The Deep

Nick Cutter

Jan 2015 · Sold by Simon and Schuster

About this eBook

From the acclaimed author of The Troop—a book that is “utterly terrifying” (Clive Barker). “Fans of unflinching bleakness and all-out horror will love this novel….Each new shock is freshly disturbing” (Publishers Weekly, starred review).

A strange plague called the ‘Gets is decimating humanity on a global scale. It causes people to forget—small things at first, like where they left their keys, then the not-so-small things, like how to drive or the letters of the alphabet. Their bodies forget how to function involuntarily. There is no cure.

But far below the surface of the Pacific Ocean, a universal healer hailed as “ambrosia” has been discovered. In order to study this phenomenon, a special research lab has been built eight miles under the sea’s surface. But when the station goes incommunicado, a brave few descend through the lightless fathoms in hopes of unraveling the mysteries lurking at those crushing depths…and perhaps to encounter an evil blacker than anything one could possibly imagine.

Ratings and reviews

I, like you perhaps, got VERY excited by the premise and now here I am nine dollars or so later and I dislike almost everything about this novel. Maybe I'm spoiled because I'm coming off of reading The Stand and The Terror but this book is like something your buddy who writes a little on the side would give you, and you don't have the heart to tell him that his book is crap.

I never thought I'd give a 1-star review, but somehow even that seems too generous for this despicable puke pile of a book. Dream sequences that deflate all tension. Tactless (and constant) animal brutality written only for shock value. Chapters dedicate to jarring flashbacks or the diary of an ultimately irrelevant character. And the second half of the book reads like it was written in a three day Adderall binge. A total mess! This book is to horror what a punch in the dick is to pro boxing.

Fatphobia and no basic science knowledge. His protagonist's mom was disabled, abusive, and fat. He tells you all about it at length. Her disability is supposed to explain a lot of her anger, and her fatness is part of the horror. No thank you! That's plenty bad enough, but this is a book ABOUT SCIENTISTS that doesn't grasp some of the most basic bits of science. Twice now I've seen him talk about things shimmering in the the light of a new moon - the period of the cycle when the moon is at its darkest. He has frog eggs hatching and then wriggling around to get into water. I haven't been able to definitively confirm that that's not how an American bullfrog works, but every picture of their eggs shows them **laid directly into the water.** Tadpoles are, after all, fully aquatic and shaped like fish. I don't know how they'd wriggle over to water if called upon to do so. Also, all the scientists are men, and no one seems to be a person of color.

About the author

Nick Cutter is the author of the critically acclaimed national bestseller The Troop (which is currently being developed for film with producer James Wan), The Deep, Little Heaven, and The Handyman Method, cowritten with Andrew F. Sullivan. Nick Cutter is the pseudonym for Craig Davidson, whose much-lauded literary fiction includes Rust and Bone, The Saturday Night Ghost Club, and, most recently, the short story collection Cascade. His story “Medium Tough” was selected by author Jennifer Egan for The Best American Short Stories 2014. He lives in Toronto, Canada.