Boulder author Jeff Long has a gift for taking a whoppingly outrageous adventure tale and turning it into a perfectly logical, even riveting story of good vs. evil, God vs. the devil, with a splash of philosophy thrown in for good measure.
He did so with “The Descent” in 1999, and now follows that with its sequel (sort of) “Deeper.”
In “The Descent,” the battle was between God and the devil, with mankind thrown in as fodder. There is more of that in “Deeper,” as the devil makes another appearance.
As “Deeper” opens, it’s a decade since the hadals, mutant humanlike creatures who lived beneath Earth’s surface, were wiped out by the U.S. government – supposedly.
Apparently, though, not all of the hadals were exterminated and on a Halloween night, American children are kidnapped on the surface by a group of hadals. They are taken into the bowels of the earth to serve as slaves. But not so fast: Humans are outraged at the attacks and mount an effort to rescue the children.
One woman, Rebecca Coltrane, will stop at nothing to retrieve her daughter from the grasp of the mutants. Separately, linguist Ali von Schade, who had been captured by the hadals and escaped, but lost her husband and daughter in the process, also goes on a mission to save the children.
Long peppers his new novel with almost set-piece battles as the humans take on the hadals in an effort to rescue the children. Some of the scenes are not pretty as the grisly fighting take place.
But always in the background is the feeling of foreboding that the best thrillers offer a reader. You just know that something bad is going to happen, but you don’t know what, when or how. It’s what keeps you reading, and Long is a master at that.
If there is a quibble with “Deeper,” it’s that the story bears a lot of similarities to “The Descent,” perhaps too many.
In addition to the battle between God and the devil, this time out, it seems Long was going for a discussion of the primacy of species.
Is man truly at the top of the food chain, or is there something else out there – down there, to be more specific – that trumps humanity? A little more of this and a little less of the biblical battles would have gone a long way.
Long has said that “Deeper” is the second in a trilogy about the hadals and their war with humans on the surface. Here’s hoping the third and final installment can expand a little more on the story and the major themes it contains.
Books editor Tom Walker can be reached at 303-820-1624 or twalker@denverpost.com.
FICTION
Deeper
By Jeff Long
$25
