On a boat heading out into the North Sea, Ellen Brooke steels herself to spend almost a month locked inside a hyperbaric chamber with five other divers. They are all being paid handsomely for this work - to be lowered each day inside a diving bell to the sea bed, taking it in turns to dive down and repair oil pipes that lie in the dark waters. It is a close knit team and it has to be: any error or loss of trust could be catastrophic.
EXTREME PRESSURE INSIDE
All is going to plan until one of the divers is found unresponsive in his bunk. He hadn't left the chamber. It will take four more days of decompression, locked away together, before the hatch can be opened. Four more days of bare steel, intrusive thoughts, and the constant struggle not to give way to panic. Mind games, exhaustion, suspicion, and, most of all, pressure. And if someone does unlock the door, everyone dies...
After discovering Will Dean last year when I read The Last Passenger I was so intrigued by his new release The Chamber which follows 6 divers as they set off for a month undersea for work and I was taken in by the chilling by line on the front which said
Six Divers,
Deep Underwater,
Who Will Come out Alive?
Now you tell me that line alone doesn't have you intrigued!
This was a whole new world to me as I know nothing at all about sat diving and it is evidently clear that this author has undertook an extreme amount of research in this topic but I am thankful for him for putting a helpful glossary at the start listing all the different terminology that is used otherwise I think this book would have gone a little over my head!
The one word that I am sure is going to come up time and time again in the review for this book is claustrophobic and that is because it best represents the feeling of this storyline, from the minute the first diver was found unresponsive my mind straight away shouts get me out! That was where we learn there is no quick get out because if they don't go through decompression then they will die anyway! They are trapped in hell.
The storyline was a little slow burn in places with the divers back stories being used for conversation but not really feeling like it had any impact to the story however it takes some skill to write a whole book set in one confined area with only so much you can make happen and still hold the readers attention right to the end.
The storyline is told by Ellen's POV who is one of the divers, the only female amongst the team of divers. We only see events through her eyes and I can honestly say I had no suspicions about any of the divers because I couldn't see any clues to put anyone in the firing line. There was one unexpected revelation that came to light that took me by surprise at the midpoint of this book which came at the right time to pull my attention back in.
This was a well researched plot that kept me in the dark the whole way through, it didn't knock The Last Passenger off of the top spot but it was still a intriguing read.
No comments:
Post a Comment