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The Deep John Crowley Richard Powers 9780425031636 Books

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The Deep John Crowley Richard Powers 9780425031636 Books

Those who are familiar with the Wars of the Roses, or the Cousins' War, or the White Queen mythos, will recognize the inhabitants of the world above the Deep (or in it, as some passages seem to imply). They play out their roles as part of the endless spiral of violence intrinsic to human behavior - to a point.
For those not into history, there is the science fiction side, with the description of the World itself and the mission of the Visitor/Secretary/Recorder, but even that moves away from the ordinary run of sci-fi to something nearly as fathomless as the Deep itself. Reminiscent of David Lindsay's Voyage to Arcturus: a read to take slowly, not all in one gulp, and despite the horrors, to be glad you've read it.
For both plot lines, there is a happy ending!


Tags : The Deep [John Crowley, Richard Powers] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Berkley Medallion, first paperback edition, 1976. Crowley's well-received 1975 first novel. A visitor arrives from elsewhere on a strange medieval world where the two factions,John Crowley, Richard Powers,The Deep,Berkley Medallion,0425031632,Science Fiction & Fantasy - Science Fiction

The Deep John Crowley Richard Powers 9780425031636 Books Reviews

If you undertake this one, bring your ability to discern remarkably similar names and titles and positions. Dark age type fantasy with your castle intrigues, wars, alliances, etc... But just for fun, on a faraway celestial body of indeterminate origin, composition, etc... The main arena is clearly defined, and somehow Crowley again makes me think the best part of this story happend either before we came in on it, or after the last page leaves us behind.
Looking back (and reading the other reviews), I can't believe I trudged through this big long uphill battle of a thing. I was obviously sticking around for the non-binary character. The first line he's mentioned in makes a big to do about him being 'sexless' and each subsequent line that mentions him afterwards does the same thing. Like, Don't Forget, Kids this thing ain't human. If that's going to disappoint you, check out The Left Hand of Darkness. The main character was still good, though, as I recall. Do not look at the cover, it will distort how you see him in your mind when he gets described like 100 times.

I read this book in highschool and it's taken me 9 years to figure out the title. I don't think I ever put it together than the Visitor, whose name, like everyone else's', I forgot, was an 'android.' I knew he was created, but so was everyone else in the story. This was my first book I read in which the far-fetched religious lore spoilers, turns out to be true. The non-royal characters were the most memorable. This was also my first book and probably my first story with spoilers openly homosexual relationships. My mind was so full of F**K. How did they slip that in? But earlier in the book, there had been a much more graphic straight sex scene between two people who were much less of an item, so there was no way I could say it crossed any lines. The (I don't want to say gay because the text didn't, but I'll use it for convenience) gay character had more of a place in the story than a lot of other people. And in a twist that surprised no one, something bad happened to them.

The other main character I remember well was the girl whose gun's name was Suddenly. She was kind of a bid deal. I'm thinking she might have mostly been referred to as 'the girl whose gun's name was Suddenly.' There was also a big fat war lord chick and she was kind of a bad ass. You were constantly reminded how fat she was and this mattered because she was indeed very very fat and that's okay being constantly reminded that she's fat. Because she turned out to be going on to bigger and better things. But we don't get to find out what those things are.

Everyone else is just named 'red' something, in regards to how the family line has red hair. I gave up trying to remember them all and I still feel guilty about it.

It was not my usual cup of tea and I will never ever read anything so, what I assume must be, Tolkienesque in its long winded drudgery. And yet it stuck with me for so long because of that all-so important and exceedingly rare gender neutral main character. In a surprising twist (that everyone who already knows about queer media already saw coming) that really bummed me out for like a year afterwords and turned me off to reading the other two stories bound in the same book, spoilers, the Visitor kind of sort of dies or something? Ascends?

To this day, my biggest clue to what the meaning of the story is comes from the other reviews here, and I am so very sorry.

