Into the Deep [Paperback]

Ken Grimwood (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 1996

Making an incredible breakthrough in dolphin communications, a beautiful marine biologist learns from her oceanic friends that an environmental disaster of earth-shattering proportions is imminent. Reprint. PW.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This tepid eco-thriller comes as a disappointment after Grimwood's World Fantasy Award-winning Replay (1986). Though the author gives us several interesting characters-journalist Daniel Colter, dolphin researcher Sheila Roberts, tuna-boat captain Antonio Batera-and sketches convincing, often painful pasts for each, such subtleties are blurred by his soft-lensed focus on dolphin characters (with unwieldy names such as Ch*Tril and Ek*Tiq) and their cetacean point of view. The main plot develops in the dolphin sections, which explain that humans and dolphins were once in regular telepathic contact before our violent ways drove away the dolphins, who declared humanity off limits. Now, though, as human depredations in the sea are reaching critical levels, the dolphins have concluded that renewed contact may be the only way to end the slaughter. Colter, Roberts and Batera all felt the telepathic call of the dolphins when they were young, so they're the obvious choices for contact now. The narrative's early stages contain some drama, but it grows increasingly clogged with Grimwood's utopian vision of a dolphin-inspired paradise in which humanity's troubles are washed away by contact with the universally wise and kind cetaceans. The coda describing the eradication of most of the world's ills (AIDS, sexual repression, neurosis, "an effective end to war, to cruelty, to hunger") merely confirms this book's devolvement a muddle-headed, moralistic wish-fulfillment fantasy that substitutes airy preaching for real human feeling.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Onyx (January 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0451406451
• ISBN-13: 978-0451406453
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,321,484 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A very good book! Definetly worth reading!, January 16, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Into the Deep (Paperback)

After seeing the only one review, giving it a one star, I felt I had to respond. Even though this book is not 'perfect' (like 'Replay' is), this is a very very good book. It has a very unique perspective, since some of the heroes of the book are actually dolphins - and Mr. Grimwood has done a very good job telling the story from their eyes. You can actually feel how much Mr. Grimwood loves the sea, dolphins and other sea creatures.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars If you love dolphins, read this!, May 21, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Into the Deep (Paperback)

Living near the ocean and seeing dolphins so often I am so entralled by them. This book gives a light at the end of the tunnel to what things could be like if we were to stop thinking of dolphins as an animal whos purpose is merely to entertain us at amusement parks. Anyone with a deep soal will appreciate this book. I highly recommend it.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Dolphin in My Mind, December 10, 2001

By 

Lawrence Fife "space explorer" (Anywhere) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Into the Deep (Hardcover)

This book is cool. It does such a great job of exploring the concepts of dolphin intelligence and sentience, and it does it in the context of a compelling adventure. Ken Grimwood is probably not too far off the mark of what we will eventually discover about dolphin intelligence and communication. He really has thought this stuff through. If you know about dolphins, you'll know more.. and if you've never thought about them as thinking/sentient beings, you'll definitely have something to think about with this one.