- Paperback: 415 pages
- Publisher: Gollancz (23 Sep 1999)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0575068620
- ISBN-13: 978-0575068629
- Product Dimensions: 22.6 x 15.2 x 3.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 925,922 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
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
Book Description
Adventure isn't dead. It's just gone to Hell.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format: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
Format: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
Format: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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Most Recent Customer Reviews
While not without its foibles, a good read
The Descent holds a special place in my literary heart. When I first read it my response was 'meh.' But by the end of the week I was practically in love with it. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Sadie Forsythe
Great horror/suspense story
Firstly, I haven't seen the film of the same name but this book doesn't appear to be anything to do with it. Read more
Published 7 months ago by Dr. Andrew Phillips
Simply the best book I've ever read
On a par with Stephen King and David Gemmel, Jeff Long has a talent for creating characters you just want to know more about. Read more
Published 11 months ago by Lauren
Don't think I'll be going potholing anytime soon
I picked this up in a charity shop, intrigued by the premise and having never read anything by Long before, or even seen any reviews previous, I entered Long's subterranean world... Read more
Published on 29 Nov 2008 by N. Cannon
Good, thought provoking adventure
It took me a while to actually pick this book up from my shelf (I bought it in January) but when I did I was suitably impressed and read it within 3 days. Read more
Published on 27 Jun 2008 by L. Young
into the abyss...
Wow, what a read. Now, I would consider myself to be a fairly seasoned reader of books. I have seen many different topics & many different styles of writing. Read more
Published on 13 Feb 2008 by wilco121
Visceral, shocking, violent .... brilliant !!
Visceral, shocking, and in parts, extremely violent, but Jeff Long's book `Descent' is also a thrilling adventure. Read more
Published on 31 Oct 2007 by alexander the librarian
You Must Read This Now!!
Never heard of Jeff Long. Nope nor had I.
This is not a book about climbing or coming down a mountain. Read more
This is not a book about climbing or coming down a mountain. Read more
Published on 12 Aug 2007 by Mr. William Oxley
A horror story of EPIC proportions!
The Descent is probably the most well written, well constructed story I've read to date. Epic in it's scope, Long's description of a hidden, labyrinthian world beneath our own and... Read more
Published on 20 Feb 2007 by Jack
Goblins in the basement
If you grew up in a house with a cellar, do you remember imagining what horrors lurked in the dark among the cobwebs under the stairs until you turned the light on at the top? Read more
Published on 12 Sep 2006 by Joseph Haschka
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