Reading The Deep by Nick Cutter has cemented Cutter as my favorite, go-to horror author. This was so deeply unsettling and full of tension, it literally had me hiding in my hair at work and jumping when coworkers snuck up on me or the phone rang. There are so many different phases to the horror which is what made this so amazing. Each strand was carefully woven into the other so every sense was bombarded until you’re frozen in dread.
Writing a review for an almost perfect book is hard. What is there that I can say to convince you this was amazing without spoiling anything? Let’s start with technicalities. Corey Brill is amazing as narrator and I honestly believe the audiobook version is absolutely the way to consume this book. Hearing him voice Lucas’ terror as everything unfolds makes the fear contagious. Descriptions were visceral and detailed to the point where my brain could see what was happening, my nose could smell it. The pacing is steady and quick. We get heavy beats of horror and gore and then it pulls back, gives us time to breathe, to settle, before bringing us back up to where we were before and more.
The basic premise is that there is a worldwide pandemic (this was written prior to Covid) where people forget until they die (extreme Alzheimer’s or Lewy body dementia-esque.) There is no cure and there is no rhyme or reason discovered on how it is transmitted or if it can be prevented. A discovery is made at the ocean floor and three scientists are sent down to see if this might be a cure. The story starts with the brother of one scientist being summoned and ushered to this seafloor lab at his brother’s request. Everything goes wrong from there.
Our everyman whose eyes we experience this narrative through is Lucas and he is just such a good guy. He has trauma from life but works to put it aside to help the world and his brother as best he can. And honestly? His trying to be a good guy is extremely to his detriment. The second one scary thing happened, I would’ve left. But Lucas is so desperate for connection – to belong to something, someone, that he remains with the bald hope that he can help, he can matter. It is this desperation that blinds him to some of what is going on until it is extremely way too late. It’s what drives us, readers without that need to cling, to understand just how horrific the events actually are.
The ending stumbled a little but corrected itself for an amazing conclusion that absolutely leaves me full of questions. No explicit spoilers here, but if you don’t want to read anything close to spoilers, you can skip ahead to the next paragraph! What I absolutely loved about the ending after having time to digest it, is how it leaves me with a burning question – how much can we trust? Perhaps it’s just me, but I literally cannot stop wondering how much was really experienced and how much was constructed to achieve the end goal. The idea that you don’t even have the self awareness to question whether everything you know really is everything you know is terrifying to me. That your mind isn’t yours and isn’t safe is frightening. And it’s that which sticks with me long after I’ve finished reading this, not the gore, not the body horror, but that question.
If you’re looking for horror, and can deal with body horror, I wholeheartedly recommend The Deep by Nick Cutter. It is a horror story that works on multiple levels – emotional, mental, visceral. But you have to go into it knowing you’ll be exposed to gruesome and graphic descriptions. I recommend listening to this as an audiobook, but if you’re simply unsure if you can handle that, then at least with a physical/ebook, you’ll be able to quickly page away from the intense parts. Please, read this and let me know what your thoughts are on that ending, on the question that haunts me.
