The Descent - Hardcover

Long, Jeff

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0609602934 ISBN 13: 9780609602935

Publisher: Clarkson Potter, 1999

Synopsis

At the dawn of a new millennium, humankind faces its ultimate challenge as a demonic horde, led by a satanic overlord, prepares to leave its subterranean kingdom for an apocalyptic confrontation with the forces of good. 150,000 first printing.

About this title

Review:

This blockbuster confection of adventure, paranoia and horror is receiving bestseller promotion. Jeff Long gives a fresh spin to the underworld caverns of Jules Verne's Journey to the Centre of the Earth by populating these vast spaces with demonic creatures whose existence explains the myth of Hell. They're our feral relatives, Homo hadalis or "hadals", afflicted with horns and deformities by a harsh environment where necessity is the mother of cannibalism. Greedy for new frontiers, governments and corporations move to exploit the recently discovered underworld. It's deadlier than they think; much hideous bloodshed follows. Long expertly hits a range of nerve-jarring emotional buttons, playing on our fears of darkness, monsters, mutilation, torture and worse. One major plot strand follows a literally bedevilled expedition through terror-fraught tunnels under the Pacific to the remnants of a 20,000-year-old civilisation below. Another speculates about the charismatic hadal leader "Satan" and his impact on world religion (this is where the Turin Shroud comes in)--a tastily paranoid reinterpretation of history. There's a slam-bang climax down in the deeps, with enough horrific trimmings to make readers nervously shield their tender parts. Though the incidental science is poorly handled and occasionally absurd, The Descent reads well as nightmare action-adventure. Not, as they say, for the squeamish. -- David Langford

Amazon.co.uk
In a high Himalayan cave, among the death pits of Bosnia, in a newly excavated Java temple, Long's characters find out to their terror that humanity is not alone, that, as we have always really known, horned and vicious humanoids lurk in vast caverns beneath our feet ... This audacious remaking of the old hollow-earth plot takes us, in no short order, to the new world order that follows the genocidal harrowing of Hell by heavily armed, high-tech American forces. An ambitious tycoon sends an expedition of scientists, including a beautiful nun linguist and a hideously tattooed commando former prisoner of hell, ever deeper into the unknown, among surviving savage horned tribes and the vast citadels of the civilisations that fell beneath the earth before ours rose. A conspiracy of scholars pursues the identity of the being known as Satan, coming up with unpalatable truths about the origins of human culture and the identity of the Turin Shroud, and are picked off one by bloody one. Long rehabilitates, madly, the novel of adventures among lost peoples--occasional clumsiness, and promises of paranoid revelations on which he cannot entirely deliver, fail to diminish the real achievement here; this feels like a story we have always known and dreaded. --Roz Kaveney

Review:

"An imaginative tour de force...equal parts Ray Bradbury and Robert Stone, Michael Crichton and T.C. Boyle. It is a rip-roaring good read. Jeff Long has written a remarkable novel...that somehow succeeds both as a sober-minded allegory and a nail-biting thriller." --Jon Krakauer, author of Into Thin Air

"Would give Stephen King and Dean Koontz the night sweats. A flat-out, gears-grinding, bumper-car ride into the pits of hell. Jeff Long has delivered what is bound to be this summer's really hot read." --Lorenzo Carcaterra, author of Sleepers and Apaches

"The Descent is simply the best horror novel since Ghost Story, and, on pure literary merit, it could even be called a masterpiece." --Fort Worth Star-Telegram

"A return to the fantastic epics readers associate with H.G. Wells or Jules Verne...[A] high-spirited tale of good versus evil, faith versus reason, and the power of the human heart to overcome even the darkest obstacles." --Chicago Tribune

"As frightening and exhilarating as anything in heaven or hell...[and] impossible to set down. Part thriller, part horror story and part mystery...an all-engulfing reading experience." --Denver Rocky Mountain News

"Perfect...right out of the stephen king mold, with a touch of Dante's Inferno." --Denver Post

"Deeply piercing terror. A sweeping, dark epic.Entertains the senses and challenges the mind [with] new levels of visual wonder." --Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

"Horrific...takes the reader into a Dantesque world, a journey to the center of the earth for the new millennium...Long deftly blends science, myth, and a superb imagination to provide an entrancingly dark novel...a novel for the thinking reader--bright and scintillating, illuminating the darkness it so smartly depicts." --Baltimore Sun

"A dizzying synthesis of supernatural horror, lost-race fantasy and military SF...Like the subterranean trail blazed by its adventurers, the narrative twists, turns, dead-ends and backtracks. Brims with energy, ideas and excitement." --Publishers Weekly

About this edition

• Publisher: Clarkson Potter
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0609602934
• ISBN 13: 9780609602935
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 450