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A review by larry1138
The Deep by Nick Cutter
dark
sad
tense
fast-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? Yes
0.0
I'm opening with this disclaimer: for those of you who are into detailed gore scenes, depressing character backstories, and psychological horror, then this book might actually be good for you. For me, this was self induced torture to read because I went into it thinking it would be a horror experience that I could enjoy. I was very wrong and I'm genuinely glad to be done with the book, which has in fact taught me to set proper boundaries on books: if a book is actually causing a negative physiological or psychological reaction in me, I should definitely stop reading it fully.
This book made me feel nauseated physically and sad mentally, and in the end I didn't even get a modicum of a satisfying ending. Perhaps I should have read some reviews first before I purchased the book but just going by the description, it seemed like this would be right up my ally. I actually typically hate horror, but there is a subgenre that I absolutely LOVE: science fiction horror where a group of people is trapped on a spaceship or space station and something is hunting them. I have no idea why that's really the only horror I can tolerate, but I just know I like it. Underwater research bases are similar to space stations in terms of aesthetic so I enjoy those stories too. I've had great fun reading books in this same genre and playing videogames and watching movies and TV in related genres. There are little throwbacks to some of these very media pieces in this book in fact. And yet, this book was a horrible experience for me for one very important reason: it's not what was advertised.
I thought this story was going to be something akin to the movie Underwater mixed with a little Event Horizon/Pandorum/Dead Space for the psychological parts. What I got was a story that bounced around every possible phobia in the grossest possible ways with the cruelest possible ending. The "trapped in a station with something hunting them" was really just superficial set dressing for what seemed to be Nick Cutter's bread and butter: gore and trauma.
I have a sensitive stomach, so too much goo/blood/vomit/slime/pus/ichor/filth or any other descriptor you want to use makes me sick. I did not, in any way, expect there to be SO MANY disgusting scenes of things bursting out of things, things being squashed, and sound effects of oozing and dripping and squirming. It was ridiculous. I will never see the appeal to gorefests and I will never understand people who like them. Hell, videogames with blood and guts are fine because the gore in those is either realistic (which I can handle) or ridiculous and over the top (which allows me to distance myself from any nauseous feeling). Cutter describes things in horrible detail, and since I have an active imagination, things got very intense. If you have a sensitive stomach, you should not read this book.
The other specialty seems to be emotional trauma. Half of this book isn't even spent inside the Trieste (the name of the underwater research lab). It's spent in the main character's flashbacks. We get to experience the incredibly traumatized life of Luke. These trauma's could have been interesting chances for character and story development if tackled in a sensitive way with a character and story that had the potential for a redemption arc. But this is not that story. The traumas are dumped on Luke incessantly. Hell, even if you wanted to write a book where trauma does actually tragically consume someone, you could've done it WAY better than this. And that's just the mental and emotional flashback trauma. There's plenty of physical trauma to be had whenever we are present with Luke in the station. Bodies are crushed, infested, warped, perverted, violated, and broken.
And perhaps most unforgivable in this book is animal cruelty and animal trauma. Humans can be evil and die off (that's basically the entire focus of modern horror) but nobody except for sociopaths and psychopaths wants to experience animals suffer and die. If you're sensitive to this in particular, stay away from this book. I was able to just blow through these scenes, I didn't want to add too much to my already depressed and saddened mental state from all the other traumas present.
So there I was, approaching the end of the book, actively suffering nausea and having a heavy chest due to sadness. How will Luke and the others survive? How will the aforementioned 'Gets disease be cured? How will these very traumatized characters avoid being consumed by the station? I needed a break of some sort and I sort of got it. There were two moments where Luke seemed to confront a horror in the station but had the mental fortitude and growth to deal with it. "Here we are!" I probably said to myself. The story and characters are finally... protagonizing, and any minute now we'll get a great resolution to a really horrifying story. My suffering will all be worth it.
Spoilers Ahead:
The ending of this book is confusing and incredibly unsatisfying. Not only do we not get a solution to the problem of the Gets disease, we get an out-of-nowhere cosmic horror resolution that results in all the characters dying and likely the eventual destruction of humanity on Earth. We also discover that the incredibly traumatizing life Luke and his brother Clayton had led was the result of this cosmic horror toying with humanity. But is Luke, when presented with this new information, stiffened in resolve to destroy the source of his life's pain? No. He gives into it and let's his past traumas consume him. Perhaps not by choice, he has just gone through an experience that seems to destroy human minds. But then humanity is doomed. The end.
So I just suffered through nausea and sadness to experience bleakness? What an incredibly awful use of my time. I had a somewhat similar reaction to the ending of the horror movie Life, but at least Life had an interesting and likeable cast of characters, used a monster that was plausible in-universe, and didn't make me want to vomit and/or call my therapist. I was so emotionally and physically traumatized I needed my friend to hug me for a bit (thank you, Victoria). After recovering, I looked at further reviews on Goodreads and things started to make a little more sense.
