Rolling in the Deep; My review for "The Kraken Wakes" by John Wyndham.

“If it had only been something we could fight - ! But just to be drowned and starved and forced into destroying one another to live – and by things nobody has ever seen, living in the one place we can’t reach!”

This quote from Phyllis Watson, one of the main protagonists of “The Kraken Wakes” pretty well sums up the whole book. Phyllis and Mike are journalists who work for the E.B.C. (rivals to the B.B.C.). When strange events begin on Earth, the two journalists are tasked with reporting what is happening back to the masses in the United Kingdom and around the world. This is their story.

It begins harmlessly enough; a few strange glowing lights fall through the sky and plunge into the oceans of the Earth, but then events become terrifyingly sinister. I won’t go into the details of what happens for fear of spoilers. What I will say is that this is the best imagining of an alien invasion that I have read since “The War of the Worlds” or John Wyndham’s other classic book, “The Day of the Triffids”.

The writing style is a little formal, even old fashioned by today’s standards, but if you can get past that then the story simply sucks you down into the murky “depths” that are slowly being colonised by creatures that we can’t even see as they live at depths where the pressure would crush even our strongest submersibles. From the moment that an exploratory deep sea diving bell disappears with the loss of two sailors the puzzling events that have so far been dismissed as “harmless” take a sinister and deadly turn. The scene where “sea tanks” crawl out of the depths to prey on the unfortunate inhabitants of a coastal village still haunts my imagination.

The book is not only entertaining but is cleverly and intelligently thought through and has many of the elements of cataclysmic, worldwide apocalypse that wouldn’t seem out of place in a contemporary big budget movie. In fact I can’t imagine why no one has bought the rights to this story as it would put such mind numbing popcorn fodder as “The Day After Tomorrow” to shame.

As with his other books, The Kraken Wakes has a dismal feel to it. The main characters become gradually worried, depressed, terrified and eventually completely disconsolate. This book scared me more than “Jaws”, mainly because the creatures below are never seen or described. The imagination conjures up more terrifying creatures than computer special effects ever could. Tentacles, beaks and gelatinous amorphous forms roll in the deep as huge saucer-like eyes regard mankind with incomprehensible malevolence. One piece of advice I would give you; don’t even think of reading this book while you are on a cruise…