The Sea Hides Its Dead

by Megan Bontrager

Synopsis:

Trapped in an underwater cave, a group of academics must face a series of deadly, supernatural trials—each one demanding they confront their darkest sins—in this chilling aquatic cult horror debut from Megan Bontrager.

Grad student Caro has no idea what she wants to do with her life, but when an opportunity arises to act as a research assistant on an anthropological expedition for her professor and lover, Edward Beck, she doesn’t hesitate. Beck assembles a team of academics and professionals to study the ancient sea-based Cult of the Leviathan, and the expedition descends into the sea caves where the cult is said to have dwelt.

But when the cave entrance collapses, trapping them inside, the expedition finds they are not alone in the darkness. Surrounded by strange artifacts and scattered bones, an ancient trial has been set in motion. One by one, the members of the expedition will be tested and forced to atone for their greatest sin... or die.

I received a copy of this book for free in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

I was initially really unsure about Megan Bontrager’s The Sea Hides Its Dead, because the prose… gets in its own way, especially in the first fifty pages or so. It’s a mix of “trying too hard” and “…did you ask an LLM to help you come up with an original simile here?”, and sometimes it’s just plain overwritten. Some choice bits that I went “eh???” at include:

I bore the day like a rotten organ, one that had gotten stuck in its botched extraction.

Like… I get where this one is going for, but it doesn’t sound or feel right; “rotten organs” don’t get “stuck”, you just… well, die. And then this, after the protagonist realises that she’s forgotten that that particular day is the anniversary of her mother’s death:

It takes no bravery to make the active choice not to mourn. This, too, just happens.

But she didn’t make an active choice not to mourn. She forgot. That’s… these are not the same things. You understand that, right? Author? Right?! (Please don’t answer. This review is not for you. If you have feelings about it, feel free to go and speak to other authors, a sympathetic family member, or your therapist. This was rhetorical and not an invitation.)

I guess you can be generous there and say that the protagonist then chose not to mourn for the rest of the day after remembering, or that the very forgetting was an active choice through deliberately not trying to remember the date, but that’s all getting a bit special pleading for a sentence that doesn’t, on the face of it, make a lot of sense. It’d be easier and clearer to just write, “I’d been trying not to mark the date, to not think about it, not to set aside special time to mourn.”

And, final example, this bit:

The open, curious expression on Mallory’s face twisted, wilting in on itself like a rusted lattice.

The combo of “wilting” and “lattice” makes me think the author started off with “wilted lettuce” and then decided it wasn’t quite the right note.

Anyway! I felt like this sort of thing evened out a bit once we were into the meat of the story, which takes most of the first 100 pages. There’s an obviousness about it all, from the sordid relationship between Caroline and the professor to the drug-addicted doctor to the soldier who deserted his men. The darkness in their pasts takes obvious forms, and there’s no real ambiguity about whether Beck’s right about what the whole cave system is about. The ultimate outcome is predictable, even most of the twists.

That said, I did think the way that Caroline confronts her “sin” is pretty well done: I’m not sure she’s more likeable for the choice she makes and the way she treats it, but she definitely stands out more for it. The unashamed way she goes, “Yeah, I did that, and I’d do it again!” — yeah, pretty great. I also enjoyed her friendship with Mallory: I think we didn’t get enough build-up to that, really, but their closeness within the cave makes enough sense that it works.

Overall, it came together better than I’d feared from my sense of the writing when I started the book: maybe I got used to it, maybe it genuinely settled out and those first pages had been over-polished or something. Either way, I had a reasonable amount of fun reading it, but I’m not sure I’d recommend it, so I keep wavering on how exactly to rate it now I’m looking back at the whole. Perhaps it’s just not enough my usual genre for me to really know; I’m more of an occasional horror reader.

Rating: 2/5 (“it was okay”)