Adam Roberts revisits Jules Verne's classic novel in a collaboration with the illustrator behind a recent highly acclaimed edition of The Hunting of the Snark.
It is 1958 and France's first nuclear submarine, Plongeur, leaves port for the first of its sea trials. On board, gathered together for the first time, are one of the Navy's most experienced captains and a tiny skeleton crew of sailors, engineers, and scientists. The Plongeur makes her first dive and goes down, and down and down. Out of control, the submarine plummets to a depth where the pressure will crush her hull, killing everyone on board, and beyond. The pressure builds, the hull protests, the crew prepare for death, the boat reaches the bottom of the sea and finds nothing. Her final dive continues, the pressure begins to relent, but the depth guage is useless. They have gone miles down. Hundreds of miles, thousands, and so it goes on. Onboard the crew succumb to madness, betrayal, religious mania, and murder. Has the Plongeur left the limits of our world and gone elsewhere?
Review:
I got this ebook from Netgalley in return of an honest review.
Going into this book I was expecting something like a retelling of Jules Verne's 20.000 Leagues Under the Sea, maybe with a modern sci-fi sort of twist. Although I haven't read that book yet, I am pretty sure Twenty Trillion Leagues Under the Sea is nothing like I just described.
Before I start the actual review, I need to address the fact that half-way through the book I discovered Adam Roberts also wrote The Soddit under the name A.R.R.R. Roberts, a parody of The Hobbit that I read last year and extremely enjoyed. The writing was just as intriguing and the story just as weird and gripping. However, in The Soddit the combination of the author's imagination with his wits and strange plotlines created an hilarious and fast-paced story, whereas in Twenty Trillion Leagues Under the Sea it was just odd. That's the best word I can think of. Odd.
First of all, this was a good book. It was good. It definitely didn't blow my mind and the collection of french names was not easy to follow, but there was something about how strange it was that kept me reading on. I honestly wanted to get to the end and know what was causing all those shenanigans.
To me, the story just dragged a little bit, there were moments where it felt like nothing was happening, and I felt there were deaths and violent and gory descriptions that were just a bit unnecessary, like they were there for effect or the eccentric factor.I couldn't like any of the characters. They were all so proud and crazy, always trying to prove themselves and their manly power. In this case, I don't reckon we are supposed to like the characters, but I believe this is a classic example of men in power and how keeping a cool head in extreme situations is impossible to them sometimes and it can lead to war - internal and external. Linked to this is the lack of female characters. I know this is set in 1958 and a woman in a war submarine might have been somehow too much to ask for, but I still wish there had been at least one involved in some way in this project.
Another thing that lowered my rating was how uneven this book felt. For about three fourths of the story it was slow and not too crazy. It was just the crew of the Plongeur falling through a huge body of water without being able to do anything about it (kind of). But there was a point where everything just turned bizarre and freaky. It seemed like two different books and I was completely lost - I had now idea what had just happened and I was like that until the end. The ending only confused me more, to be honest.
Now, I have to admit that there are a lot of redeeming qualities, the most impressive of which is the illustrations. They helped the story a lot. The helped me visualise the extraordinary descriptions that were almost impossible to imagine. They were mysterious and wonderful and a beautiful and awesome addition to the book.
I definitely recommend giving this a try, because I feel that this isn't for everyone. I was still very entertained and will absolutely read more books by Adam Roberts if I get the chance.
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