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Friday 17 January 2014

Mark Morris - The Deluge


reviewed live on bookshow by Brian Lowen 16th Jan 2014 

A rather strange book this which starts off as a disaster type story and then moves into science fiction.

13 year old Abby is staying with her Dad in his eighth floor penthouse in London during the summer holidays. She is woken one night by a strange rumbling noise which steadily gets worse. Looking out of her window when dawn breaks she is horrified to see water lapping at the window sill. The whole city has been submerged by a tidal wave with just a few tall buildings left sticking up out of the water.

There is no power or water but they manage to cook some food over a camping stove using bottled water to drink. After three days the water starts to drop and eventually retreat far enough for them to venture out. The whole city is covered in mud and vegetation and seaweed and there are hundreds of dead bodies in the streets. They manage to get some tinned food from a wrecked supermarket together with a supply of bottled water. The descriptions of the scenes they find in the wrecked city are horrific with no gruesome details spared.

They do meet up with a few other people and set up camp on the top floor of one of the big hotels. It is obvious that most of the country has been submerged by the water and as the smells start to build up of the rotting bodies of the humans and animals they
decide to try and get to Scotland where Abby’s Mum and her Dad’s ex-wife live. There are no means of transport left so they set off to walk to Scotland where they assume there must be higher ground that escaped the flood.

And so we follow them on their tortuous journey as the small band sets off. They meet other groups of survivors on the way, some friendly, some not, and then they run into the aliens who obviously caused the flood and attack any humans.
I found the book very depressing with no light patches to ease the dreadful situation they find themselves in. Also the ending was very disappointing with no explanation of what caused the flood and no proper resolution with the aliens. I nearly gave up on the book several times but kept going to see what happened in the end, only to be disappointed.

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