The Deep: Robert Reviews Nick Cutter’s Latest Horror/Thriller Novel
First Impressions of Nick Cutter’s The Deep
Let me preface this review by saying I did indeed read Nick Cutter’s breakout novel The Troop based solely on the Stephen King blurb on the front of the book (“TheTroop scared the hell out of me and I couldn’t put it down.”) While I found the book more gross than scary, it was well constructed and really dug into the relationships between the various boys within the scout group—relationships that in many ways mirrored those I had with my own childhood friends and acquaintances. So I came to The Deep with elevated hopes (not quite high ones) for something similarly engaging. For the first half to two-thirds of the book it looked like Cutter was going to deliver but from thereon out everything just sort of fell apart into a tangled mess.
The world is in the midst of a biblical plague called “The Gets” which causes everyday people to simply forget things one by one until they forget to live. It looks as if there’s no hope until a mysterious substance called Ambrosia bubbles up from the deepest part of the Atlantic Ocean—The Mariana Trench. Superstar (and perhaps sociopath) scientist Clayton Nelson is called in to 1) harvest the ambrosia and 2) figure out how the god-like substance works in order to cure The Gets. He is stationed on a futuristic undersea laboratory (called The Trieste) at the very bottom of the deepest part of the Mariana Trench. Something goes wrong, topside loses contact with the lab, and a mysterious message brings Clayton’s brother Luke, a veterinarian of all things, to the Trieste in order to figure out what happened and how to get the project back on track. Of course the plan doesn’t work out so well as it seems as if The Trieste and the mysterious presence that haunts the place has a plan of its own. Luke is stymied at every turn by some seemingly supernatural force (and his own troublesome memories of childhood) and is forced to make life-defining choices in the terror of The Deep.
My first reaction to this book was shock. The major plotlines and much of the associated “insanity” that complicates the hero’s journey could be ripped right from Michael Crichton’s Sphere (which is ultimately a better book in my opinion). (Potential Spoilers Below) As I read further, the supernatural occurrences which haunted Luke’s past and the Trieste itself became caricatures of childhood terrors—akin, almost, to Stephen King’s masterful Pennywise in IT. There’s a giant centipede, a thirty-foot-long arm with razor claws, prune men (actually Fig Men), and even a mutated hamster! Also, Cutter’s narrator, Luke, is far too broken to feel relatable. I found myself hating the man from the midway point for reasons I couldn’t quite pinpoint. He spends pages and pages describing the death of a dog yet when the only other sane person on The Trieste disappears Luke discovers her body (or what’s left of it) after the fact and the description is done in less than a page. Sure, he was traumatized by his abusive mother, yes he was traumatized by the loss of his son (vanished without a trace and seemingly kidnapped by the evil that waits another 10 years on the bottom of the ocean?), yes his crumbled marriage probably messed him up pretty good, but the Luke that exists on The Trieste is a mirror image of the one that we meet on the surface before his descent. There is no transition, no character growth, just a magical light switch that’s flipped.
The Horrible, Horrible Ending
I wasn’t hoping for a happy ending—Cutter seems allergic to them. I knew things were going to end badly but I was hoping for it to be in a good way—if that makes sense. A satisfying bad ending is just as good as a satisfying happy one if things are tied up neatly in a way that follows the development put in place throughout the rest of the story. Instead Cutter throws in this supernatural mishmash of Cthulu-like beings cast off from one plane of existence and manipulating our world like a chess board for thirty or forty years . . . just to get Luke and his brother Clayton to the bottom of the ocean. It was kind of like a Deus Ex Machina but a tragically ass-backward one.
Final Thoughts on Nick Cutter’s The Deep
I read several other reviews (after I picked my way through this mess) that all say the same thing: The Deep is a mess of good ideas that just don’t come together in any comprehensive form. The beginning of the novel feels completely divorced from the end and the middle section is crammed with so many gruesome images it feels as if the reader is being led through a haunted house with no theme. I cannot, in good conscience, recommend this book. If you want a strong dash of horror with your sci-fi, go read Michael Crichton’s Sphere. If you want straight-up horror, Stephen King’s IT is a much better way to spend your time. If you have to read a Nick Cutter Novel, choose The Troop.
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