The Descent

Written by Jeff Long

Narrated by Boyd Gaines

In Tibet, while guiding trekkers to a holy mountain, Ike Crockett discovers a bottomless cave. When his lover disappears, Ike pursues her into the depths of the earth....In a leper colony bordering the Kalahari Desert, a nun named Ali von Schade unearths evidence of a proto-human species and a deity called Older-than-Old....In Bosnia, Major Elias Branch crash-lands his gunship near a mass grave and is swarmed by pale cannibals terrified of light....

So begins mankind's realization that the underworld is a vast geological labyrinth riddling the continents and seabeds, one inhabited by brutish creatures who resemble the devils and gargoyles of legend. With all of Hell's precious resources and territories to be won, a global race ensues. Nations, armies, religions, and industries rush to colonize and exploit the subterranean frontier.

Fathom by fathom, Ike guides an expedition -- and Ali -- deeper into the deadly wilderness. In the dark underground, as humanity falls away from them, the scientists and mercenaries find themselves prey not only to the savage creatures, but to their own treachery mutiny, and greed. Meanwhile, on the surface, a band of aged scholars scours for clues to Satan's existence. Is he lurking in wait for the expedition, or is he roaming the earth? One thing is certain: Miles inside the earth, evil is very much alive.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
• Release date: Jul 1, 1999
• ISBN: 9780743546461

Jeff Long

Jeff Long is the New York Times bestselling author whose novels include The Wall, The Reckoning (in development with Reese Witherspoon at Type A Productions), Year Zero, and The Descent. He is a veteran climber and traveler in the Himalayas and has worked as a stonemason, journalist, historian, screenwriter, and elections supervisor for Bosnia's first democratic election. His next novel, Deeper, is forthcoming in hardcover from Atria Books. He lives in Colorado. Visit his website at www.jefflongbooks.com.

Reviews for The Descent

[sadiesforsythe · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The Descent holds a special place in my literary heart. When I first read it my response was 'meh.' But by the end of the week I was practically in love with it. Scenes and snippets of dialogue kept creeping back up on me at odd times, and I liked it more and more. Especially the tension between Ike's stoic personality and Ali van Schade's merciful one. There are a few exchanges between them that really gave me shivers. (I won't tell which so that I don't give anything away.) The comparison to Wells and Joules is not amiss. This is truly a subterranean epic. Granted, there are a few themes that could, if one was so inclined, be considered racist. There is no lack of 'dark other' in this book. Nor is there any lack of demonising of religion and mankind. But the themes are not so strong or intentional that they detract from the enjoyment of the story.

[dlgiddings · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I picked this book up at a check out while I was waiting in line with other books in hand. I am so glad I did. I have read it countless times since purchasing it and have actually bought it for a few friends when I was getting presents. I do highly recommend it to anyone who wants to read something that will send tingles through your body. Long brings his life experiences into the characters, especially his mountain climbing.I have read other books by Jeff Long but his is by far my favorite. The creatures/human-ish creatures that live inside the earth in this book are enough to give you nightmares for weeks. I love the way he handled things through out the whole books, and really the situations can be set parallel to other situations in our history. It is not hard to see both sides of the fighting in this book.

[MistinaChristina · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I listened to this non stop and really loved it but.. I am not entirely sure what happened even so. Maybe because the book was abridged, I intend to read the full book and see Basically it’s hard to rate this story it was confusing and disturbing and I think the reason I kept with it was that it made me think. Wonder. It sticks with you. I’ll read the next

[bensdad00 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

great idea that only got worse the more he wrote

[Michelle Silence · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is one of my all time favorite books but I will say this is the abridged version and there is a lot missing from it. :(

[aeceyton · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Grim. Casual descriptions of rape and torture.

[carol420 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Hard to follow. He did a lot of skipping around from character to character.

[mzieg · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book was an interesting surprise: a unique and entertaining (if appropriately dark) romp through an improbably congruent corporeal Hell, which manages to creatively retcon everything from the Shroud of Turin and Dante's Inferno to the origins of proto-language and human evolution.

I heard about it from a random comment on the internet, by someone who stumbled across this by mistake while seeking a novelization for the 2005 spelunking flick of the same name. As far as I can tell there is no explicit connection, although the two stories have enough overlap to make you wonder if there wasn't at least some uncredited/subconscious cross-pollination going on.

In any case, the novel was an lively cross between Jules Verne's "Journey to the Center of the Earth" and Clive Barker's "Cabal", with bits of Lincoln & Child's "Reliquary", Pérez-Reverte's "Club Dumas," and Salvatore's Underdark thrown in for color (infra/uv-only, natch).

Note that the comparison to Clive Barker is apropos -- Long's depictions of physical mutilation ("flensing," in Vernor Vinge vernacular) are frequent and explicit, and sensitive readers (one might say "sensible") will be justifiably repulsed by the rampant and seemingly gratuitous trespass of social taboos. Exploitative cheese this may well be; yet not, in the final analysis, pointless -- there is a rhyme and reason to the gradually revealed subterranean subtext, which ultimately lifts the novel above its basest peers.