I read this for funsies in highschool.
The Deep (1975) was John Crowley's first published novel and his first of three SF works from the 70s (The Deep, Beasts, Engine Summer). He is best known for Engine Summer (1979) and his complex/literary fantasy - Little, Big (1981) and the Ægypt sequence (1987-2007). In the two novels of his I've read (the other is Beasts), Crowley's prose is characterized by an almost icy detachment, an adept construction of unusual images, and dialogue that says only what is needed.

The Deep deploys, in minimalistic fashion, the standard tropes of the fantasy genre mixed with distinctly SF elements namely, an android visitor whose blood "was alive -- it flowed in tiny swirls ever, like oil in alcohol, but finer, blue within crimson" (1). The world itself is fashioned like a game. The players are arrayed across the surfaces of a pillar that rises upward and is surrounded by the eponymous chasm, the Deep. The characters move across the landscape in the methodically-structured dance of a game -- each action reeks of cyclical timelessness, endlessly played and replayed, played and replayed. The being that fashions such choreographed destruction clutches the cosmic pillar -- a re-imagined Yggdrasil -- from below, wreathed in the deep, twined like the Norse serpent Nidhogg, the Hateful Striker.

Everyone besides the Visitor seems aware that their parts have been played again and again. They are content to repeat the same empty yet impassioned motions. They are content to strive for glory knowing that once the balance is askew the Just will set them aright -- with the Gun.

Brief Plot Summary/Analysis

The novel begins with the discovery of the android Visitor, who is "neither male nor female," by two Endwives, who care for the wounded and the dead caused by the endless struggles between the Reds and the Blacks. The society on the pillar is feudal in nature. The Blacks and the Reds, called the Protectors, evoke old claims for the throne in continuous back-and-forth maneuvering for the ear of the king and even the throne itself. The Just "protect" the common Folk by assassinating key players who are selected by lot by their sexless and mysterious leader, the Neither-nor.

The other power are the Grays who arbitrate the law, collate knowledge, and slowly uncover obscured carvings in their indomitable keep that illustrate the cyclical workings of the world "crowned men with red tears running from their eyes held hands as children's cutouts do, but each twisted in a different attitude [...] Behind and around them, gripping them like lovers, were black figures, obscure, demons or ghosts. Each crown had burning within it a fire, and the grinning black things tore tongue and organs from this king and with them fed the fire burning in the crown of that one, tore that one's body to feed the fire burning in this one's crown, and so on around, demon and king, like a tortured circle dance" (30).

Soon the Visitor, who relearns speech from the Endwives, is discovered by Falcounred, a lesser noble who owes his allegiance to Redhand. The Visitor is exposed to the complex machinations of the Blacks and Reds -- Crowley bases their conflict on events from the English War of the Roses. The exact lineages, figures, battles -- although discussed at length -- are not the main movements of the plot. Rather, the Visitor, as he experiences more of the world in the employ of the Reds, soon learns his origins and purpose.

Final Thoughts

I found the sculptured landscape -- the plain called the Drumskin, where the battles are waged; the lip that surrounds the edge of the word; the circular lake surrounded by mountains whose single island contains the residence of the King; the increasing decay that inundates the landscape as one moves outward towards the edge; the deep abyss that surrounds the pillar; the movement of the stars -- incredibly evocative. The reader watches the action unfold below, like the hypnotized audience of a chess game. But there is only one player... The Leviathan wrapped around the pillar. The Visitor, initially ignorant of the world, is a cypher for the reader who slowly learns the workings of the board.

For fans of literary fantasy and SF. Crowley's early visions are not to be missed. Perhaps not as intriguing or as complex as Beasts, The Deep will transfix the diligent reader.
Those who are familiar with the Wars of the Roses, or the Cousins' War, or the White Queen mythos, will recognize the inhabitants of the world above the Deep (or in it, as some passages seem to imply). They play out their roles as part of the endless spiral of violence intrinsic to human behavior - to a point.
For those not into history, there is the science fiction side, with the description of the World itself and the mission of the Visitor/Secretary/Recorder, but even that moves away from the ordinary run of sci-fi to something nearly as fathomless as the Deep itself. Reminiscent of David Lindsay's Voyage to Arcturus a read to take slowly, not all in one gulp, and despite the horrors, to be glad you've read it.
For both plot lines, there is a happy ending!