From Below

Product Information

The story was told through dual-timelines and shifting perspectives. As the modern-day crew go on multiple dives and uncover progressively unsettling discoveries there, the truth about what happened all those years ago is also being revealed to the reader. I found this a very clever narrative style, as tension remained present throughout and my intrigue was heightened as the chapters progressed and the mysteries were revealed. This proved a claustrophobic read with an intriguing cast that kept me engaged throughout. I did wish for a little more depictions of the horrors, at the novel's close, but still feel impressed with all the author did deliver. I want to thank the publisher "Poisoned Pen Press" and Netgalley for the opportunity to read this spooky novel and any thoughts or opinions expressed are unbiased and mine alone! I have read quite a few books by author, Darcy Coates, but I think this book is one of her best books yet! The story just grabbed me right away and took me on a fast pace into the deep sea as the tension of the book took me on a roller coaster ride of emotions from breath-hitching moments of anxiety to throat closing claustrophobic atmospheric intensity as I barreled my way through the storyline!

From Below (2022) [Full Film] – Mutual Aid From Below (2022) [Full Film] – Mutual Aid

Julius Scott, The Common Wind: Afro-American Currents in the Age of the Haitian Revolution, Verso, 2018. A feature length documentary entitled ‘From Below’: a film by Matthias Kispert celebrating the mutual aid projects during COVID-19, and how they are moving forward to help people in the future (the trailer can be viewed here). Don't go merely by my review on this one, because there were a LOT of parts that I truly loved. I think I just wanted a faster pacing, and more of the horror NOT being interrupted by technicalities.For the first time in 30 years, there is a new game for the Nintendo Vs. Arcade Systems: Vs. From Below! From Below has her signature paranormal elements in the plot but it's also creepy as hell and the claustrophobic moments in the book are fantastic.

from below: a reading list with Marcus Rediker History from below: a reading list with Marcus Rediker

When it comes to the later chapters up to the end, I wasn’t a fan of how they abruptly ended right when good stuff happened. It was very frustrating since when it happened and brought a little bit of a spark while reading, I was left hanging until the chapter after next when it returned to that specific timeline. Combine that with the slow pacing of this novel and it’s just something that leaves much to be desired. Thompson’s The Making of the English Working Class showed historian Ruth Mather “a new way of doing history, one which didn’t patronise working people, or subsume them in a narrative of progress, but instead constructed a story about thinking, feeling people with their own ideas about their lives and their own strategies for living them.” There is always a place for the torment brought forth by psychological fear; scratching, tapping, crawling behind the tangible; these are things that wander in my mind late into the night. The stones of the walls are broken off, and hurdled down at hideous creature. And it just might be enough to This felt more like a paranormal mystery than an actual full-fledged horror novel. As events started to unravel, that was the vibe I got in this being more mystery than actual horror. There’s nothing wrong with that but being a huge horror enthusiast, I needed scarier events and situations than all this extra dialogue, often which was just repeating what had already transpired. I definitely wanted more scares, creepiness, and what you’d typically find in a horror novel.There's a bit of repetitiveness in the book with the diving sessions, but I didn’t have an issue with it.

FROM BELOW - A Real NES Game! by Matt Hughson (NES Dev) - Itch.io FROM BELOW - A Real NES Game! by Matt Hughson (NES Dev) - Itch.io

Coates just keeps adding elements to make the walls close in on you, literally - having both hydrophobia and claustrophobia, I was genuinely creeped out, rare for me in all my horror reads. She skillfully leaned on the idea that when drifting in the dark, your path only lit by a headlamp, even the mundane becomes terrifying. That specific concept of abandoned places, but with incongruous things like tables, glasses etcetera left behind, as terrifying spaces. At least the sharks are good!” No, Sharky. The sharks are not good. They are bad. They are sub- Sharknado bad. When they are CG they flop about, moving through the water (and occasionally the air) with no physical presence. When they are puppets they are adorable, like sea puppies, making the way they are treated seem, frankly, unreasonably cruel. They pop up for all of thirty seconds at a time – budget, I assume – not making their appearance until easily past the one hour mark. Added to this the fact that the total time they are on screen for is easily under 10 minutes so not only is the majority of the movie gaspingly inept, it’s also a huge disappointment to fans of shark movies (and fans of James Woods' legal dramas).Rediker argues that Lemisch went beyond these distinguished scholars in several respects: “If the British Marxist historians, along with the French historians Georges Lefebvre and Albert Soboul, had pioneered “history from below,” which made historical actors of religious radicals, rioters, peasants, and artisans, Lemisch pushed the phrase and the history further and harder with “history from the bottom up,” a more inclusive and comprehensive formulation that brought all subjects, especially slaves and women, more fully into the historian’s field of vision… by insisting that sailors and other workers had ideas of their own, he [also] made a point that many historians have yet to grasp—the history of the working class must be an intellectual as well as a social history.” Nov. 12: Just finished reading about the second dive. The creep factor is turned up and this is getting intense. Even weirder is the strange happenings on the ship in 1928.