But my original instinct was correct: this is unreadable amateur garbage, confusing and clumsy from the first. Peopled by angry, incomprehensible, and whining "characters" who talk of needing and wanting death and sex, how death is life and vice versa, Descent is irritating beyond belief. There is no pacing, no suspense, no humanity here, not to mention any scares at all. Its po-faced religious imagery is ludicrous. I wish I could joke about it all but nope, I'm getting angry about it all over again.
Her long fingernails stabbed both breasts, making them bleed freely. Aliester's eyes were round. He saw her perfect nakedness and gulped (what kind of rock star gulps at the sight of a naked woman?!), even harder as he saw her purpose: the sharp nails tore slowly down from the base of her rib cage to her pubic hair with a wet tearing scream, flaunting her ghastly whit bones and pink organs as they peeked out and shimmered with her giggle (can we delete this word from the world?). "Fuck off with life—and fuck with DEATH!"
Dee's first novel for Abyss, dare I...?
Aliester gets mixed up with Vickie, our protagonist, somehow, and her grief over her stillborn child plays out over the whole novel, which in capable hands could have been effective; here it is only tacky tasteless first-draft hackery. Graphic violence, most of it sexual, is unbelievable and bears no referent to our shared inhabited reality—that is, none of the violence hurts or unsettles; it is, to use an actual metal lyric, a child's dream of death. It means nothing because it comes from nothing. Descent neither disturbs nor delights; it is ponderous, pretentious sludge. And even that doesn't begin to describe this Descent. I'm sick of seeing this book on my desk, mocking me, beggaring my critical faculties; avoid by every means necessary.
But if you really want unbearable truths about the living,
go listen to what Timmy Baterman has to say
