- Mass Market Paperback: 592 pages
- Publisher: Jove Books; Reissue edition (30 Nov 2001)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 051513175X
- ISBN-13: 978-0515131758
- Product Dimensions: 17.2 x 10.7 x 3.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 628,939 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk 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
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Product Description
An extroadinary thriller about the discovery of a new world miles beneath the surface of the earth and the nightmare consequences that ensue. In a remote Himalayan cave a group of New Age tourists led by a cynical American guide come across the mummified corpse of an RAF flyer. Before they can investigate the mystery all except the guide are ritually massacred. In Bosnia, an American Air Cavalry Patrol investigates a disturbance at a mass grave site and it's commander catches a fleeting glimpse of a creature straight out of a medieval morality play. We are on the verge of discovering a new frontier. And it lies beneath our feet. A global labyrinth of underground tunnels and caves, miles below the surface inhabited by immensely strong, savage devil like creatures. Hell exists.The world's armies respond to the threat and are slaughtered in the dark. From the panic comes a new resolve. Big business takes 1 look at the chasm and sees only the profits from the undiscovered mineral and oil deposits. The race for profit is matched by an intellectual investigation into the nature of the newly revealed satan. Will mankind destroy the new wilderness or will the descent destroy him?
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Most gripping book I have read in a long while,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Descent (Paperback)
Beware reading this book - you will not be able to put it down. This is one of the most exciting books published in recent years and you will keep turning the pages until it is finished. It crosses genres being both sci-fi and a thriller and will please people who are aficianados of both. If you buy nothing else this year buy this!
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Some excellent concepts,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Descent (Paperback)
Well worth reading. This book has some superb elements to it. A lot of pseudo-sience but when taken in the context in which it is presented, forms a great story-line that keeps the reader turning the page. For anyone who enjoys a well presented action thriller which provokes thought and keeps you reading past your bedtime, this is the book for you. The only criticism is the way provisions are 'dropped' to the expedition - Ludicrous, read it and weep! - but alas the only way the book can keep going. I would have given it 4+1/2 stars if I could but it's not quite a 5!
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A superb initial idea let down by a weak ending,
By mark.beech@virgin.net (Birmingham) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Descent (Paperback)
What a fantastic premise and utterly absorbing first chapters. However the themes of an alternative evolution were neither explained or clarified. A dissapointing last third let down thebooks initial promise
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