The Dungeon 2: The Dark Abyss

Philip José Farmer's The Dungeon #2

by Bruce Coville

Neville Folliot, a 19th century explorer, goes missing and his brother Clive sets out to find him. He stumbles across "The Dungeon", a place of strange atmospheric conditions, beings from distant galaxies and hidden pockets of time.

Genres: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy, Fiction

311 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1989

Reviews

[Space · Rating 3 out of 5]

In reading these books again as a more mature adult (I was only 19-20 the last time I read them), I found that the biggest problem I have with them is not so much the magical bits. Sure, okay, the stars in the sky rearranged themselves and began spiraling hypnotically. Fine. Whatever. It is a fantasy book, so I have to accept a little fantasy. I'm not a fantasy reader, typically. Well, not ever. I haven't read Tolkien. I don't care. I don't like magic and wizards and fairies and pixie dust and dragons and all that other horse shit. Now if you turn it into science, I can roll with it. The stars started doing that because someone turned on the Super Black Holer 3000 in the proximity of those stars... You get my drift. The only reason I read this set of fantasy is because they have been grandfathered into my collection. I read them at the recommendation of a friend back then, and knowing no better, and still within my first fifty books ever read, I hadn't decided what I liked yet.

Anyway. My foot is now sore from kicking that horse. The point is, the problem I have with these, like I said, isn't necessarily the magic and the monsters and whatnot. I can deal with that. It's that the writers attach themselves way too much to these characters. I'm pretty confident when I start each book that I'll finish it with the same characters in the group. Yeah we lost one in this book, but said character was tertiary at best. Useless. Whining. Didn't add anything to the story other than another set of tits for our protagonist to want to get with. So it wasn't a big loss.

You see, I subscribe to Stephen King's rules of character loyalty. His words from On Writing are, specifically, "Kill your darlings." Don't get so attached to a character that you become afraid to kill it if the story needs that. Sometimes your story needs to move in a different direction, and for that to happen you have to lose one or two of your heroes. Well, The Dungeon - this horrid, nightmare of a dangerous place - is a safe little sweet cottage where all my favorite characters will make it out alive. I just know it, friends! I'm so excited!

Blah. I shake my head in disgust. It's so predictable. And the problem with that - or at least the biggest problem - is that it makes the battle scenes (oh, and there are many) almost ridiculously non-intense. There's no tension, wondering who's gonna die. Miraculously all my heroes fight hundreds of gnomes or dwarves or whatever the shit, and get some scrapes and scratches. No one loses a hand. Well, Shriek lost a leg. But come on! She's got seven more of them! How cheap is that? I just know going into a battle that all my friends are gonna make it out and everything will be okay. So I'm never on the edge of my seat.

While I like the story, I just can't ever get so lost in it that I feel threatened by a pack of horrendous beasts, or a kraken. Sigh. Oh well. I am only reading it for that nostalgic feeling anyway. I'm gonna have to give it three stars for the storytelling though. Because really dude? No one ever dies? In the DUNGEON? Really? Well it doesn't sound like that scary of a place to me then. Sounds like a resort.

And here's a quick example of why I feel like the writing is so immature. He was describing a scene in which a man was being punished for his sins:

His scream echoed through the temple. The seated worshippers sighed in satisfaction.

But still it was not the end. As the old man hobled away to the left, the next person in line at the right, a dark-haired woman, stepped forward. She dropped her robe, revealing a pair of round, full breasts. Then she mounted the table, where she lay face down...

What the shit do her breasts have to do with the story? It never mentions them again, and in about a paragraph, they leave the room. We never hear about her again. But I'm so glad to know that extraneous character had round, full breasts. Dude, seriously? Go jerk off before you sit down to write. :rolleyes:

[Eckhardt · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Dungeon: The Dark Abyss is a continuation of Clive Folliot’s journey through the Dungeon, a mysterious planet that extends space and time. Searching for his brother Neville, Him and his group of intrepid adventurers must traverse an ocean of monsters dotted with dangerous islands. The challenges they face bringing question to Clive’s ability to lead the group.
The dark Abyss is an amazing continuation to the series, being faster paced than the first one. The story focuses more on Clive’s internal struggle, questioning his own leadership and wondering if he is truly fit to lead his group to find neville and to safety. One of these situation being when they get caught on an island by cannibals. They manage to save themselves from the gruesome ceremony but are nearly endangered again when Clive attempted to rescue more people, “balanced on a razor, death on one hand, moral despair on the other.” I would recommend this book, but only if you can read somewhat challenging books and wouldn't mind being forced to re-read it to be able to understand it completely.

