I'm also a sucker for the weird deep. If there's an opposite to thalassophobia, I've got that. But I did not like this book.

They say, in writing, to show, not tell. I was unprepared for a book that tells, shows, then tells again. It is as if the writer was not being paid by the word, but by the ounce. Everything is overdescribed, overexplained, and retold again in case you missed it, but not in the manner of bad writing, rather in the manner of the narrator addressing the unspoken alien reading the book.

The characters that are meant to be likable are unlikable. The characters that are meant to be unlikable aren't characters, but Captain Planet villains. And there are so many of them. Their introduction is like the catalog of ships from the Iliad - no, really, it's two characters taking about each of the other characters as they come by - except that then there are more characters, many more, mostly unnamed. There are so many damn people and I do not know why.

The plot is the worst kind of plot, where it feels unrealistic but has no point of unrealism to point to. Yes, I know that complaining about realism in a monster book is wrong, but the book seems so concerned with the realism of the monsters, veering into Moby Dick territory with its investigation of anatomy, so plainly the realism is important to the author. I can't judge the science, but I can judge the story structure.

I think of the opposite of Chekov's gun as being Deus Ex Machina, but the plot here challenges that definition, where things that feel really, really important to the plot or the resolution occur without future context. Others, where the narrator takes what amounts to a fourth-wall break to mention, repeatedly, amount to nothing at all.

The ending is almost cool. There's some fridge logic...okay, a substantial amount of fridge logic, but as above, strict realism is a limited virtue. But then nothing. There really isn't an ending, so much as a sort of arbitrary point of climax, a funny enough joke, and an epilogue that re-establishes what we already know. So much is left unaddressed. Again, I'm not looking for the socioeconomic or philosophical ramifications of what just happened, but, gee, if I were interested in any of the sixteen other characters I am left only with a sense that they are not dead. I do not know how their plots resolved. I could, I assume, piece some of it together from the epigrams that start off chapters, but look, this ain't House of Leaves.

And now I would like to turn to the wokeness.

Assuming a vaudeville crook does not rip me away as I key this, I venture into this with delicacy. I like books with diverse casts. Between you me and the cat, I think that something like representation in the text is tertiary to having diverse authors, publishers, and other staff writing and producing the books, but it is important in books. I am sensitive to how complaints about diversity is a racist dogwhistle. I recall Justice Ginsburg's line to the appropriate number of women on the Supreme Court. And I'm doubtful of my ability to appropriately assess things.

But look, in an aesthetic sense, there are better and worse ways to be inclusive in a novel. There is no singular way of doing it, and the answer is not 'don't do it' like so many of the typical complainants assert. But there is good and there is bad. I'd give examples but doing so would run against my point of there being no one way. I think, though, that it relates to the show, don't tell factor. Make it their character.

It may be that the combination of this with the prolix descriptors makes for an awful read, where every time the narrative swings to certain characters suddenly we dive into yet another explanation of what it feels like to be an Evangelical Latino Veteran and how that background is influencing what is happening here and now, and, as you know Bob, here is the history of the Protestant church in Honduras. The result, even if unintentional, is the author showing off how much they know about traditionally marginalized people and their life, and how deeply they feel their problems. It is not useless, as there are instances when it is okay, and it is not particular (not Honduran history qua Honduran history), but you used your word count thusly?

The only virtue, absent the fact that it was long and took me a long time to read, so I have an immense sense of value for my money, is that the gore and violence descriptions around characters dying are, for the most part, quite good. Though even there is a bit of a cheat, where much (all?) of the unnamed cast is killed off-screen and then repped by grim descriptors about the ship, which could have been effective, but this books determination to show how much they don't matter makes me feel like it doesn't.

This author is a HuLN winner. I am not reading any of their other books.