Dead Sea [Paperback]

I'm surprised that this book hasn't received more attention. There were only 75 limited edition hardcovers and the book hasn't received any marketing effort. While I enjoy Brian Keene as an author, there is no comparison between his Dead Sea versus Tim Curran's. Both are good reads, but it's like comparing Outback Steakhouse to Flemings. Flemings has more meat and is juicier.

Curran's book is based on the story of a cargo ship entering the Bermuda Triangle and reappearing in an alternate dimension. The concept of normal life is immediately replaced by the horror of warped time and space. And what a horror it is! Glimpses of horrific creatures sliding in and out of the ever-present fog quickly evolves into constant terror as the survivors are tested repetitively by escalating challenges. The themes of man against man and man against nature are supplemented by the possibility that humans aren't necessarily at the top of the food chain when multiple universes are pondered.

Curran is a great wordsmith and does a great job fleshing out his characters and this unusual environment. You can feel yourself alongside the characters in the story and wonder how you would hold up to the constant stress and danger faced by them. Do you measure up or are you found wanting?

Find yourself a quiet place in the dark and allow your mind to enter this maze of horror. You won't be disappointed.

I cannot believe there are not more reviews on this masterpiece.
If you hesitate on reading Dead Sea, Don't!
This book is about a crew of men on the Mara Corday, a 720 foot cargo ship. They are going to work in the jungles of French Guiana. One man George has never been to Sea before. He took the position because he needs the money for his mortgage. How apropos for the times. He has a wife and a young son who is thrilled for his father and even asks accompany George. He is only 8. As they head out George listens to the crew exchange tales of sea life. The characters in the story are as real as you can get. After several days out they slowly sail into the Graveyard of the Atlantic. They loose all functions of their high tech equipment as a thick fog rolls in. The Captain keeps a tight lip about the communications, but the crew can feel a static in the fog. They attempt to send out an SOS but what answers is not what they wanted to hear. Then things start to happen. Creatures, spirits, the undead and alien life forms of other worlds are met. In another dimension. Survival is at stake in another world. There are some places from which you can't return......I loved this book. I had never heard of Tim Curran. What a treat it was to find him. Now I am searching for other books by him. He is an excellent author. Enjoy..

Do read Dead Sea you will not be disappointed.

I hate hospitals, I only go there when I get sick. I had seen this novel popping up several times when I was looking up some other book on Amazon, and it looked good, but, there were almost no reviews posted and I always wondered what it was about. Still, Dimension Books is a subsidiary of Elder Signs Press and so I could make a guess. When something didn't show up at a local bookstore, it took the credit offered and ordered "Dead Sea", and it arrived about a week before I was to have some minor spinal surgery, I took the book with me when I had it done and spent the first cold week in January recuperating, and reading what was perhaps the best damn weird adventure that I had read in ten years or more. This novel should have won some awards that year, but I'm sure some dopey, academic, safe, and mainstream weird fantasies were nominated. Whatever. And besides, I believe Curran is a fellow Michiganian, and this book was printed about twenty miles from my home. Cool.

Anyway, Saks is a hard case construction boss, he's also abusive, and an alcoholic, a racist, a sexist, a rapist, and a possible murderer, but he also gets the job done, and he's put together a new crew to go down to French Guiana to clear some jungle for a diamond company's new airstrip. Among his crew is Cushing, a spy from the company to keep an eye on Saks, and George Ryan, the crew's newbie, who's never been on a construction crew before, and who is the novel's central character.

They're not going to make it to the job site. Sometime during the night the radio, Satnav, Satcom, and even the compasses stop working, the ship goes off course, the fog closes in, there's a violent suicide, and something is alive in the ballast tanks. Soon, something comes out of the fog, sailors disappear, and a phantom barge hits the "Mara Corday" and she begins to go down. There are explosions, and it soon becomes everyman for themselves as ship and construction crew alike scramble to get off the ship. Some end up in the water, some on makeshift rafts, and some in lifeboats.

The only problem is that they soon find out that they are someplace other than the Atlantic. Eventually, those that survive the waters end up in two lifeboats, one run by Gosling, the first mate of the "Mara Corday", and the other by Saks. The water is thick and soupy, the lifeboats won't row like they should, and there are things in the sea that are hungry, and the only one there to keep some of the survivors alive is Saks. Then things go from bad, to worse, to Hell in a handbasket.

And then things get really serious, because they find that there are also things that fly, as well as swim in this sea.

The novel's perspective switches back and forth between the two lifeboats, until gradually both storylines drift together into a cohesive whole as the survivors of the two boats combine for survival. Things happen constantly in the novel, and as the characters realize that they aren't in Kansas anymore, their moral drops as they begin to realize that they are going to have less and less control over their destinies.

Tim Curran is a workingman's writer. Curran's obviously influenced by William Hope Hodgeson and his Sargasso Sea stories, especially his novel "The Boats Of The `Glen Carrig'". Other influences would be Dennis Wheatley's "Uncharted Seas"; Lovecraft, obvious when you read the novel, and writers like Jack London, Curran's a realist, and possibly adventure sea author M. C. Pease. But, Curran's most obvious influence here is Robert Howard as Curran is not afraid to jetson the flotsam of politeness; the politeness of upper middle class fictions. Curran's creates characters that swear, drink, become afraid, and often do what they have to do, even if they are scared to death; they are all the types of people who aren't afraid to get their hands dirty while working. Howard wrote high-energy fictions for the working class, with tough, no-nonsense characters and an unflinching look at the situations that they are involved in. Others have been declared the new Robert Howard but Curran is the real deal. Curran romanticizes nothing, he's a realist, everything that happens has an effect, and nature is not here to be admired, its only purpose is to kill you, and to do so in as nasty a way as possible.

The surprises never stop coming, the cover is moody and amazing, the book is sturdy and will hold up under multiply readings. "Dead Sea" would make one hell of a mini series or movie if done right. In a fair world, this would be a classic, but it's not a fair world, and we all know that. Deserves a five star plus rating, buy it now.

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 22 reviews  4.6 out of 5 stars