✍ The Deep - Nick Cutter

Genre: Horror
Published 13 January 2015 by Headline and Gallery, Threshold, Pocket Books
Number of pages: 401

My rating: ★ ★ ★  I liked it

"Nick Cutter is bringing classic horror kicking and screaming back to life - The Deep will thrill anyone who loved The Abyss or Alien.

A plague is destroying the world's population. The 'Gets makes people forget. First it's the small things, like where you left your keys ... then the not-so-small things, like how to drive. And finally your body forgets how to live.

But now an unknown substance with extraordinary power to heal has been discovered in the depths of the Pacific Ocean. Nicknamed ambrosia, it might just be the miracle cure the world has been praying for.

A research lab has been established eight miles below the sea's surface, but all contact with the team has been lost. Dr Luke Nelson's brother is down
there and as desperation for a cure outweighs common sense, he agrees to descend through the lightless fathoms ... perhaps to face an evil blacker than anything he could have imagined."

Having read Nick Cutters first book, The Troop (review here), I was really looking forward to The Deep.

The author's writing style is really easy to read, fast moving, descriptive, engaging.
The comparisons to Stephen King are fully justified.
I did not find this story overly gory, and there wasn't the gratuitous sadistic animal abuse that I had found so disturbing in The Troop. Don't get me wrong, this is a horror story... no rainbows or unicorns here... but I found the animal aspect very sensitively done.

Unfortunately, the story was simply too familiar: a mixture of the Sphere, Event Horizon, a sprinkle of Deep Blue Sea, and good portion of IT for good measure, and therefore I was disappointed for a good part of this book as I expected something more original from this author.

The last part of the tale rescued this book for me, and I went from finding it OK, to liking it.

I look forward to reading more from Mr Cutter, hopefully next time he will have a more original story and he would have developed a more individual voice.
In the meantime, I have given in to curiosity and am planning to read the very two first horror novels published under the Patrick Lestewka pseudonym: The Preserve and The Coliseum.

[ARC received via Netgalley]