A review by heathengray
The Deep: We all know the story of the Titanic . . . don't we? by Alma Katsu

dark emotional mysterious 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

2.0

Statler: The Deep?
Waldorf: More like 'The Dearth!'
Both: Doh! Ho! Ho! Hooo!

The best thing I can say about The Deep, is that it is written in such a easy, breezy, style, that it lends itself well to skimming. It could be that's because it takes ages for Katsu to get to any point, or description, that skipping a few lines doesn't harm your experience. Any other author would have excised about 150 pages to create a taught drama, but Katsu wants you to stay for as long as possible.

And I admit, I was intrigued. A Ghost Story on the Titanic? I'm in! But there were many problems...

First, while her style of writing is quite lovely (perhaps too nice for a horror). She tells this story over 2 interwoven timelines. Cleverly so she can get in some good cliff hangers and revelations. Fine. But the 1912 timeline (set on The Titanic) is told in the past tense, the 1916 (set on The Britannic, her sister ship) is written in the present tense. Obviously done to create some kind of immediacy. But at the start of the book, this took my brain some moments to shift into the correct gear, and by the end, the two timelines had completed so most actions in 1916 were describing the past, so set in the past tense. It was a bit of a failure in prose device, if I'm honest. Also I counted at least 5 variations of the same metaphor along the lines of "She/he may as well have slapped/punched her/him for the hurt the words they spoke caused". Not quite drinking game worthy, but noticeable.  

Second, I'm sorry to say this isn't much of a ghost story. Katsu confuses nothing happening with building tension. And what tension is there is build by people's deteriorating mental states. There's no pressing unnameable horror here to cause that. People on the Titanic according to Katsu were just broken mentally to begin with, and only got worse. There is a ghost, it features in less than 1% of the book. There is plenty of talk about the ghost, repeating what we already know. A wasted oppertunity.

Thirdly, despite being set on the Titanic and later the Britannic, there is nothing here to root it to those ships. A survivor of both sinkings was the inspiration for the book, but beyond the detailed historic decorations and name-throwing, this could have taken place on a space ship for all the narrative is worth. We mainly just learn that rich people don't understand poor people, and how life was cheap, and there are certainly other books that do this better. I didn't much like the use of real historical figures front and center in the narrative either. No matter how awful they may have been, it strikes me as tawdry. Despite Katsu's flowery descriptions of the boats, there was nothing much to separate characters, except very shallow traits: pregnant, newly-not-pregnant, cruel-rich-fasion-designer, gambling-addict-now-rich, big-burly-honest-boxer, toned-conman-boxer, etc. The use of historical figures seems to have been more of a noose than anything.

At the end of the day, this is an almost girlish fantasy about chasing your man and fixing him, because it must be destiny. However I did enjoy the sub-plot of the two boxers aboard, who happen to come from my hometown of Pontypridd in Wales. I'm not an expert of turn of the last century valley vernacular, but I don't think anybody called their fathers 'da', when the Welsh is 'tad', so perhaps Katsu confused her Celtic languages. Surely something a former CIA senior intelligence analyst would take pride in. There are also a couple of lines of a Welsh song (of sorts) I'm sure were just google translated, gibberish adjacent.

And so I finished The Deep, disappointed. I think I know when I'm going to be disappointed when I get 1/3 into a book and think "Still a solid 3 out of 5", because if I do that, the score can only drop.




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