[cbloky · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

a could not put down book. the book starts out with different time periods at first making you think it is some short stories but then it all ties together

[skuldomg · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This seems like a love or hate book. To me, it seemed like the author didn't know where to head with the story himself at times. Still, I liked the setting, characters and atmosphere, as well as the overall premise, even though it took quite some time getting there. The finale was also appropriate and I'm left intrigued where the sequel will head.

[mmtz_82 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I’m not sure what to make of Jeff Long‘s tale of an ancient underground civilization and the genocidal conflict that ensues after their discovery. It starts out kind of creepy, turns into a romance novel, then ends with one of those horror movie final scene gotchas.Published in paperback by Jove.

[knownever · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Surprising. It was being discarded, I read the bad reviews, but ended up liking it anyway. I mean, it's pulp through and through, and the ham handed religious overtones are maybe the stupidest part. However, no matter how scientifically far fetched it is (there's no getting around the pressure induced heat of the subsurface), the book's internal world is consistent enough that you can pretend it would happen like that. The thing that took the book from dumb to fun for me were the characters and the military sci fi elements. I'm definitely a sucker for "monsters with a heart of gold" so I was into our sometimes-protaganist, Ike, as a character. Also, the characters were more well-developed overall than is typical of books with a military sf bent (stereotype-ridden and emotionally poverty-stricken genre that is is...). If you like military trappings and themes without all the macho jerks and wilting flowers it's a good read.

[lisamaria_c · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I wasn't twenty pages in before I suspected I had a stinker on my hands: The dialogue, the characterizations, the plotline was of trainwreck dimensions. We open with too-stupid-to-live mountaineers in Tibet, led by Ike Crockett, following a gold coin trail to hell--literally. Next we turn to the Kalahari and from central casting, a "beautiful" nun working among lepers, leaving no B movie cliche unused. The book is reminiscent of Journey Into the Center of the Earth as it posits there's an underworld of continents and seas inhabited by creatures that inspired Gargoyles and demons led by Satan himself. Except, well, it's easier to believe that premise in 1864 than in 1999, the date of publication. I gave this about 100 pages, where he kicked off this ridiculous, unconvincing war between the modern military and the underworld, before giving this a pass.

[neilsantos_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This was eerie and compelling. Some bad gun-fu, but the peculiar nature of the story carried it past the technical failings. Michael Crichton meets Jules Verne meets Dante. Hell is real, it exists, it is not supernatural. Neato.

[absurdeist · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

It would be too obvious to say "Dantesque" or Inferno in the same breath as Jeff Long's dizzying The Descent, as so many of the latter's blurbers have, and it would be misleading, anyway. Yes, The Inferno and The Descent both deal with the powers of Perdition, in their varied, and equally horrific, descriptions of what happens down there. But Dante's Hell exists in a poet's vision of the relocation of unregenerate souls into eternal torment after their deaths; while Jeff Long torments his characters in the right-here, right-now, pitch darkness underground. Their agony is all too corporeal, whether they've sinned against God or not.The Descent has far more in common with Jaws than epic medieval poetry. The Descent indeed, is a marriage of Jaws and Journey to the Center of the Earth. Heaven, in effect, stands up Hell at the altar in this wickedly divine Descent not to the center of the earth, but to the very core of humankinds most archetypal, universal fear: the dark, and the demons who swim in it.There's no great white sharks striking terror from the murky depths in The Descent; no, there's worse, much worse: there's great albino "hadals" disembowelling you alive from the cavernous depths. Once they've disembowelled you alive, they just might make a rope out of your intestines, using your innards to tie you to a stake, so that you, a) won't escape; and, b) can sample your flesh while it's still fresh, like you were human-sushi!Are you scared? You should be. Because The Descent is so scary it will scare the Hell in to you, not out. Read The Descent and Jaws will seem a guppy by comparison. After all, a great white shark can only bite and eat you, but a great albino hadal can not only bite and eat you, but since they're amphibious and bipedal, they can slyly hide beneath the surface of what appears at first blush a tranquil, phosphorecently lit underworld ocean; but as you wade into that primeval, peaceful ocean ... up thrusts a wooden spear so fast and so fiercely and aimed so precisely it enters your anus unscathed before it impales the back end of your butt hole and punctures your abdominal cavity's wall ramming up past your kidneys and straight for your heart, so that you die instantly, standing up, having become a veritable homo sapien shishkebob, held in the hateful hands of one hungry hadal."Hadal" comes from the Latin, "homo hadalis," a team of scientists postulate, an evolutionary offshoot or hybrid of homo erectus and homo sapien. But all you need to know is that hadals come from Hell, the Hell waiting for you inside that cave, that mineshaft, or that archaeological dig. So obey those signs please ... and KEEP OUT!That Legion of demons that tormented Regan and those two Jesuit priests in The Exorcist, would get their collective, possessive asses kicked by a single hadal.Just ask the 150 members of the Helios scientific expedition sent to explore the theorized passage underneath the Pacific Ocean's floor that's hoped will connect the Galapagos Islands with New Guinea. Think of the logistic and power-opportunities available for the first-taking should such a passage be found. But what if the tyrannical head of Helios has ulterior motives for the expedition? Well, then maybe the mercenaries and the military and the scientists and the nun (yes! a nun) hired on board, and kept in line by tyrant's son, Shoat, have a secret, underestimated defense weapon hidden up their sleeves themselves: A half-human/half-hadal evolutionary cross breed as their guide? Could it be? And what about Satan? Whole role does the Devil play in all of this? Don't tell me Satan is a sshhhh you be quiet, 'Frique! Don't spoil the surprise! But do insert the mad laughter here. Will all, uh, Hell inevitably break loose in The Descent? Maybe not all of Hell, but maybe all of Hell-in-the-flesh: Homo hadalis!Bats belong in caves, Intrepid Reader, not you. So stay out of them! You've been warned. And remember what Dante Alighieri said about Jeff Long's novel (and tremble): "Abandon all hope, ye who read The Descent."

