'Submerged, The Labyrinth: Book Two' – Brian Keene (Manhattan on Mars)

The other week, I took myself off to Ramsgate for a little book shopping but also to grab a little time for myself and read some books that I was desperate to get to but... you know what it's like, life loves to exercise its power of veto over my reading plans (yours too, I reckon). Well, no prizes for guessing which book came with me and kept me in my hotel room until it was finished... ;o)

I thoroughly enjoyed 'The Seven', when I read it last year, and have spent the intervening time looking forward to getting back into the Labyrinth and seeing what happened next. And when I finally got round to it, it was like I'd never been away...

The Seven have won the first battle against the Thirteen, but it cost them one of their number. Now Frankie, Teddy, LeHorn, Tony, Bloom and the Exit find themselves in the middle of a global super storm on a flooded Earth, reunited with old friends and facing off against familiar threats, including the terrifying titanic might of Behemoth and Leviathan, and the machinations of Ob, Lord of the Siqquism. In a fight that spans from a sodden landscape to the very heart of sunken R'lyeh, only one thing is certain. Even if they win, it will be at an unimaginable cost. The storm is here, and the end continues.

So yeah, opening the book was pretty much a seamless jump from 'The Seven' straight into 'Submerged' and I loved the way that was so casually executed. A year went by on this level but in the Labyrinth? Time works a little differently it appears. It worked for me anyway, shit happens so quickly that you can't help but get swept up in and Keene does a great job of giving us a little back story without having it get in the way of what's happening right now.

And there is one hell of a lot happening right now. If 'The Seven' was about getting the team together and easing them in slowly, 'Submerged' is the book where everyone is thrown in at the deep end (quite literally actually) and they have got to be able to swim otherwise that's the end of a whole world. The stakes are appropriately high right from the off then and honestly, watching the rest of it play out is like watching it on an IMAX screen, one where everything is turned right up and the sheer force of it all keeps you pinned in your seat. It goes without saying that I couldn't put 'Submerged' down once I'd got going with it. Everything is MASSIVE and it doesn't stop, not once. The pace is relentless but Keene fills his plot with so much cool stuff that you only realise how emotionally drained you are after you finish that last page.

Because that's the thing, it's not just the big confrontations that get you, although they do (fighting giant worms and going to sunken R'lyeh will do that to anyone), we're looking at another book that has all your favourite characters in it (from several of Keene's other works) and it's clear that not all of them are going to make it to those final pages, and they don't. So everything suddenly takes on a much sharper focus where the human cost of the Seven's mission will sit with the reader just as much, if not more so, than the fact that the universe itself is in mortal danger. It's a balancing act that I don't think many writers would even attempt but Keene nails it because he's already done the groundwork over years of other novels. You will be invested in these characters because (surprise!) you already were ;o) And some of them are still able to surprise you...

I think you can tell how much I enjoyed 'Submerged'... And I did, it was brilliant and a couple of key moments, at the end, have left me really wanting to see what happens next. Oh well, only roughly a year to go. I can do that ;o)

In the meantime, if you haven't read 'Submerged' already, I'd go and do something about that if I were you (definitely read 'The Seven' first though, if you haven't read it already, you can thank me later). If you're a fan of Brian Keene's work (or just pulp horror in general really) there is something here for everyone.