The Deluge

I passed Deluge up on its original publication because the reviews in general rated the book as mediocre at best.

Still, the synopsis was tempting enough that I kept wondering about the book: In the dead of night, London suddenly and impossibly floods. Water covers all but the tops of the tallest skyscrapers, wiping out the majority of the population. When the floodwaters recede the survivors find that they are not alone.

Well, I finally bit the bullet and ordered the book. As soon as I started reading, I was glad I did. The opening chapters of the book are its strongest moment. The description of the flood (which occurs at night, so is only described with sounds and sensations) is very effective and the characters have a little bit of show more depth to them The writing is several levels above the usual Leisure schlock.

Once the waters drain (sooner than I was expecting), our heroes travel to Scotland to check on family members and the book becomes your typical post apocalyptic journey story (for a little while anyway). While there was always something happening here, I lost some interest. I guess it's because post apocalypse stories are invariably going to be similar to one another and nothing in this one necessarily stood out. This section is in no way bad. Just sort of so-so.

Things pick back up once they discover their first 'other', my interest piqued again. I enjoyed the rest of the book, but even at its best it never quite gets back up to the levels established at the beginning. The bulk of the book is an above average horror/sci-fi story that mixes elements of The Day After and The Thing. Unfortunately, as good as it is, that tale is preceded by a much stronger introduction that made me feel that even though I was enjoying the book, the author could do better.

Overall, I enjoyed the book. If the synopsis sounds interesting, I would recommend reading it. Mark Morris had a good idea and he handled it well. At the same time, while I would possibly pick up another book by the same author, I don't see myself going out of the way to seek one out. show less

Abby is awoken in the middle of the night by a slight rumbling, what feels like a small earthquake, which is weird because she visiting her dad in London. Then she hears what sounds like the crashing of waves on a shore, and is horrified to find a massive wave crashing through the city below her as she watches from the top of a tall apartment building. The water doesn't recede either, but continues to rise until the entire city - perhaps the entire world - is engulfed in water...all but a the tips of the tallest buildings.

When the water does finally recede, much of the human population is gone. It only gets worse, however, because the disaster wasn't a natural one, and the survivors aren't as alone as they think.

There are many technical show more flaws with this book, particularly in the beginning. Characters are referred to with different names (first names, last names, shorthand names, etc), a woman was featured in 1 chapter but her name isn't given, and then when she is introduced later I didn't make the connection that it was the same person, at one point a character points something out and says something along the lines of "Hey, look at that" and then the author spends a paragraph describing the characters discussing what they are looking at without actually telling you what it is, before finally telling you it's a smoke plume. Little things like that, that cause you to pause, question what you are reading, and causing you to occasionally flip back a page or 2 to figure out what's going on are common at the start of the novel.

Despite all this, I still found myself enjoying the story a lot. It's not an instance of "It's so bad, it's good." It was just enjoyable enough that I could see past a few minor issues with the writing. I particularly liked Abby's perspective...even if her diary entries annoyed me due to intentional misspellings, and there were some genuinely scary moments...even if the monsters were kind of silly and absurd. Okay, I can't seem to say anything positive about it without pointing out everything negative about it, so I'll just end this by saying it was a fun and enjoyable read. There! show less

The second post-apocalyptic novel I've finished today, and also the second book I've read today that I got as part of a three-for-a-pound deal at my local charity bookshop. Coincidence? Well, yes, obviously.

This book isn't dreadful, it just doesn't feel very original. It's a loosely cobbled together mish mash of scenes from 28 Days Later, The Thing, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and a few others. The story isn't badly told either, although it does seem like the author rushed through the beginning and then stopped before the end.

One aspect of the plot that seems slightly clumsily handled is the number of characters. Initially the group we follow has nine members; they're picked off one by one because this is a horror book. But then show more towards the end of the book a fresh bunch of people are brought into the story, although most of them are nothing more than names whose only contribution to the story is to be killed at the end, seemingly to make the ending appear exciting and dangerous while in fact letting a bunch of people die while keeping most of the original characters alive to see the end of the story.

Oh, and one more thing really got my goat. That this book by a British author set in Britain should use American spelling I could deal with, it had an American publisher after all. But why oh why did the chapters written as diary entries by a thirteen year old British girl have to use these spellings too? "Thru" I could cope with as an abbreviation favoured by the SMS generation. But "color"? "Favorite"? Egads! This truly is horror. show less

The second post-apocalyptic novel I've finished today, and also the second book I've read today that I got as part of a three-for-a-pound deal at my local charity bookshop. Coincidence? Well, yes, obviously.

This book isn't dreadful, it just doesn't feel very original. It's a loosely cobbled together mish mash of scenes from 28 Days Later, The Thing, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and a few others. The story isn't badly told either, although it does seem like the author rushed through the beginning and then stopped before the end.

One aspect of the plot that seems slightly clumsily handled is the number of characters. Initially the group we follow has nine members; they're picked off one by one because this is a horror book. But then show more towards the end of the book a fresh bunch of people are brought into the story, although most of them are nothing more than names whose only contribution to the story is to be killed at the end, seemingly to make the ending appear exciting and dangerous while in fact letting a bunch of people die while keeping most of the original characters alive to see the end of the story.

Oh, and one more thing really got my goat. That this book by a British author set in Britain should use American spelling I could deal with, it had an American publisher after all. But why oh why did the chapters written as diary entries by a thirteen year old British girl have to use these spellings too? "Thru" I could cope with as an abbreviation favoured by the SMS generation. But "color"? "Favorite"? Egads! This truly is horror. show less

I truly loathed the previous work of Morris' that I had read, THE IMMACULATE, which was truly one of the most disappointing reads I'd had last year. Needless to say, I wasn't looking to forward to having received this in the mail from my Leisure Books Horror Club.

I was pleased to discover that THE DELUGE was a good, apocalyptic, almost end-of-the-world read. I really felt the novel was at its strongest when it just was about daily survival and the common things they encounted. Those weird energy kids things? Meh. The story would have been stronger with them edited out, but they didn't ruin the story, just distracted from it.

As a footnote, a friend of mine also read this and simply adores it from first page to last.

And so it goes.

***SPOILERS****

This is an unoriginal apocalypse/post-apocalypse novel, that doesn't so much terrify the audience as revolt them with graphic descriptions of corpses and other ... things. The writing was inconsistent with too much exposition and not enough "showing". I also found the characer's reactions (or rather lack thereof) to the disaster to be unbelievable, especially in this day and age when supposed adults are having melt-downs over some internet persons differing opinions. There were simply too many unanswered questions not to get annoyed with this book. We never find out what caused the deluge, or what the slugs are or where they come from, what happens to Max and what they find when they leave. The book also doesn't end show more properly - the author apparently just got bored and stopped.

NOTE: I read the ebook which was filled with typos/spelling and grammar errors, along with missing letters, eg. "thru" instead of "through", "arum" instead of arm, "rn" merged into an "m" etc. I don't know if the text was supposed to be like that but I found it annoying. show less

I thought that this was a really good book up to the end. Then it just kind of stopped. No explanations or alluding to a sequel. It kind of left you just wondering.