Flinx Wrote:I gave up trying to read The Descent after a couple of chapters. I might have to try reading again.
Read Year Zero it was okay but disappointed with the ending.

lovestigger Wrote:Hi Maggers,

I loved your summary of this book. I only know one other person who read this book to talk about and it was my husband. LOL! I have read for years many books and many characters cross my path, but there are only a few that I take with me and don't ever forget and Ike was one of them. I loved how it gave our fears of demons and hell actual, logical substance, i.e. a race of people beneath us. Very interesting subject. Got to me on many levels as I have problems with caves, dark and airless places. Having been in a cave in the dark and discovering claustophobia, I had trouble in some places in this book. But overall, loved it. Thanks so much for responding.
Rose

maggers Wrote:Rose,
I only just found this thread. I read Jeff Long's "The Descent" and found it to be one of the scariest and most disturbing books I'd read in a long, long time. It scared me so much because it's a book based on all our fears of the devil and demons and COULD THEY BE TRUE? I thought the first chapters of "The Descent" were absolutely extraordinary. The rest of the book less so, but nevertheless, many months later, images from that book still haunt me.

I was hoping the movie "The Descent" would be based on Jeff Long's book. It sounds so much like the basis for Long's book but bastardized for the screen with lost women instead of the complicated story Long had created.

I'd love to see a movie of Jeff Long's book.

This is what I wrote about Long's book just after I'd read it:
"I finished "The Descent" by Jeff Long a couple of weeks ago but haven't had a chance to post about it. I highly recommend it. It's flawed, for sure, and long, but the opening is worth reading regardless of the rest of the book. I very much enjoyed the book overall. Long takes off on tangents here and there, and the ending, as with so many authors these days, was rushed, tied up too quickly. Though the ending was not satisfying, the book has stayed with me and I've thought about it daily.

The premise is that there is an entire civilization of beings living deep within the Earth. They are not nice, nuh uh. They are the stuff that nightmares are made of, and they may even be the reality upon which so many of our fears are based. This book got to me very quickly and very profoundly. It played to my darkest fears and made them seem...logical and reasonable, given the awful creatures down below.

I don't want to give anything away. "The Descent" is an imperfect piece, but I am very glad I read it."

Maggers Wrote:I saw someone reading this thread, and I loved "The Descent" by Jeff Long, which has stayed with me for a very, very long time. Here's what I wrote about it a while ago....






Oh, and I don't know why this thread is in the RJ area.

The Mad American Wrote:I just finished The Descent after seeing Maggers bring this thread back to life.

I loved this book. I love stories like this that take things and give you a new look at maybe the who/what/why/how of things. I love stories that give you a new frontier and people exploring it and the excitement and danger associated with that.

I have ordered the other books by Long that have been mentioned (since my local bookstore didn't have them, I bought the only copy of The Descent they had). I really love this kind of fiction. The unkown, implications of alternate history/understanding of what something is. Great stuff.

Thanks for the recommend and the resurrection Maggers!

sigokat Wrote:what's the basic premise of this book? It sounds like it is worth reading, so I might have to check Amazon.

The Mad American Wrote:At its most basic, the book is about a discovery of a race of beings that live in the underground cave system that no one knew existed to the level it does. The beings resemble some of the myths and legends of demons or devils. Some people start to wonder if there is a "Satan" or leader of the beings, a search starts, exploration and other things as well.

It is much more complicated and in depth than my poor description but that is a basic over view of it.

I really enjoyed it, it is right in my wheelhouse for fiction so I would give it a strong recommendation.

Maggers Wrote:That's a good description, MA. But if anyone were to read back over the thread, there's lots of specific descriptions of the book's premise.

I didn't want to read the whole thread in case there was spoilers.