Book Review: The Vanishing Deep | Astrid Scholte

This is book #5/20 (#10 overall) that I read this year. It was published on March 3, 2020, and counts towards my 20 for 2020 challenge. I will have a spoiler section, but I will warn you before we get there if you don't want to be spoiled.

This was a very plot-driven story which I really appreciated since a lot of the books I've been reading lately have been very character-focused with flowery writing that requires more attention and analysis. So it was fun for me to just be immersed in this unique world and on the ride for this crazy adventure. A world covered in water is not a completely original concept, but I think some of the details of the way they lived and this society were unique from other similar settings like in "Waterworld." For example, I feel like other water-covered worlds are more apocalyptic where there are no remnants left of society, there are very few people and everyone is savage and only out for themselves because that's what they have to do to survive. This world was more civilized; it is an apocalyptic setting, and life is hard, but it's not completely unbearable, and this world still has some resemblance to our world now.

I was also really interested in the whole concept of bringing people back from the dead for 24 hours; however, there was a lot of suspension of disbelief that I had to put myself through. A little bit of suspension of disbelief is necessary for there to be any fantastical, unique story, otherwise we would only be seeing stories about our normal world. But especially towards the end, it definitely got pretty bad for me. The logic completely got thrown out of the window. While I had to suspend a lot of disbelief regarding the concept of reviving people for 24 hours, I was able to look past this because of how interesting the story was. Towards the end it definitely got a little ridiculous for me though, with just basic laws of physics being ignored to fit the story.

I really liked the juxtaposition between Lor and Tempest and what each character represents. I also really liked the character arc and transformation that Tempest undergoes. Lor was slightly annoying in the beginning and I didn't exactly understand his struggles or the motivations behind his actions, but continuing through the book it definitely begins to make sense. And he definitely had some great moments too.

I didn't really have much of an emotional connection to the characters or what happened to them. The book is told in a pretty straightforward way that focuses more on the story I think. I enjoyed the book more for the world-building and adventure aspects.

I did have some criticisms for the book, but overall I did enjoy it. I thought the story was really unique and interesting.

***SPOILERS SECTION***

Here I just want to discuss all the random spoiler-y thoughts and opinions I have.

This is pretty early in the book, but I don't want to include it above and reveal too much. But I liked the cleverness of all the coincidences that led to the story and adventure. Like how Elysea's revival was on the same day as Lor covering for Ray, and Elysea just happened to be the case they were assigned to. I liked the circumstances that led up to Tempest and Elysea's escape. They were thinking that Lor was this highly trained Palindromena employee and how they outsmarted him when really he was just clueless because he was covering for Ray. And how Lor let them escape because if he told anyone, then Lor and Ray would get caught. How he pulled the fire alarm to provide a distraction for him, but Tempest and Elysea thought it was like a master alarm to alert that someone escaped. And how throughout their whole chase sequence, they thought Ray was the bodyguard. It all was just pretty clever throughout all of their assumptions about the other person.

I wanted to talk about some of the things that I had an issue with in terms of suspension of disbelief, and just some general issues I had with the main characters' logic. It definitely started going off the rails for me once they were headed back to Palindromena to try and save both Elysea and Lor. A lot of the scientific explanations they were giving didn't really make sense to me that I just started kind of ignoring it all because it felt like these things were all just made up to get the desired ending. It definitely got way too convoluted and over-complicated for me. I've included some examples of this below:

• Using a brain dead person as a tether to be able to save both Lor and Elysea. I still don't really understand why exactly that plan didn't work. Their explanations didn't really make sense to me. Also I just don't believe that Nessandra (or any of the other scientists) had never thought of that before. Workaholic Nessandra, who is obsessed with finding a cure for death hasn't thought of this pretty basic idea of using a brain-dead person's heart instead of a normal functioning person's heart? I really don't believe that.

• Using Calen's echolink to bring Lor back to life. First of all, I don't really understand the logic that says this is necessary for the transplant. It feels like something that was just an extra element added for the climax of the story. It gave them something else to do to add to the suspense and drama. Secondly, I don't understand why they couldn't have just used Raylan's echolink that Lor had been wearing for the past 24 hours if they needed a memory of Lor's heartbeat rhythm?

• Breaking the glass ceiling of the underwater crypt with a rock. The crypt is so far down underwater that it takes them 30 minutes to fall down to it. The glass would have to be extremely strong and thick to withhold that kind of pressure. No human, not even Raylan the strong spearfisher, would be able to throw a rock hard enough to break it. There is absolutely no way. And if the glass did break, they would have been crushed by the sudden difference in pressure from all the water. It makes no sense.