[Derek · Rating 1 out of 5]

I wish I'd reread To Your Scattered Bodies Go before The Black Tower, as it provides more context for The Dungeon series. A man from recognizable Earth history is transported to some mysterious superworld and accumulates outlandish companions as he penetrates mysteries in a mythic underworld-like journey. Between significant events he confronts personal demons and cultural limitations.

And like the first Riverworld, this is pulp adventure interspersed with character development and some philosophizing, in a setting of limitless possibilities and mystery. But as an adventure it doesn't hit that grand set piece or sense of _doing_ something. The first hundred pages were corridor wandering, travel montage, and eventually a bar fight and overnight brothel stay. This is a hero being pushed from place to place towards a nebulous goal and not having much agency. (It is probably the point of this adventure from a character-development standpoint, but I'm not invested enough to find out.)

[The Honest Book Reviewer · Rating 3 out of 5]

While I enjoyed the second book of The Dungeon series, it felt very formulaic to me. There is a definite pattern to the events. Discover a new part of the dungeon, find it strange - sometimes friendly, a dire event happens, flight or flight (sometimes both) and then on to a new part. The story is driven by this pattern, it doesn't seem driven by the characters. Also, because we have the overall purpose of finding the lost brother, Neville, it takes away part of the fear that the party won't escape each danger.

Still, it makes for a good adventure story, much like an epic from ancient Greece.

The thing that doesn't sit right with me is the sexualisation of the female characters. It gets to the point of being obscene in this novel, makes it feel like it's a Conan story. Mentioning anatomy when there's no reason to is a bit much.

As I have the rest of the series, I'll keep reading. I'm interested in where the next book will lead.

[Xabi1990 · Rating 4 out of 5]

7/10.
Prefiero al Farmer de CF, pero esta saga de fantasía (6 libros) se llevo yb 7/10 en todas y cada uno de ellos. Entretenida, vamos.

[Mark · Rating 2 out of 5]

I picked this up without having read the first one -but I loved Farmer's Scattered Bodies series, so I thought I would go for it.

Straight off I was at a disadvantage as I didn't know the characters - not just their personalities but what they physically are.
The dwarf seems to be some kind of dog creature, I think, A lot of the other people are just there, only the army codger really gets named.
I can't really blame the book for not wanting to tread old ground but a summary would have been nice.

This is just too silly for me.
I like older sci-fi where the author didn't have to worry about appeasing an educated or sensitive audience and could let their imagination run free. But this takes it too far.
There is some kind of spider creature in the group that acts as a multi-tool of dungeoneering - need a poison dart? Got one. Need someone's head bitten off? Done. Need to make a psychic conference call? Not a problem. Need everyone to start fucking each other? On it.

There is a mysterious parallel story that I must admit I was intrigued by. But, as the group wandered from room to room killing and doing stuff, I just lost interest.

Maybe I will come back to this from book 1 and give it a proper run

[Kirk Macleod · Rating 3 out of 5]

The second volume of Phillip José Farmer's The Dungeon series, The Dark Abyss, by Bruce Coville, picks up immediately where The Black Tower left off. Major Folliot and company continue their search for the Major's missing brother and the mysteries of the dungeon get both deeper and stranger.

The second book is a faster read than the first, Coville moves the narrative along at a nice pace and as the characters have already been introduced the action can begin immediately. The novel takes the group through two levels of the dungeon, pits them against some of the most dangerous creatures they've met so far and manages both to answer some questions from the first novel while still leaving the reader looking for more.

As the third book is by Charles de Lint (who happens to be the reason I've picked up this series now), I'm looking forward to getting to the halfway point of the series, so will be starting almost immediately.

[Robert Negut · Rating 4 out of 5]

The second part of this interesting experiment, written by a different author than the first.
The story continues very well and Annie does start to sound and think more like a human than in the first book.
This author fixes the impossible names from the first book, as in N'wrbb and 'Nrrc'kth, by creating characters with believable names, such as "an unpronounceable grumble", later referred to as Ka, or "a name that started with Mar and ended with a kind of fizzing sound made by lifting the upper lip and blowing through the front teeth", later referred to as Mar/fssh.
Better than the first, certainly, but there are still some problems. Still, great idea.

[Jerjonji · Rating 2 out of 5]

Vol. 2... in which more strange adventures happens to the crew of adventurers and in which they meet more strange entities. A little of the mystery is resolved, but not enough- after all, this is a series! The voice was completely different (which is to be expected since it's a different author)- not bad, just different. No longer feeling like Haggard's wild tales of dark Africa, it read like a typical fantasy adventure journey- like a bad game of D&D, perhaps!

[Lepeth]

woah - gotta check THIS out

[Deven Elliott · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved the series. I enjoyed the first and last.