This started out sort of slow, then got really promising, and I enjoyed about 50% of it... but then it losts its steam. Or rather, it never really gained it in the first place.
A grieving mother.
A monster.
A ship crewed by the damned.
The Thing swam out of the magma in the Earth's core and clawed its way up through the San Andreas Fault on the night that a chunk of the California coast sank into the Pacific. Millions died, including the two children of Lucille 'Ceely' Bennett, an accomplished engineer stranded in rural Montana when the cataclysm occurred. Ceely builds a submarine, complete with mechanical arms and a set of harpoons -the biggest on the market- with the intention of going down among the ruins of Los Angeles to collect her daughters' bodies. A mother's love and fury drive her to hunt the creature across oceans and decades in this tale of grief and revenge.
This story explores the darkest side of unconditional love in a cerebral and unconventional take on the horror genre.
The book starts of being written from Ceely's POV, a mother who lost her children to a catastophic desaster and sea monster, and she is hell bent to at least salvage her daughters' corpses, and avenge her kids.
...And then just when she finally confronts the creature, the POV switches to Jacob, a meek clerk upon an oil tanker that braves the waters despite the creature's threat. I enjoyed his POV the most, but once again, once things get rolling, the POV switches to the Captain, and he doesn't last particularly long either...
The POV switches felt jarring and kicked me out of the flow of the story every time it switched. And it switches every single time RIGHT when things get interesting, which was incredibly frustrating. But the worst part was that throughout the whole of the book... the plot only sort of meanders. We get the daily life on the boat, and aside from some personal drama and introspective musings, nothing really happens.
The sea creature that seems to be so central barely ever appears, and the ending is very unsatisfying.
This is advertized as horror, but there are pretty much no scary scenes. The few that could turn scary are super short, and are told in a very distant narration style.
The book still captured me, but ultimately didn't deliver what I felt was promised by it. Much more about human interactions than any sort of horror creature, and even with the characterization I found it kind of inconsistent.
Check out the book here.
~Iam
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