A vision of vast black seas exploded behind Armin’s eyes — oceans spanning entire worlds, deep and crushing, cold as space. In that endless void swam things whose shape and substance defied description, whose thoughts cut like razor wire and left his psyche slashed and bleeding. [loc. 4671]
A science fiction novel with horror elements, set seven kilometres beneath the ocean's surface, and featuring a romance between two male characters. Mo Rees is a deep-sea miner, part of the team on the BathyTech 3 facility which sits at the edge of Richards Deep, off the coast of Chile. Their rover has picked up images of a strange spherical object on the ocean floor: a team of scientists, led by Dr Armin Savage-Hall who has seen something similar in Antarctica, arrives to examine it.
Mo and Armin hook up almost immediately, but that's not the focus of the novel. The thing they bring back from the deep begins to affect the crew of the BathyTech 3, and the visiting scientists: hallucinations, mood swings, and worse. And the strange mermaid-fish -- which most still believe are just stories -- seem to be gathering in the darkness beyond the module.
Down is extremely atmospheric and generally well-paced, though I was not entirely convinced by Mo and Armin's instant connection. Still, they both have something to bring to the story. Less convincing was the future setting: it's some time in the 22nd century, but the technology (apart from, importantly, the actual deep-sea mining module) doesn't seem especially advanced. And apart from Mo's backstory, which involves a long blackout in Dubai during his childhood -- it's made him tough and resourceful -- there's little sense of the outside world.
The ending is unsettling, and I felt Mo and Armin's responses to its implications were a little out of character, a little too blase: but then, they've been changed by their experiences in the deep.
Would make an excellent film!
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