The Deep is an early short novel

Novel

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

 by John Crowley

John Crowley

John Crowley is an American author of fantasy, science fiction and mainstream fiction. He studied at Indiana University and has a second career as a documentary film writer...

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A visitor arrives from elsewhere on a strange mediaeval world where the two factions, the "Reds" and the "Blacks", struggle for supremacy through battle, murder and treachery.

It soon becomes apparent that he (it) is only superficially human. Damaged in a skirmish between Protectors and the Just at the start, he and we spend the rest of the book finding out how and why he was made and sent. Early, Fauconred quotes their book: "the world is founded on a pillar which is founded on the Deep". This turns out to be true.

Whilst a war of succession plays out, the visitor becomes secretary, then recorder; and travels to the edge of the world to meet Leviathan

Leviathan

Leviathan , is a sea monster referred to in the Bible. In Demonology, Leviathan is one of the seven princes of Hell and its gatekeeper . The word has become synonymous with any large sea monster or creature...

, an immemorial creature who built the world to shelter his sleep from the heaven stones. Meanwhile, the slow stable world which has been immortal because repeating for uncounted years begins to spiral into the unknown path of development.

Crowley has said that his first, unfinished, novel was about the Wars of the Roses

Wars of the Roses

The Wars of the Roses were a series of dynastic civil wars for the throne of England fought between supporters of two rival branches of the royal House of Plantagenet: the houses of Lancaster and York...

, but this novel owes more to the life and wars of Edward II

Edward II of England

Edward II , called Edward of Caernarfon, was King of England from 1307 until he was deposed by his wife Isabella in January 1327. He was the sixth Plantagenet king, in a line that began with the reign of Henry II...

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Reception

Aldiss and Wingrove

David Wingrove

David Wingrove is a British science fiction writer. He is well-known as the author of the Chung Kuo novels . He is also the co-author of the three Myst novels....

praised The Deep as "a remarkable first novel, well written and darkly true to human nature." They described it as "a complex novel of many layers [whose] people live and breathe and die horribly in [its] pages.

External links

• http://pluto.spaceports.com/~mot/books/books7.htm#deep