HORROR

From Below

Poisoned Pen. Jun. 2022. 480p. ISBN 9781728220239. pap. $15.99. HORROR
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The disappearance of the ocean liner Arcadia in the 1920s has fascinated people for a century. So when an ocean mapping project reveals a ship on the ocean floor matching the Arcadia’s description, a production company hires a crew of experienced deep-sea divers to explore and get footage for a documentary. Once they drop anchor, things begin to go wrong almost immediately; most notably, the remote cameras fail, so instead of one manned dive they’ll have to do three to meet their contractual obligations. The ship is remarkably well preserved thanks to the low oxygen in the deep sea, but the tight spaces, sediment, and almost complete darkness make it tricky to navigate. And when they encounter cryptic messages on the walls and barricaded hallways, it becomes clear to the divers that something is very wrong. Something on the ship is waking up, and it doesn’t want them to leave. With a timeline that jumps between the last few days before the Arcadia sank and the present-day, Coates’s (The Haunting of Leigh Harker) latest slowly ratchets up the tension and will leave readers gasping for air.
VERDICT Highly recommended for readers who enjoyed Caitlin Starling’s The Luminous Dead or other survival horror.
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