Fathomless by Greig Beck

Fathomless by Greig Beck

Greig Beck is the master of creating primordial worlds. This time he creates one in a massive lake underneath an icefloe that has been cut off from the oceans for millions of years. Inside this lake are numerous creatures that have died out in the rest of the world including a terrifying megalodon. As usual, his primordial world was fascinating, but this time the rest of the novel just didn’t keep up.

 

First, there was the problem of pacing. This novel moves very, very, slowly. And I don’t know why. It would have been far better to cut out half of the book then to let the plot creep along the way it does.

 

Second, some of the human villains (and one of the things I generally like about Beck’s books is that there are always human villains that in many ways are as big a problem as the monsters) were just ridiculous. A dirty nuke is exploded at the bequest of a Soviet official trying to kill off a billionaire he hates, and no one apparently notices. And the environmentalists at the end of the book seemed literally unhinged.

 

Third, the tactics of our heroes to avoid the megalodon while in the water just didn’t make sense to me. Paddle slowly, be quiet (except for talking), and so forth. I just didn’t feel like any of these things would have worked. And what about the lights? Forget for a moment that they keep burning all of their flashlights as the batteries die, wouldn’t light be a big attractor in a world that has been dark for millions of years?

 

Fourth, there are some really stupid people in this novel. Cate, our heroine, should have been nicknamed Dr. Poor Decisions. She funds her first exploration on her own and acts as if she has to learn everything there is to learn about a mammoth cave system on one short drone flight. She makes a decision to fly her expensive drone past the point of no return—why? It never made sense. It’s not as if they couldn’t have made many more flights and if necessary, established a forward base camp to extend their reach. Similarly, they later get attacked by a creature thought to be extinct and she rejects the idea of pulling back to better prepare for their expedition deciding that there couldn’t possibly be anything worse in the entire unknown ecosystem. And this woman’s a scientist?

 

I really hate not liking a Greig Beck book, but I just couldn’t get past the problems with this one.