The Deluge: Mark Morris

When the world floods, the only people who survive the water are those fortunate enough to be high up when the disaster strikes. Most of those who make it are then faced with limited supplies and provisions, no way to relocate or locomote due to the water and a complete lack of electricity, light and other conveniences man takes for granted. But when the waters recede as quickly as they rose, the world that is revealed is destroyed, covered in mud and silt and littered with corpses, filth and ruin. It's in the ruins of England in this nightmare world where Mark Morris' novel The Deluge is set.

Here we follow Steve and his daughter, Abby, as they struggle to reach Scotland to try to find Steve's ex-wife and his son, Dylan. Along the way they meet other groups of survivors, some of whom they unite with, and others who have less than sterling ideals in this chaotic, lawless new world. And there's also that unnatural blue lightning that's been seen since the flood and crazed survivors who speak of monsters masquerading as humans.

It seems as though all horror authors are required to write an apocalyptic end-of-humanity novel and if that's the case, Morris' effort reads like a fleshed-out template with just enough substance to meet the minimum page requirement of the book contract. It's as though he didn't even try very hard: basic, stereotypical characters for this type of novel, all of whom are banded together after a hundred pages and spend the rest of the book getting picked off one by one; scenes that seem to fill empty space and up the body count as opposed to progressing the story; episodes of convenience, such as finding a helicopter with an amicable pilot, which really make you wonder if the author was boring himself with the story and just wanted to fast-forward over the narration to the climax of the book.

The most infuriating aspect of this book is the lack of explanation. There's no attempt to determine what caused the flood or where the waters recede to after three days. The monsters have no origin, and their description is kept vague and noncommittal, usually described as shifting black spots that are impossible to focus upon for more than a few seconds and one cannot help but wonder if the author added them as an afterthought.

Don't get me wrong, I didn't hate this book; the writing was good despite the infrequent passages of stale dialog, and the story was cohesive, albeit occasionally monotonous due to the subject matter and setting books of this nature tend to have. It was Morris absolute lack of attempting to do something original or unique with this novel that turned me off. Like I said, it seems like he didn't try and because of that, I just didn't care about the book or the characters in it.

You'd be far better off re-reading King's The Stand or McCammon's Swan Song, or even picking up Brian Keene's The Conqueror Worms for something on a less-epic scale and with far better monsters.
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Paperback: 342 pages
Publisher: Leisure (November 27, 2007)
ISBN-10: 0843958936
ISBN-13: 978-0843958935
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