through a tunnel while being chased by a giant maggot with the heads of his mother, ex-wife, and missing son.
Toy basically being flattened by the research station and 8 miles worth of water, except slowly.
The two dogs being fused together and sucked through a supernatural sparkly goo hole while Luke cried his eyes out.

I literally just laughed at these moments.

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dezaraemd's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

This was the most gripping, intense, horrifying book I have ever read. Well done, Nick Cutter.

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jesshorn10's review against another edition

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5.0

This book was so good! The way the author built tension throughout the story was very well done, and there were lots of scenes that genuinely creeped me out. The twists were unexpected, and the imagery was horrifying at times. Parts of the story reminded me of IT and The Shining in the best possible ways. I loved this!

Check content warnings though!

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hannanni41's review against another edition

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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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papercrowns's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

I really enjoyed The Troop—I gave it five stars—and I remember picking that one up because of the praise it received and how many of my fave booktubers said it was super disturbing.

Well, I don't remember too many specifics about The Troop (my memory's fault, not the book's), but I do recall thinking it was awesome and gross, but not super disturbing per se. Well, The Deep was certainly disturbing. But, I understand why The Troop is the Nick Cutter book people talk about most, because while The Deep does what it says on the tin in terms of the horror, it's got its problems.

An overuse of onomatopoeia to the point of distraction.
The story touches on a lot of serious, uncomfortable topics, and they certainly gave me the ick but for the most part, these serve the story and felt intentional. However, there was some fatphobia that didn't quite feel necessary or serve the story that I could have done without. It was very like
"Ooh, she got fat, gross! We know she's gonna be a baddie!"
The general dialogue was fine, but when it came to banter, it felt a bit forced and unintentionally cringe, particularly between the main character and his brother.
The 'Gets, the worldwide pandemic that instigates the whole narrative, was super interesting but is largely forgotten once we get to the underwater lab in the Challenger Deep. It was such an interesting concept that it would have been great to see it have more impact to the story rather than being a throwaway plot device.

These things brought it down to a 4-star read for me, but none of them derailed the story. It's a real wild ride and intensely unsettling; exactly what I want from a horror book. Nick Cutter excels in describing horrifying, uncomfortable, and balls-to-the-wall cuckoo-bananas situations.

His descriptions of the characters' psychological trauma as they grapple with desperate situations are so intense and unnerving; I often found myself wanting to put the book down to give myself a break but also being absolutely unable to tear my eyes from the page. There was one claustrophobic sequence in particular where Cutter describes

the main characters crawling through an access tunnel that gets narrower and narrower with no guarantee that they'll be able to get out at the other end

. Ooof, my skin was crawling, my heart was racing, and I almost threw the book across the room in vicarious panic.

And frankly, that's some chef's-kiss horror writing if you ask me.

I can't wait to read more Nick Cutter, cuz I know it'll be a grand creep-fest that does exactly what it says on the tin. However, I will say that I'd love to see a bit more character diversity, particularly more women.

Worth checking the trigger warnings before reading if you have triggers. Definitely do not read if bad things happening to animals in your reading is a dealbreaker. 😬

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apolloniablooms's review against another edition

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dark tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

Like a lot of horror/thrillers this book suffers from hitting the peak amount of tenseness a person can feel really early on and then maintaining it instead of giving the reader relief then building tension again. By the end I was skimming. Bad guy is bad because of mental illness. Wish it had been a short story. Would be a good premise for a video game.

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