I received this book for free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
Somewhere in the Deep by Tanvi Berwah Series: Standalone
Published by Sourcebooks Fire on 2024 January 09
Genres: Adventure, Science Fiction
Pages: 372
Format: E-Arc
Source: Netgalley
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Seventeen-year-old Krescent Dune is buried under the weight of her dead parents’ debt and the ruinous legacy they left behind. The only way she can earn enough money to escape her unforgiving island is by battling monstrous creatures in an underground fighting pit. After a fight goes terribly wrong, she’s banned from the pits. Now hopeless, she is offered a deal: in exchange for the erasure of her debts, she must join and protect a hunting party for a rescue mission deep within the mining caves beneath the island.
Krescent is determined to keep her head down and fulfill her role as the dutiful bodyguard, even though she is trapped underground with her childhood enemy and a company of people who would gladly kill her if they knew who her parents were. As they come across creatures she believed only existed in legends, it becomes clear they are in far more danger than she could have imagined. But someone doesn’t want her to make it out alive. And she’ll have to figure out who before she’s left alone… in the dark.
From the author of Monsters Born and Made comes an action-packed South Asian inspired fantasy that will have your heart racing at every turn.
Somewhere in the Deep was not the most boring book that I have read in 2023. At first, I was really interested because our main character, Krescent, is a slave who was made accountable to pay off her dead parent’s debts. In order to do this, she joins monster fights wherein she earns money whenever she wins over the weird monsters on the battle arena. For me, this was a good premise and it really upped my hopes because I assumed that I’d be reading about some sort of gladiator battles all throughout the story. Unfortunately, the story took a wrong turn and had me hobbling along with our characters in exploring the Deep.
There was more talk about how to explore caves safely, what kind of PPEs to wear, what kind of responses to make when exploring unknown areas. I am person who is easily frightened that’s why I don’t usually watch horror and thriller films because I don’t like being frightened. I thought that Somewhere in the Deep is going to frighten me out of my wits but lo and behold, I got bored and yeah, I have to play Stardew Valley and Sims 4 in between my reading hours because killing my sims and having them fight are more exciting than reading about Krescent descending into the Deep and dealing with unknown monsters lurking there. But the monsters did not frighten me, it’s as if they’re just on the background scene and the author just really wants to show us how expert cave explorers do it. Well, I am not interested with theoretical cave exploration because I’d rather try that first hand. What I want is to be breathless while reading about these monsters while our main character is trying to keep every one in her party alive.
All in all, I wish there was more adrenaline pumped into this book. It was not a bad read per se but the writing of the battle scenes and the monsters could’ve been improved. Thanks to Netgalley and Sourcebooks for the e-ARC.