From Below

The Book in 1 Sentence

At the bottom of the ocean, no one can hear you scream, and your brain doesn't know what to do with things hiding in the shadows.

Brief Review

This was not the story I was expecting. I also was concerned while reading it that it would follow the Children of Ruin story or some other "microbe" that is affecting that. However, it didn't turn out that way and the story was very well told, really leaning into the more human elements of the story. However, the bow at the end is too perfect.

Why I Read this book

Recommended somewhere.

In-Depth Review (Favorite Quotes)

This book was kind of up and down for me. Other than Between Two Fires, I don't think I have actually read a horror book and this one was more horror about drowning than anything else for me. During the dive to the sunken ship, they are something like 400 ft down, the way things are described I am for sure more worried about the mask not functioning correctly on the rebreather. Being a certified deep open water diver, I understand the fear when that mask starts to do something funny or something is funny with you. I won't share my person horror story with diving here, but two things I can tell you: 1) I can understand that fear of being that deep and losing the site of the sun, 2) I would dive again.

The characters are all weirdly selfish. I am not talking about the fact that they decide to keep diving after events happened on the first dive, but they are all there under weird circumstances. They don't tell people about changes in plans. They hide important things. All for weirdly selfish reasons or just out of disrespect. I guess that is human in nature, which I appreciate, but I still feel like the characters are not very fleshed out at times. Cove is fine, and Roy seems to be ok, but the rest seem half complete.

That leads me to my biggest complaint with this book. I am pretty sure that there are some science issues that allow for a nice bow to be created, that should have been negated based on the science presented in the book. I also feel like there was way to much plot armor that again allowed for a big bow to be created that just took away from what this book could have been. I am not asking for all of them to die, I just feel like there were no consequence to the team for the constant stupidity.

Rating

I liked this book. It was very well told, but I kept waiting for luck to run out and for someone to cost something. However, this book ends in where I don't think it should have. I am trying to talk around major points, but I am pretty sure that their tanks last 10000x longer than they should have been. Outside of that, I think the story is really well done. I am very interested in the mystery of the shipwreck. I am interested in the documentary they are making. It is a well written book with just weak characters. So I am giving it a 7. I want to give it an 8, but that make it a "Great" book in my mind and it just doesn't match that.

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