The Descent
Ratings16
Average rating3.9
This has been my longtime favorite novel, not because it's profound or moving, but because it fully pulled me into its strange and twisted subterranean world. I found my imagination returning to the story for weeks after reading the book.
I'm not sure what to make of Jeff Long‘s tale of an ancient underground civilization and the genocidal conflict that ensues after their discovery. It starts out kind of creepy, turns into a romance novel, then ends with one of those horror movie final scene gotchas.
Published in paperback by Jove.
This book starts out strong and promises to be a truly terrifying story. That first chapter is sleep-with-the-lights-on, throw the book in the freezer, chilling. But then Long keeps broadening the scope so we're introduced to a Dan Brown DaVinci Code re-examination of history and secret cabals, Michael Crichton eco-terror with elements of sci-fi, and romance thrown in for good measure. What could have been a tight horror novel about the discovery of a savage race living far beneath the earth instead becomes a convoluted mess that is all the stories that still manages the occasional bright spots.
2.5, I think. Yes, it was problematic. I have little to say on the science, since I don't know enough about it. I definitely find it awkward when a white male uses racial descriptors in certain ways. This was written almost twenty years ago, so he probably didn't mean to sound offensive, but he did. In some ways, this didn't age well.
As for the story itself, I confess that I ate it up. As always, though, the ending wasn't particularly engaging. The characterizations are shallow, except for a few of the characters. And some of the characters are exposition-spewers. There is also a character that is needlessly intelligent and annoying, but he goes out like a total punk and also kills his lover for no good reason.
Ali is totally white man's burden, even though she's a nice person. Pretty white savior in Africa and in Subterranea is at worst reprehensible; at best, it's just bloody awkward. But again, I'm not completely aware of what real life was like back in 1999, because I was at a Christian college (not a progressive one either, and I was very naive). So did people in the real world realize how awkward it was at the time? I suspect not, judging by reviews in the front of the book.
That said, this book was fun. I devoured it. It was fascinating, although I was disappointed by the hadals in the end. And the dropping of the balls on different characters.
But when this book was straight-up horror, like the first chapter, it worked pretty well. There were some delightfully creepy bits. I just wish the whole book had worked as well.