Deeper [Paperback]

Jeff Long (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 21, 2007

Widely and enthusiastically acclaimed, The Descent marked the debut of a powerful imagination and earned Jeff Long comparisons to Stephen King. Now, after three more suspenseful blockbusters, he returns to the captivating creatures he conjured in that first incredible novel, unleashing a story that will hook his fans and never let go. In The Descent, we discovered a world beneath our feet - a tubular nightmare of tunnels and subterranean rivers and seas inhabited by a savage race of hominids. Our search was to locate their leader, the so-called historical Satan. In Deeper, mankind once again confronts its cruel subterranean relatives, and we must descend even further. Searching for the hadal god, we reach down to our very genesis. With terrorism boiling up from the depths, we find ourselves drawn into a clash of civilizations - one primal, one modern - that forces us to confront our demons all over again. Mesmerizing, concussive, this darkly brilliant work of imagination galvanizes Jeff Long's reputation as a prodigious talent.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Fans who hoped for a sequel to Long's 1999 bestseller The Descent may be sorry to have their wish granted, as this fumbling thriller fails to expand on the tantalizing concepts explored in its predecessor. Set 10 years after spelunkers stumbled into a literal Hell and later led a supposedly successful expedition to kill Satan, this story opens on Halloween, when underground creatures abduct dozens of children and slay any adults trying to stop them. Grieving mother and widow Rebecca Coltrane, the media-anointed public face of the disaster, makes clever political use of the publicity to launch a major military expedition underneath the Earth in search of her daughter and the other missing children. As war brews underground between the explorers and the quasi-human hadals, aboveground tensions increase between China and the U.S. The parallels to the current war on terror are too broadly drawn to be convincing, and whatever larger point Long seeks to make about the source of human evil is lost in numerous gory scenes of butchery.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* In The Descent (1999), Long introduced us to hell: not the biblical hell, but the actual place. Hell, it turns out, is an underground world where a nasty race of humanoids called hadals lived for millennia, occasionally coming to the surface and wreaking havoc. In The Descent, the hadals were wiped out, or so we thought. Now, 10 years later, humans have colonized the Subterrain, but they're about to find out that some hadals have survived and that you can't really kill Satan. At least as exciting as its predecessor, this flashy, fast-paced sequel features a motley crew of characters—including one of the human survivors of the last novel, Ali Von Schade, who ventures deep into hell to rescue children who were abducted from the surface. In addition to Ali, the characters include a NASA researcher who spent two years exploring hell and who now has massive physical deformities, including a pair of horns; the mother of one of the missing children, whose journey into the Subterrain takes an unexpected toll on her; a filmmaker who disappeared into hell several years ago and who seems to have survived its perils; and a Navy SEAL sniper. Long has a knack for telling stories with inherently over-the-top premises, but he tells them so well and with such passion that we are brought totally under his spell. His characters are real and complex, his dialogue sharp, and his narrative stylish and frightening. This is one case where readers should be enthusiastically encouraged to go to hell. Pitt, David --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster Export (August 21, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1416550291
• ISBN-13: 978-1416550297
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.9 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (58 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,539,769 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Deeper doesn't mean Better, January 13, 2008

By 

H. J. Spivack (Yardley, PA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: 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.

19 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars What a disappointment....., October 27, 2007

By 

Sara Ann (The Missouri Ozarks) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Deeper: A Novel (Hardcover)

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!

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Doesn't provide the same rush as its predecessor, but it certainly is no slouch, November 1, 2007

By 

Bookreporter (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Deeper: A Novel (Hardcover)

DEEPER by Jeff Long is the sequel to 1999's THE DESCENT. Notwithstanding its heartstopping conclusion, THE DESCENT did not scream for a follow-up, and given the interval between the publication of the two books, there may be a bit of confusion. 2006 marked the unfortunate release of an arguably wretched film titled The Descent, which was not based on Long's novel, even though it bore some plot similarities. The bottom line is that you may want to read THE DESCENT before getting DEEPER, if you will, into Long's netherworld model for hell on earth.

THE DESCENT concerned the discovery of a civilization beneath the earth's crust that had provided the basis for Hell, with a real Satan as well as lesser demons known as hadels. It concluded with an invasion of that underworld by surface dwellers and the apparent eradication of all who lived beneath. The world in DEEPER is somewhat different. The subplanet, as the area below the crust is called, is being colonized, mined and generally exploited for all it is worth. China and the United States are the main players in a spitting contest for subplanet territory. The hadels, apparently surviving the Holocaust, return the favor, invading the U.S. and kidnapping children. An official rescue mission might seem in order, but surface tensions between the U.S. and China mitigate against it.

Two very different unsanctioned missions commence. One is led by the mother of one of the kidnapped children, a populist crusade peopled by a disparate group of mercenaries, would-be tough guys and ringer Armed Forces veterans. The other is a party of two, consisting of linguist Ali von Schade and her student and erstwhile companion. Von Schade, whose own child is dead, has lost her lover to the subplanet, and has nothing to lose by going below and trying to persuade the hadels to release the children by peaceful means. What no one realizes is that Satan, believed to have been killed in THE DESCENT, is in fact very much alive and manipulating events in an attempt to effectuate his own release from the subplanet.

Even if DEEPER doesn't provide the same rush as its predecessor, it certainly is no slouch. Long has had nearly 10 years and the benefit of a visit to Bosnia to think up new horrors, and he does so with the horrific imagination of a contemporary Bosch. He gets bogged down occasionally when he attempts to make DEEPER a parable critical of contemporary U.S. foreign policy, but it's been overdone and overwrought in the thriller genre to the point where the kvetching is unfortunately tiresome at best and tedious at worst.

Long truly shines, however, when he slowly and steadily sets up Satan's machinations, and saves the ultimate horror for last, letting it settle quietly and with great subtlety. Let us hope that we don't have to wait another decade for the third volume of what is now described as a trilogy.

--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub