The Deep

The deep had potential… the first half was interesting and felt like the author was setting up for a great novel. Despite the premise being very interesting and creating a sense of claustrophobia, it was not enough to care about the characters or anything at all. Which the characters literally had no life to them.

There were times you tried to connect with a character but it just wasn’t happening. Alice had potential but eventually she was just… there…

Luke: lost his son in the woods. Abused by his mom, who we get hammered about how morbidly obese she is. Okay we get it! Despite this fucked up life, you just have a hard time connecting to the character or even feeling sad for him. I think a lot was the authors writing style (More on that below). Luke was annoying and I disliked him

Clayton: lukes psycho brother, later we find out he was molested and raped by his mom then he slowly kills her. I guess you can justify his psychopathness. I really don’t know but i felt this added nothing to why clayton was the way he was.. because in the book he is just pure EVULZ.

There were other doctors… truthfully I didn’t care for. Some guy wrote some journal that still provided nothing to the store (not surprised). Some other dr is holed up at the station i forgot. I don’t remember the other character’s.

The dog: LB I felt she had more common sense than everyone there. I was sad she died because I felt she was a good puppers. However, her death goes on for paragraphs. Meaning luke is describing all these dramatic scenes. Its ridiculous, to the point it’s like okayy? Can you just let her… umm die…..

Anyway, yeah the characters are not developed well. Somewhere along the 50-60% mark I just wanted them to all die or the book to be finished. So there’s literally no character development here. If you want that, then hard pass this novel.

Now onto the writing. The writing was awful. It was passable but after about 30-40% it is EXHAUSTING. He compares everything to everything and flashback after flashback. I think if the author had laid off on the similes and just showed us the hallway was dark without going into some simile sentence after sentence, it would have been better and I think the story could have unfolded better. It felt like he was trying too hard to make it horror or scary or whatever. It just wasn’t happening.

The book is being compared a lot to some great classics like the thing or alien, but me it reminded me a lot of Kings book “under the dome.” Where the ending is literally alien kids messing with humans. This had the same silly vibe and just felt it so unnecessary. So I don’t know what to say there.

If you really want to read this book, I suggest read the first about 52% then skip to 92% and you will not miss a single thing. You will thank yourself for not wasting 6-7 hours of your life reading this.


I gave it 2* for the potential it had in the beginning and for the dog (LB) who had more character development than any character.

I loved the idea of this book. For the first half I was fully invested (and frightened) in where it was going. I wanted to know more about the disease, the Gets but feel like the story, after a strong introduction, sort of forgot about it. Somewhere around 50-60 percent into the book I became lost with all of the drawn out hallucinations and just became un-invested. I can't resist, it truly went off the deep end for me.

People are dying from a disease, and the solution might be 8 miles deep in the ocean. Only trouble is, there is something waiting for them.

I don't necessarily regret reading this book.... But I wouldn't recommend it to anyone either. I feel like there are two types of books, those that just have a great satisfying ending, and those where everything is a disaster from beginning to end. And this book is the latter. Think, a marine version of Saw and a splash of The Exorcist.

Well was hoping for better after reading The Troop. Actually enjoyed that a bit more than The Deep. Cutter has some really great ideas for plot, characters, and setting. BUT the descriptions of all those things is Stephen Kingesque in over telling. It was hard not so skip whole paragraphs once realized it was yet another long description of a place or thing. l'd like to see more story and interactions, with less description over all.

100x more frightening than The Troop