Deeper: A Novel [Hardcover]

Jeff Long is an interesting writer. From what I understand from his bios, cadged from the back of books, he is an adventurer who likes to write about adventure. His heroes are manly men, who scale mountains, transverse canyons, explore depths. When he writes science fiction, its pretty good.

For example, Year Zero was a great book about the release of a pathogen from a holy relic. It was a vial of blood that contained a virus that hadn't been seen for 2000 years and for which we no longer have any antigens. So, they start cloning people from those holy relics, looking for someone who successfully survived the original virus to fashion a cure. Of course, that means they're cloning saints and (maybe) Jesus. Good stuff.

There were some other books in there, The Reckoning, The Wall, The Ascent, none of which I thought were amazing like Year Zero and The Descent.

Descent posited the notion that the Earth is full of tunnels, caves, depths inhabited by 'primitives.' It is Hell and its apparently ruled over by Satan ('Older Than Old') and a war stirs between the surface and the depths. Sure enough, it sings. Strong stuff, a great thriller. Before you know it, its over and you're missing it.

Now, Deeper comes along, a direct sequel to The Descent starring many of the same characters and plunging deeper (naturally) into the depths and history of the underground.

First, this is not as good as The Descent. I won't spoil it, but the scientific basis proposed in the first book is abandonned in the second. There is a Satan and he IS 'Older Than Old' and he's just kidnapped a whole mess of children from the surface. The novel is about finding them, bringing them back up atop.

There's a lot of internal dialogue going on and, as it turns out, the depths are haunted by the dead. Ali, a nun with a talent for language and trouble in the first book, is now agnostic carrying around the ghost of a dead daughter. There's another mother who's daughter is among those below, Ike from the first book who has changed unbelievably (unforgiveably), a military sniper and a film producer. All these characters are a bit confusing and each of their stories interlock, intersect, depart from each other.

To say its not as good as the first book isn't a terrible review. There aren't a lot of books out there as good as the first one. This is a good thriller and I hope Long returns to the underground again so I can actually figure out what happened at the end.

Jeff Long is a terrific writer, and I have enjoyed several of his novels.

After reading THE DESCENT and telling everyone it was the best book I'd read in years, I was thrilled to discover this so-called sequel. After just finishing DEEPER, I am not only disappointed but almost....mad! This book was obviously whipped out as the much-anticipated sequel, but if you've read THE DESCENT, this is more like a long, drawn-out short story.........or even a lost chapter from the original story. It goes on and on and........usually inside the characters' heads. ("Hush, baby...." over and over.) Occasionally, there was some quick, gratuitous gore. (Please.....not the little kids......!) Long's "Satan?" (the really, really bad guy) was the most interesting character, though even he seemed to struggle with his purpose in the story.

If you loved THE DESCENT, don't bother with DEEPER. If you have read neither, put THE DESCENT at the top of your must-read list!

I was blown away by The Descent. I was surprised to see a sequel out; I thought The Descent had ended at an excellent place, but I was happy to reenter The Descent's creepy, dark, gory world. Talk about disappointing. It felt like an entirely different person wrote the second novel. My problems with the novel:

1.) The claustrophobic blackness that Long so successfully cultivates in The Descent is gone. I don't feel the scenery because he doesn't describe it. I don't feel creeped out just by the description of a narrowing passageway or complete and utter blackness.
2.) Satan. Satan alone is a huge issue; his little passages are cutsey and are there to take up space. There is absolutely no logic behind the character either; it doesn't mesh with the Satan we left at the end of The Descent. He's also very over-stressed and given too much significance. His "revelations" don't feel like an 'ah ha!' but far more like a 'get on with it'.
3.) Long tries way too hard to humanize the hadals. I thought he did a good balancing act in the first novel to present savagery mixed with spirituality, but he went overboard in this round.
4.) The characters are all unlikeable. I loved all the characters (protagonists or antagonists) in the first novel. All the characters I loved before are inexplicably different (i.e. no development to speak of), and all the new characters are irritating.
5.) The entire novel felt rushed, as if the details weren't just skimmed out but skipped entirely. I had a lot of issues of the sociology of the hadals in the first novel compared to the second novel. As a group, they behave far differently than they were set up to behave. There were a lot of similar problems.
6.) The government news clips. Boring. Absolutely boring. Instead of the first novel's interesting one-shots thrown in, we get to read a government report every few pages.
7.) Long did a great job *not* explaining things in The Descent. It was real; we don't know much about strange phenomenon, ancient history, etc. Why should we get full, logical explanations in a novel about things that are shrouded in mystery? Well, you get all the explanations you want in Deeper--to the point that it gets tedious.

I have to admit, many of my problems with Deeper spring from my expectations from The Descent. That means that Long did an excellent job on the first in the very least. Deeper was entertaining and would probably have been a fun read had I not compared it to The Descent. For that, I give it 2 stars.

All in all, Deeper has the feel of being here only to serve as a stepping stone for a third novel. If a third Descent book comes out, do hope it's on par with The Descent. If not, Long would have done so much better just to leave The Descent as a great stand-alone.

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