Deeper » (Reprint)

Jeff Long is the New York Times bestselling author whose novels include The Wall, The Reckoning (in development with Reese Witherspoon at Type A Productions), Year Zero, and The Descent. He is a veteran climber and traveler in the Himalayas and has worked as a stonemason, journalist, historian, screenwriter, and elections supervisor for Bosnia's first democratic election. His next novel, Deeper, is forthcoming in hardcover from Atria Books. He lives in Colorado.

Visit his website at www.jefflongbooks.com.

Hell exists. It is a real, geological, historical place beneath our very feet. And it is inhabited savagely.

In an intense and imaginative tour de force, New York Times bestselling author Jeff Long takes readers into the depths of the earth where a primordial intelligence waits in the darkness.

A decade has passed since doomed explorers unveiled a nightmare of tunnels and rivers honeycombing the earth's depths. After millennia of suffering terror and predation, humanity's armies descended to destroy the ancient hordes. Deep beneath the Pacific Ocean, a doomed science expedition killed the subterraneans' fabled leader, and suddenly it seemed that evil was dead and all was right with the world again.

Now Deeper arrives to explode that complacency and plunge us back into the sunless abyss. Hell boils up through America's subways and basements to take its revenge and steal our children. Against the backdrop of a looming war with China, a crusade of volunteers races to find the vestiges of a lost race. But a lone explorer, the linguist Ali von Schade, learns that a far greater menace lies in the unexplored heart of the planet. The real Satan can't be killed, and he has been waiting since the beginning of time to gain his freedom. Man and his pitiless enemies are mere pawns in the greatest escape ever devised.

Mesmerizing and concussive, this darkly brilliant work of imagination galvanizes Jeff Long's reputation as a prodigious talent. At once a love story, the ultimate thriller, and an extreme adventure, Deeper will leave you breathless.

Laura A.B. Cifelli - Library Journal

Nearly ten years have elapsed since Long (Year Zero) took us on an imaginative yet terrifying journey to the center of Earth in The Descent. Apparently, this is the second novel in a planned "Descent" trilogy. We are reunited with linguist Ali von Schade a decade after she reemerged from the depths of Earth's subterranean world following her capture and assimilation by the indigenous species known as Hadals. Now von Schade devotes her life to the study of the artifacts, language, and peoples of that underground realm. When groups of children suddenly go missing and ritualistic massacres start happening, it becomes clear that the Hadals are responsible. Rescue expeditions ensue, and von Schade is drawn to the depths, haunted by personal demons made manifest by Satan himself. More horror/thriller in the tradition of Clive Barker than an intellectual tale of linguistics and symbology, Long's novel is extremely grisly and gory. Recommended only for popular fiction collections where the author has fans.