Introducing our new book review series from the Merry Mayhem’s own Carol the Cat, where she will read the books in her TBR list so you may not have to!
The Deep: A Novel by Nick Cutter
- Publisher : Gallery Books; Reissue edition (August 16, 2016)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 416 pages
- Amazon Link (we may get a small stipend if you buy here)
Carol’s Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
I should have put the book down when he introduced the dog.
Everyone who knows me knows I’m a bit of a horror buff. As such, I tend to get a lot of horror book recommendations – and it doesn’t help that I am constantly scrolling through #BookTok for more. One book that came up time and again as a recommendation was The Troop by Nick Cutter. Normally, I don’t read “extreme” horror, it’s not really my thing, but this one was so highly recommended that I thought I would give it a try. You can check out my rant on TikTok to see how it went. It wasn’t good. My main issue with that book was that Cutter had this really interesting premise, that he quickly dropped in favor of a pretty standard psycho killer plot.
So why, you may ask, did I pick up The Deep? Well, I though this one would be a bit better, since I have an innate fear of the water and this book takes place in an undersea laboratory. The main premise is that a disease called The Gets is slowly working its way through the population. When you contract this disease, you slowly forget everything you know, eventually forgetting how to breathe. The cure for this pandemic is being worked on by genius scientist Clay Nelson. Clay was a prodigy with slightly sociopathic tendencies. The research is being done in an underwater lab eight miles below the surface of the ocean. There Clay has discovered a substance called Ambrosia that may be the cure the world is looking for. When the lab goes silent and one of the researchers surfaces dead, the government recruits Clay’s brother Luke to go down the lab and find out what is happening.
As with The Troop, The Deep starts with an incredibly interesting premise. The Gets is a horrific disease, very graphically portrayed. Whenever this plot of forefront, I was enjoying the book (as much as one can enjoy a book about a pandemic). Unfortunately, Cutter quickly pushes that plot to the side in favor of the sociopathic Clay and his troubled relationship with Luke. There are many flashbacks to their childhood with their domineering mother and to the disappearance of Luke’s son. The end is one of the most batshit crazy endings I’ve read in a while (think a very wet Hellraiser). But frankly, by then I didn’t care. I was tired of the standard mad genius trope that is Clay’s character and the newly introduced creatures were a bit too Cenobite-ish to me. When you completely ignore all your previous plots and introduce yet another plot right at the end, I really start to get irritated and that is how I felt by the end – irritated.
Cutter is a talented writer, and yes, I am aware this is the penname of author Craig Robinson. But with his Cutter novels, he can’t seem to focus on one plot and the subplots quickly take over the story. Which is a shame, because if this book had been solely about The Gets and its cure, I would have been far more interested in its outcome.
If you are into extreme horror and don’t mind animal cruelty, you may fare better than me with his work. I will not be picking up anymore Nick Cutter novels, however. Two is quite enough.
