One of the first things to arouse my suspicions was the quote on the front cover which said “One major takedown of a read. A pageburner.”. Surely the expression is “pageturner”? “Pageburner” sounds as if I might want to set fire to this book. Suspicions were confirmed when I glanced inside the back cover to find the words, “Please burn me as I am undoubtedly one of the most appalling books ever written” penned by notorious UK caver Joel Corrigan. I disobeyed orders and read it instead.
I have to admit that Mr Corrigan has a point. This is a very, very badly written book. Firstly the premise of it is just stupid: all the caves in the world link up into one giant master system which is inhabited by savage hominids evolved to live underground. These creatures, named “Hadals” emerge in order to eat, enslave or just mutilate humans. The main part of the book then follows two rival quests: a collection a religious scholars decides that the underworld is a literal hell, therefore there might be a real, live Satan who they could find and broker a truce with. Meanwhile, a global company puts together an team of explorers for a landgrab of underground real estate. What makes the book awful, though, is that the author has obviously not done any research at all. In this book radios work underground and it is possible to look at the earth's mantle through a crack in a rock. At one point a Himalayan expedition is trapped by a storm and their gas canisters run out. The author thinks this will be a problem for them because they won't be able to get their regular caffeine fix, not because they will now be unable to melt snow and will therefore die of thirst! Then there is the stupid way in which the plot turns on the fact that the Hadals can be reincarnated by taking over someone else's body at the moment they die. This key fact is not revealed until very near the end of the book. By this time we have already had a big war between humans and Hadals in which apparently nobody noticed this happening! Perhaps the worst abuse of logic in the book is when the underground expedition picks up a radio distress call which will be sent by that same expedition in the future. This is explained away as being due to the radio signal bouncing off rock strata – backwards in time? I wish I had some sort of award to give out for the clumsiest use of foreshadowing in a literary work 'cos I think I've found the winner right here.
The characters in The Descent seem thin and unbelievable. For example, one of the main characters is a beautiful feminist nun – a combination which strikes me as desperately unlikely! The expedition to claim the underworld for the evil corporate bosses is filled with people who are nothing more than a name which maps to a sticky end. I couldn't keep track of all these people and what's more I didn't give a stuff what happened to them. This meant that all the bits of the book which managed not to be bad were boring instead. In fact, large amounts of this book should have been cut out by the editor. At 560 pages of tosh it is way too long for something meant to be light reading. There are several completely pointless chapters which just seem to be there because the author thought of another unpleasant way for someone to be killed – these could have gone for a start!
In many ways the notes in the margins of this book are better than the story printed in it. We find fascinating glimpses of expedition life such as the scribbled pencil list of things to go on the helicopter, survey data, and a few torn out pages which have been used by the Papuan porters as cigarette papers. I think we need to a take a minute to consider the challenges faced by the expedition members. Spare a thought for them sitting in the jungle, watching the endless rain and tending their tropical ulcers with only 500g of biscuits a day and a copy of “The Descent” to sustain them.
Although in many ways The Descent is utterly rubbish, I feel that reading it was a natural part of the caving lifestyle. Cavers will always want to do things the hard way. They enjoy cold, dirt, darkness and hardship. They chose to drink in the Hunter's* where the grim surroundings are surpassed only by the grudging service. They will always drink the scariest, most sediment-filled form of ale or scrumpy on offer. The Descent fits in perfectly with this perverse mentality and I therefore expect that this copy will be “enjoyed” by many more of us before it finally falls apart.
Finally, my especial, most favouritest piece of deathless prose from the book is:
“He was the only one who knew it, but they were about to get sodomised by an old-fashioned Himalayan tempest.”
*I had a quick search online, hoping to make that word a link to an amusing description of the many shortcomings of the Hunter's Lodge, but almost unbelievably no-one has done it! The nearest I could get was the UK Pub Guide which described it as "unprepossessing". That's like describing the Atlantic as "damp".
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