I went into this already having a fear of the deep ocean ... so I was pretty primed for some horror.

We follow Luke, a man with a whole lot of tragedy in his life - from his abusive mother to his cold & aloof brilliant brother to the disappearance of his young son to his failed marriage. A plague called "The 'Gets" is in full effect; those infected lose all sense of memory and self and the disease is always fatal. When a potential cure is discovered in the deep ocean, a group of scientists are dispatched to the sea floor to harvest the material (ambrosia), Luke's brother among them. When the team loses contact, Luke makes the descent down in an attempt to find out what happened. However, things go disastrously wrong (in an unearthly way).

(The 'Gets was quite interesting as a concept - but ultimately gets dropped pretty quickly. It was just a means to an end to incite Luke's journey into the deep. It's too bad, because I was curious!.)

Many of the descriptions of the body horror were so inventive and disturbing. I could see the scenes come to life before my eyes. It's super gross (that's a compliment, ha). The scary factor was to the extreme and I FELT the claustrophobia; but the ocean elements were barely mentioned after the descent. The characters remain inside a structure, but it theoretically could have been anywhere that was isolated/difficult to escape from. Overall though, I did enjoy Cutter's writing style.

Luke gets a little bit of character development, but many of the other characters are very one dimensional. It's hard to root for them when you don't know much about them. (Except for the doggy. Oh, sweet LB.)

There are a fair amount of continuity errors here, such as ages mixed and matched and dogs changing fur color. I had to flip back and double check a few things, which pulled me out of the immersion.

I also lost the plot a bit in the end, where the rug was pulled out from under us so many times that it almost felt repetitive? It was very cyclical and it felt "stalled" a bit in recurring horrors instead of moving forward plotwise.

Major trigger warnings here for child abuse and animal abuse / death. More than a wee bit gratuitous on both ends if you ask me ... also intense fatphobia regarding flashbacks to the Luke's mother which I could have done without. And the descriptions of women overall were a bit .. well ... hmm.

I've seen a lot of folks complain about the ending. I actually liked it! 

I'm curious to check out The Troop and see what that experience is like.

CW: body horror, death, animal cruelty, animal death, gore, child abuse, blood, confinement, fatphobia, torture, emotional abuse, incest, sexual assault, pedophilia, body shaming, mental illness, panic attacks