What if the devil unleashed a perfectly unexplainable plague on humanity? If so, isn't it equally possible that God created the perfect, if inexplicable cure?A plague has been unleashed upon humanity: The 'Gets (and the longform of the name is never given, but since the main feature of the disease is to cause people to forget ever-increasingly important information -- until, ultimately, how to breathe -- I assume this is the common name for "The Forgets"?) has decimated the human population, and at some point, an intriguing substance nicknamed Ambrosia is hauled up from the depths of the Marianas Trench; a substance that appears to be a magical cure-all for the plagues of the world, perhaps even, for The 'Gets. Trillions of dollars are spent to create a research station that can withstand the pressures of the ocean floor eight miles down, but when the station stops communicating with the world above, the brother of the lead researcher is sent down to investigate.
I'm not a regular reader of horror fiction, but having immensely enjoyed the campy spine-tingler The Troop, I thought that I could look forward to another tense escape courtesy of author Nick Cutter. But I was wrong. The Deep was a miss for me on so many levels, but most importantly, it felt amateurish; just incredibly poorly written (and I started by saying that I don't read a lot of horror because I have no opinion as to whether the plot of The Deep is a rip-off of other books as others are noting; I'm just talking about the writing). From the beginning, clunky writing stuck out for me, as in this physical description of ambrosia:
A drab nothing color -- the color you'd get if you scraped a billion thumbprints off a million windowpanes and collected them into a ball.And the unnecessary parenthetical addition in the following sentence made me roll my eyes:
Luke recalled how, at five, Zach (like many five-year-olds) had become convinced that a monster lurked in his closet.Cutter repeatedly underestimated the intelligence of the reader in this way, as when he defined both ambrosia and agar (in a conversation between a scientist and a veterinarian -- and if I knew what those words meant, wouldn't the vet?) and then had the Luke character mentally defining words like lacuna and the derivation of the name Hesperus (and characters internally defining the words they use is the only thing I hate more than having two characters do that CSI-thing of explaining terms and methods to each other). Also clunky: noting that LB the chocolate lab had blood on its "golden fur".
I was continuously struck by the repetition of words and idiosyncratic phrases like "a gravedigger's smile" or "breath feathering on (someone's) neck". And I couldn't understand the repeated use of "copper" as a descriptor: okay, so the sunset coppering the water a couple of times is fine, and repeatedly seeing copper tubes and wires is reasonable in a research station, but Cutter also writes that a voice has "a coppery undertone" or a deranged man has "the coppery, festering face of madness". It felt like lazy symbolism that Clayton (the incommunicado and unfeeling lead researcher) was repeatedly compared to stone: he had cold mineral eyes, his mind was stony, and a shard chipped off the granite of his memory. Insects and other creepy-crawlies (especially moths and millipedes and spider-like hands) are repeatedly invoked: Luke felt like an insect gummed on a strip of flypaper; he felt like a worm stuck in the barrel of a clear, cheap ballpoint pen; like a blind and hungry tarantula. But worst of all was the incessant writing about mouths and teeth (and isn't this the laziest of all ways to attempt to scare someone?): a guinea pig has old man teeth; the nicotine-stained teeth of a three-pack-a-day smoker; in the gloom, Al's teeth were gray: a row of tiny tombstones; Zach's baby teeth had punched through his gums, these rounded slivers that looked like soft, pale cheese; (Boxes are stacked) in rows like big brown teeth. As for mouths: The metal hasp fell forward like the tongue lolling from a tired dog's mouth; the trunk's lid hung open like a cavernous, toothless mouth; Al's overalls were torn across her belly, a slash like a sagging mouth. My point in all of this is: if the reader recognises the overuse of metaphors and motifs, it's simply not being done well. (And is this the proper place to note that Cutter mentioned both Black Jack chewing gum and Black Jack firecrackers? And why does that bother me? If these inconsequential items hooked onto my brain without serving any purpose in the plot, they can't have been used for any useful literary function.)
And last of all: most everyone knows that "Nick Cutter" is a pseudonym, and while one of the things I liked most about The Troop was its setting in my birth province of PEI, in The Deep, Cutter (alias of a well-known Canadian author) tries very hard to pass as American (and if American spellings and settings sell more books, more power to him). But if you're trying to pass, here's some advice: don't have characters sitting on a chesterfield, and don't mess with the Tickle Trunk!
And did I need to add that when I so disliked the writing, the plot became inconsequential? I note that on the book cover for The Deep, Cutter is still using the quote that Stephen King gave him for The Troop: I can only conclude that Mr. King either declined to preview this book or didn't like it. In my opinion, this book isn't nearly as good, and I'd be hard-pressed to read his next offering (which is, apparently, coming out hard on the heels of this one).
My review for The Troop.