From what I've seen, this book has very mixed reviews. This was my first Nick Cutter book, so while The Troop intrigued me with its description, same as The Deep, I don't think I'll delve into it if there are similar gore scenes in it. Apparently though, to fans of Nick Cutter, this book is actually rather disappointing. Characters are unlikable, the story is nonsense, and even the horror elements are copy-pasted or extremely derivative.
After some reflection, I do realize that Cutter threw EVERYTHING into this book. Most conceivable traumas and phobias are here: thalassaphobia (fear of the ocean), claustrophobia, fear of gore, fear of the loss of a family member, fear of an abuser, fear of animal abuse, fear of insects, body horror (things growing inside you, your body not listening to your brain, body parts changing to other things), fear of being hunted, fear of the dark, etc. You name it, it's probably here. And while empathetic little me seemed to be emotionally affected and manipulated by some of these, it was for no purpose and no greater message. It's like Cutter threw an amalgamation of horror tropes and traumas into an underwater station just to see what would happen without considering how to effectively use those traumas and tropes to tell an interesting story.
Film critics might be familiar with this in certain bad movies: you can write all the cool action scenes you want, but if you don't have a coherent story to tie them together, then there's very little point to the movie. Writers have to cut cool stuff all the time to maintain a consistent theme or tempo or aesthetic. Nothing in The Deep was consistent, it was jarring gorefest to jarring trauma flashback to jarring station horror over and over and over again.
There was no real ending payoff. Luke went through his entire traumatizing life just to give up and doom humanity to extinction? What's the message here, Cutter, to people with actual trauma who may have gone through some of the same experiences as Luke? Don't give in to your trauma or you'll hurt other people and worst case doom the Earth? Or, since Luke's trauma was influenced by cosmic beings, your trauma is not your fault, just don't go down to the bottom of the ocean? Was there any theme or greater purpose to this book or did you just want a playground of horror ideas because you like writing gore and trauma scenes?
This book is advertised on the back cover as a story about a brave team that goes down to an ocean floor research station to potentially find a cure to a disease that's ravaging Earth's population but they find an evil down there. The quotes on the back and front promise: "unflinching bleakness... all-out horror...unshakable haunting...[and making] you question your sanity." Nothing in the advertising mentioned anything about gore in particular. I was basically promised Event Horizon but perhaps scarier and in the ocean. What I got was worse in every conceivable way.
A huge not recommend (really a stay away) for... basically most people. If you are someone who likes gore porn or torture porn, then fine, go ahead. As I mentioned earlier, I never understood people who liked gore a lot, or who were fans of the Saw series for example. Perhaps I'm too empathetic, and my stomach is too weak, to engage with this horror. I will continue, however, to be on the lookout for excellent sci fi horror books like Dead Silence, Salvation Day, Devolution, and Annihilation.
This book made me feel nauseated physically and sad mentally, and in the end I didn't even get a modicum of a satisfying ending. Perhaps I should have read some reviews first before I purchased the book but just going by the description, it seemed like this would be right up my ally. I actually typically hate horror, but there is a subgenre that I absolutely LOVE: science fiction horror where a group of people is trapped on a spaceship or space station and something is hunting them. I have no idea why that's really the only horror I can tolerate, but I just know I like it. Underwater research bases are similar to space stations in terms of aesthetic so I enjoy those stories too. I've had great fun reading books in this same genre and playing videogames and watching movies and TV in related genres. There are little throwbacks to some of these very media pieces in this book in fact. And yet, this book was a horrible experience for me for one very important reason: it's not what was advertised.
I thought this story was going to be something akin to the movie Underwater mixed with a little Event Horizon/Pandorum/Dead Space for the psychological parts. What I got was a story that bounced around every possible phobia in the grossest possible ways with the cruelest possible ending. The "trapped in a station with something hunting them" was really just superficial set dressing for what seemed to be Nick Cutter's bread and butter: gore and trauma.
I have a sensitive stomach, so too much goo/blood/vomit/slime/pus/ichor/filth or any other descriptor you want to use makes me sick. I did not, in any way, expect there to be SO MANY disgusting scenes of things bursting out of things, things being squashed, and sound effects of oozing and dripping and squirming. It was ridiculous. I will never see the appeal to gorefests and I will never understand people who like them. Hell, videogames with blood and guts are fine because the gore in those is either realistic (which I can handle) or ridiculous and over the top (which allows me to distance myself from any nauseous feeling). Cutter describes things in horrible detail, and since I have an active imagination, things got very intense. If you have a sensitive stomach, you should not read this book.
The other specialty seems to be emotional trauma. Half of this book isn't even spent inside the Trieste (the name of the underwater research lab). It's spent in the main character's flashbacks. We get to experience the incredibly traumatized life of Luke. These trauma's could have been interesting chances for character and story development if tackled in a sensitive way with a character and story that had the potential for a redemption arc. But this is not that story. The traumas are dumped on Luke incessantly. Hell, even if you wanted to write a book where trauma does actually tragically consume someone, you could've done it WAY better than this. And that's just the mental and emotional flashback trauma. There's plenty of physical trauma to be had whenever we are present with Luke in the station. Bodies are crushed, infested, warped, perverted, violated, and broken.