• Tempest losing her breather at the crypt fight. After Qera steals Tempest's breather, they decide the only option is to let her keep Calen's echolink and rise to the surface. They completely ignore any option of going after Qera to get the breather back? I don't get that at all.

• Palindromena post-Nessandra. After Nessandra leaves, the island just transfers ownership to Tempest's and Elysea's parents. They've been gone for five years, and they were Palindromena traitors on the run. I don't see understand why they would get control of the island. There had to have been someone second of third or fourth in line for control. There would be a million people who should ownership/control before the parents do.

I liked the reveal where Lor came out as Nessandra's son. I liked the twist where it's revealed that Lor was actually dead the whole time and Nessandra used his friend to save Lor. But I think this second reveal was done so poorly. I felt like it was just dropped on us, when it could have had such a big impact. Tempest just came in and blurted it out. I think it was such a good twist that made so much sense and had so much potential to blow me out of the water. It explained the reasoning behind why Lor was punishing himself so much (his earlier explanations for why he was punishing himself so much didn't quite add up for me). And it made sense why Nessandra never mentioned Lor to anyone. It added to why Lor had such a bad opinion of his mom (The other examples he had given about her, didn't really convince me that she was such a bad person). So it was just really frustrating for me that they really rushed through this reveal and it wasn't very impactful.

Another thing I didn't like was how in the end they completely got rid of the revival program. Throughout the whole book, they kept pushing the idea that the revival program itself was wrong but I don't really understand why. Yes, Lor and Tempest didn't necessarily have good experiences with revivals, but that doesn't mean everyone has a bad experience. I don't think bringing people back for a day is playing God. I think it could be good to give people the opportunity to see their loved ones one last time and get the closure they need. Yes Nessandra took it too far with her experiments, but I don't think you need to cancel the whole program. But I guess if you don't cancel the program altogether though, it might be harder to draw the line at certain things in the future.

This also ties into how they portrayed Nessandra as the villain throughout. Lor kept saying how bad she was, and from what I was seeing she didn't seem to be that bad to me. In the beginning they try to say she's evil because she runs the revival program (which is apparently the devil). I never bought into the idea that the revival program was so evil, so it was slightly annoying to me that they kept trying to say Nessandra was so bad, when there was nothing to show for it (other than the fact that she ran the revival program/Palindromena). Yes she was obsessed with curing death, but that's not the worst problem to have. Playing up all these minor faults just resulted in me feeling like the characters were a little dramatic when discussing this stuff, or that things were being so dramaticized and forced for the story to make sure there's an antagonist. Eventually once we learn more, she did start to get worse in my eyes (experimenting on living people etc.) and in the end once we know what she did to Lor and Calen she becomes unforgiveable, but I just didn't really buy into her being a villain in the beginning.

I felt like the romance between Lor and Tempest was completely unnecessary. There was no point really to that for me. they could have just been friends. It definitely felt completely forced. I thought it was really interesting that they revealed Elysea to be asexual. I don't think I've ever read a book with that kind of representation before, so that was cool.

I feel like the ending was a little bit unclimactic and unresolved in the end. I think it should have ended after Lor died. They should have just accepted his death and gone back to Equinox. I didn't like how they went down to the underwater crypt and ran into the Remorans. I didn't like it because it felt pointless since they didn't even succeed in their mission in the end and it ended the same way option 1 (suggested above) would have had. Lor is still dead, and they go back to the Equinox to live their lives. So it just felt like an extra x number of pages thrown in there to make it longer and provide a climax. It just felt completely pointless to me, and left things more unresolved than it would have if it just had the Option 1 ending.

I mentioned this briefly in the non-spoiler section, but I wanted to talk about it more in depth down here. I liked the juxtaposition in the metaphors between Lor and Tempest. They were opposites in terms of their personalities, but they were also opposites in the things they represent. Lor represents death, while Tempest represents life. Lor represents the sheltered life of a hermit, Tempest represents the adventurous life of an explorer. Lor represents the mountains and elevation and Tempest represents the sea and the depths. So I just thought it was really cool to see all the different ways that they portrayed that they were different. I liked Tempest's character arc, that she learned to not close everyone out and not be so cold and disconnected. She learned to adventure out and explore; not to stay cooped up and waste her life in self-pity like Lor did and how she did after her whole family died).

***END OF SPOILERS SECTION***

Overall I did enjoy the book. I did have some criticisms, but these were more minor annoyances. I really enjoyed the fun ride. I'd give this a 3.5/5. Have you read this book? I'd love to hear your thoughts down below.