[litelady4ajh · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Tiring book... I really did enjoy it, but it took a long time to get through. Very detailed, somewhat long winded, but an engrossing tale of the "underworld" and what lies beneath.

[readingrat_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book was a total surprise to me. I don't even remember how it came to end up in my TBR pile, but it turned out to be part sci-fi, part horror, part military/pseudo-scientific thriller. Overall it was an enthralling, absorbing tale. This is one of the few books I've read that I wish would have been longer so that I could have found out about more of the motivations and history of the secondary characters.

[kayrachelle85 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

There are a few different story lines here, but essentially, man goes where he hasn't been before... to unknown depths within the earth, and at the heart... resides hell! This book scared the hell out of me! I'm a big horror buff, but I've gotta give this book a hand... it is just such an emotional ride! Long has the uncanny ability to make you feel so much for the characters... you just need to read it, ok?!?

[bcquinnsmom · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book was SO much fun to read. It scared me silly then kept me dangling up until the very end. One of the major criticisms of this book was its ending, but I disagree. I liked the ending & it was appropriate. Other than that, there really wasn't much I didn't like about this book. The characterizations were good, the plot was outstanding & the creep quotient was right up there. For a fun, scary, adventure type novel, it definitely merits a good rating.brief plot summaryIke Crockett and his girlfriend Kora have a business where they guide wealthy people around holy sites in Tibet. As the story opens, they along with their group find themselves stuck in a cave during a snowstorm In Tibet. Turning on their lights, they make the gruesome discovery of a mummy with writing tattooed into his skin. Then the next day, they wake up and one of their group is gone. Ike goes off in one extension of the cave to find him, and Kora & the others go the other way. After a long while, he has no luck, so he decides to go back to the others, but when he gets there, they've disappeared. He chases after them, to find Kora, but comes across a scene of death & mutilation. Then switch to the Kalahari, where Ali, a nun, is working in a leper colony. There she comes across knowledge of a deity knonw as Older-than-Old, and evidently, the locals are feeding their sick & infirm to the deities. Then, in the final introductory chapter, Elias Branch, an Army general oversees an operation involving locating mass graves in Bosnia. After making the decision to overfly a mass grave in his Apache helicopter after reconnaisance photos reveal large amounts of nitrogen being released (thinking the grave is being desecrated), he crashes & strange looking people come after him at the burial site. It doesn't take long until humanity realizes that they are not alone in this world...all over the world weird creatures are emerging out of cave openings etc. After tests are done, it is shown that there is an entire complex of subterranean territory waiting to be claimed. But first the humans must deal with what is below. And let me tell you, what's down there ain't pretty. Very similar in many ways to Dante's Inferno (you'll understand if you've read Dante), it's also kind of a Journey to the Center of the Earth type thing. This is not your standard horror novel; I would say it goes between supernatural and science fiction. It is one of those books where you have to tell yourself going into it that you're here for the suspenseful experience and for the fun. I really liked this book and if you're into this kind of stuff, you'll like it too.

[bookmarque · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I don’t know about evil in the traditional Judeo/Christian sense. Definitely there is a life form here, a culture here that is vastly different from ours and is just as contradictory. The live in total darkness and yet still retain eyes with which to see. They have a social network yet have ‘devolved’ back down to prehistoric capabilities. They have a social hierarchy yet don’t worry about letting humans become powerful within their society. They protect breeder women, but brutalize everything and everyone at the same time.I read this very quickly as it’s nearly a skimmer and movies along very fast. But at the end, I was left with more questions than answers. Why are the Hadals devolving? They are doing exactly the opposite of humans. Are we two sides of a whole? Does the evolution of one mean the devolution of another? Is it tit for tat? A tug-of-war? A scale that must remain in balance? When the Hadals were at the peak of their sophistication, we were barely upright. Now we have vast cities and networks, and the Hadals are reduced to living in the open without fire and they have lost the ability to read their own ancient texts. Weird. It needed a touch of Crichton's explanations.I’m surprised there hasn’t been as sequel (maybe there has been and I missed it) because the ending leaves things wide open for one.