And perhaps most unforgivable in this book is animal cruelty and animal trauma. Humans can be evil and die off (that's basically the entire focus of modern horror) but nobody except for sociopaths and psychopaths wants to experience animals suffer and die. If you're sensitive to this in particular, stay away from this book. I was able to just blow through these scenes, I didn't want to add too much to my already depressed and saddened mental state from all the other traumas present.
So there I was, approaching the end of the book, actively suffering nausea and having a heavy chest due to sadness. How will Luke and the others survive? How will the aforementioned 'Gets disease be cured? How will these very traumatized characters avoid being consumed by the station? I needed a break of some sort and I sort of got it. There were two moments where Luke seemed to confront a horror in the station but had the mental fortitude and growth to deal with it. "Here we are!" I probably said to myself. The story and characters are finally... protagonizing, and any minute now we'll get a great resolution to a really horrifying story. My suffering will all be worth it.
Spoilers Ahead:
The ending of this book is confusing and incredibly unsatisfying. Not only do we not get a solution to the problem of the Gets disease, we get an out-of-nowhere cosmic horror resolution that results in all the characters dying and likely the eventual destruction of humanity on Earth. We also discover that the incredibly traumatizing life Luke and his brother Clayton had led was the result of this cosmic horror toying with humanity. But is Luke, when presented with this new information, stiffened in resolve to destroy the source of his life's pain? No. He gives into it and let's his past traumas consume him. Perhaps not by choice, he has just gone through an experience that seems to destroy human minds. But then humanity is doomed. The end.
So I just suffered through nausea and sadness to experience bleakness? What an incredibly awful use of my time. I had a somewhat similar reaction to the ending of the horror movie Life, but at least Life had an interesting and likeable cast of characters, used a monster that was plausible in-universe, and didn't make me want to vomit and/or call my therapist. I was so emotionally and physically traumatized I needed my friend to hug me for a bit (thank you, Victoria). After recovering, I looked at further reviews on Goodreads and things started to make a little more sense.
From what I've seen, this book has very mixed reviews. This was my first Nick Cutter book, so while The Troop intrigued me with its description, same as The Deep, I don't think I'll delve into it if there are similar gore scenes in it. Apparently though, to fans of Nick Cutter, this book is actually rather disappointing. Characters are unlikable, the story is nonsense, and even the horror elements are copy-pasted or extremely derivative.
After some reflection, I do realize that Cutter threw EVERYTHING into this book. Most conceivable traumas and phobias are here: thalassaphobia (fear of the ocean), claustrophobia, fear of gore, fear of the loss of a family member, fear of an abuser, fear of animal abuse, fear of insects, body horror (things growing inside you, your body not listening to your brain, body parts changing to other things), fear of being hunted, fear of the dark, etc. You name it, it's probably here. And while empathetic little me seemed to be emotionally affected and manipulated by some of these, it was for no purpose and no greater message. It's like Cutter threw an amalgamation of horror tropes and traumas into an underwater station just to see what would happen without considering how to effectively use those traumas and tropes to tell an interesting story.
Film critics might be familiar with this in certain bad movies: you can write all the cool action scenes you want, but if you don't have a coherent story to tie them together, then there's very little point to the movie. Writers have to cut cool stuff all the time to maintain a consistent theme or tempo or aesthetic. Nothing in The Deep was consistent, it was jarring gorefest to jarring trauma flashback to jarring station horror over and over and over again.
There was no real ending payoff. Luke went through his entire traumatizing life just to give up and doom humanity to extinction? What's the message here, Cutter, to people with actual trauma who may have gone through some of the same experiences as Luke? Don't give in to your trauma or you'll hurt other people and worst case doom the Earth? Or, since Luke's trauma was influenced by cosmic beings, your trauma is not your fault, just don't go down to the bottom of the ocean? Was there any theme or greater purpose to this book or did you just want a playground of horror ideas because you like writing gore and trauma scenes?
This book is advertised on the back cover as a story about a brave team that goes down to an ocean floor research station to potentially find a cure to a disease that's ravaging Earth's population but they find an evil down there. The quotes on the back and front promise: "unflinching bleakness... all-out horror...unshakable haunting...[and making] you question your sanity." Nothing in the advertising mentioned anything about gore in particular. I was basically promised Event Horizon but perhaps scarier and in the ocean. What I got was worse in every conceivable way.
A huge not recommend (really a stay away) for... basically most people. If you are someone who likes gore porn or torture porn, then fine, go ahead. As I mentioned earlier, I never understood people who liked gore a lot, or who were fans of the Saw series for example. Perhaps I'm too empathetic, and my stomach is too weak, to engage with this horror. I will continue, however, to be on the lookout for excellent sci fi horror books like Dead Silence, Salvation Day, Devolution, and Annihilation.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Death, Domestic abuse, Gore, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , and Injury/Injury detail
Minor: Animal death and Child abuse
Nothing on the advertising on the book itself indicates this will be a book with lots of trauma and gore, be aware of this if you decide to pick it up