The Descent (Descent Series) - Softcover

Long, Jeff

Softcover

ISBN 10: 051513175X ISBN 13: 9780515131758

Publisher: Berkley, 2001

Synopsis

We are not alone...In a cave in the Himalayas, a guide discovers a self-mutilated body with the warning--Satan exists. In the Kalahari Desert, a nun unearths evidence of a proto-human species and a deity called Older-than-Old. In Bosnia, something has been feeding upon the dead in a mass grave. So begins mankind’s most shocking realization: that the underworld is a vast geological labyrinth populated by another race of beings. Some call them devils or demons. But they are real. They are down there. And they are waiting for us to find them...

About this title

Review:

In a high Himalayan cave, among the death pits of Bosnia, in a newly excavated Java temple, Long's characters find out to their terror that humanity is not alone--that, as we have always really known, horned and vicious humanoids lurk in vast caverns beneath our feet. This audacious remaking of the old hollow-earth plot takes us, in no short order, to the new world regime that follows the genocidal harrowing of Hell by heavily armed, high-tech American forces. An ambitious tycoon sends an expedition of scientists, including a beautiful nun linguist and a hideously tattooed commando former prisoner of Hell, ever deeper into the unknown, among surviving, savage, horned tribes and the vast citadels of the civilizations that fell beneath the earth before ours arose. A conspiracy of scholars pursues the identity of the being known as Satan, coming up with unpalatable truths about the origins of human culture and the identity of the Turin Shroud, and are picked off one by bloody one. Long rehabilitates, madly, the novel of adventures among lost peoples--occasional clumsiness and promises of paranoid revelations on which he cannot entirely deliver fail to diminish the real achievement here; this feels like a story we have always known and dreaded. --Roz Kaveney, Amazon.co.uk

From the Back Cover:

"Jeff Long has written a remarkable novel, an imaginative tour de force that somehow succeeds both as sober-minded allegory and nail-biting thriller. A page-turner for thinking people, The Descent is equal parts Ray Bradbury and Robert Stone, Michael Crichton and T. C. Boyle. It is a rip-roaring good read."        
--Jon Krakauer, author of Into Thin Air

"Absolutely bone-chilling -- every bit as good as Stephen King at his best."
--Charles Pellegrino, author of Dust

"This flat-out, gears-grinding, bumper-car ride into the pits of hell is one major takedown of a read. Jeff Long starts his adventure/mystery/horror story quietly in the Himalayas and then warp speeds into a world seldom seen and puts a face to the reality of evil the likes of which would give Stephen King and Dean Koontz the night sweats. Long writes with force and unearthly vision, etching vivid characters who speak in an all-too-realistic manner about the horrors they encounter. What emerges is a War of the Worlds against a world that can't lose. With The Descent, Jeff Long has delivered what is bound to be this summer's really hot read. It is one page-burner of a book."
--Lorenzo Carcaterra, author of Sleepers and Apaches

"Jeff Long keeps the pages turning at a feverish pace and creates a world so vivid that we are compelled to follow him to the gates of Hell."
--Jonathan Rabb, author of The Overseer

About this edition

• Publisher: Berkley
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 051513175X
• ISBN 13: 9780515131758
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Number of pages: 592