Darcy Coates' stories are all different that I've read so far and I'm very impressed with the variety. The premise she chose here was perfect; like space, the sea is another environment rife with fodder for horror elements. Pretty much loved this, and how Coates manages maximum creepiness paired with a feeling that things will generally work out. When I finished this book, I just wished that the book's focus had been solely on the 1928 period of the story. While there were some horrifying moments and fantastically gross parts in the present-day sections, it just didn't really deliver for me the way that the past sections did. Additionally, I felt like the reveal was unsatisfying and kind of wishy-washy. It is important to note that the majority of the themes explored in this book deal with sensitive subject matters. My review, therefore, touches on these topics as well. Many people might find the subject matters of the book as well as those detailed in my review overwhelming. I would suggest you steer clear of both if this is the case. Please note that from this point forward I will be writing about matters which contain reflections on self-mutilation, mental illness, suicide, murder, & others. From Below has her signature paranormal elements in the plot but it's also creepy as hell and the claustrophobic moments in the book are fantastic. There is always a place for the torment brought forth by psychological fear; scratching, tapping, crawling behind the tangible; these are things that wander in my mind late into the night.

Below - Grammar - Cambridge Dictionary

I loved how Darcy Coates has you questioning the motives of some and wondering if others are a liability for this diving expedition. For Rediker, part of that work is teaching. He was recently the visiting professor at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, where he ran the hugely popular graduate course, “How to Write History from Below.” The course explored the key theories, methods, and issues in history from below, from its origin in the 1930s, through the New Left of the 1960s and 1970s, to the present. I've read a solid handful of Darcy Coates' other books in the past. I would say that most of them have been enjoyable; her stories are generally well-written and fun to read. However, there are some that are mediocre at best, and unfortunately that's where this story fell for me. Do you believe in ghosts or hauntings? After reading the terrifying adventures of this documentary team it just make you think twice about what happens after death especially when one dies in a tragic and violent death. As Marcus prepared for his stint in Hawai’i, he shared online the books that he thought were essential for anyone interested in learning how to write history from below. Thinking they would make a great reading list, I wrote to Marcus and, with his permission, they are reproduced here.

Silvia Federici, Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation, Autonomedia, 2004. This proved a claustrophobic read with an intriguing cast that kept me engaged throughout. I did wish for a little more depictions of the horrors, at the novel's close, but still feel impressed with all the author did deliver. In doing so, history from below (especially feminist work and studies of slavery and unfree labour) has expanded our understanding of the working class and working-class struggle beyond waged labour. Rediker’s own work on slavery and the revolutionary Atlantic is a case in point, for it includes the waged and the unwaged, those across the gender spectrum, and people of many different ethnicities and cultures. Previously overlooked forms of resistance to capitalism have joined the ranks of more traditional labour actions. But that’s not really the problem with From Below. The problem is how utterly fake it looks. If the two lead actors even saw Distress calls in the form of garbled messages, were received from the SS Arcadia in her last hours - messages that no one was able to understand, couldn’t make any sense of them, but perhaps this dive, sponsored by Vivitech who will be using the footage for a forthcoming documentary, will finally reveal what really happened.

FROM BELOW - A Real NES Game! by Matt Hughson (NES Dev) - Itch.io FROM BELOW - A Real NES Game! by Matt Hughson (NES Dev) - Itch.io

I can see how some of the deep water diving details could be a bit much for a reader, but I actually liked it. For the life of me, I just could not bring myself to care about the present day story-line. It dragged along for a solid two-thirds of the book before anything really started to happen. It's such a shame because Coates did such a fantastic job building this sense of dread, isolation, and claustrophobia in the beginning of the story. Firstly, sorry if I have limited sympathies for a couple who can afford to book a last-minute luxury holiday to Vietnam, even though only one of them works, and then call it off after a day and hang the expense. No. Some people deserve to be eaten by sharks. Not that I’m saying that’s what happens. No spoilers here. I’m just saying that when the husband got eaten by a shark I didn’t really care. How did he taste Sharky? “A bit rich.” Hahaha. Oh Sharky, you card!Maybe Kiệt simply had no experience with green screen. His breakout hit, Furie, was a very practical martial arts crime story and it could be that he’s moving into untested waters with very little guidance. What I’m saying here is that it’s not necessarily the writer/director’s fault that the effects in the movie look abominable. Just that they do and it’s an enormous distraction. There's a bit of repetitiveness in the book with the diving sessions, but I didn’t have an issue with it. I found myself much more invested in the 1928 story-line because it did a better job delivering on atmosphere and scares, in my opinion. There were some truly disturbing and horrific scenes that absolutely shook me. I liked that the spooky parts came much earlier than in the present-day parts, and I enjoyed reading about Harland much more than reading about Cove and team. The stones of the walls are broken off, and hurdled down at hideous creature. And it just might be enough to Rediker argues that Lemisch went beyond these distinguished scholars in several respects: “If the British Marxist historians, along with the French historians Georges Lefebvre and Albert Soboul, had pioneered “history from below,” which made historical actors of religious radicals, rioters, peasants, and artisans, Lemisch pushed the phrase and the history further and harder with “history from the bottom up,” a more inclusive and comprehensive formulation that brought all subjects, especially slaves and women, more fully into the historian’s field of vision… by insisting that sailors and other workers had ideas of their own, he [also] made a point that many historians have yet to grasp—the history of the working class must be an intellectual as well as a social history.”

BELOW | English meaning - Cambridge Dictionary

I have read all three books in Gravekeeper series and thoroughly enjoyed them. While I appreciate all of Coates's work, I must mention that the Gravekeeper books stand out for their paranormal horror, which is quite distinct from the horror found in From Below. It would be wrong, however, to think that history from below ignores power relations or the powerful. As Geoff Eley argues, setting history from below against histories of “the bosses, bankers and brokers who run the economy” is to invoke a false antinomy. “Historians from below”, notes Rediker, “study power.” In 1928 an ocean liner gets lost at sea, the mystery of its disappearance never solved. A couple of radio message were received by other ships, but both the location and the precise nature of the Arcadia's distress remained unclear. Although, one of the last messages ominously stated that there was something in the walls.This was my introduction to the work of Darcy Coates and was an excellent starting point. I'm eager to find out what else she has in store for horror readers. The best summation/elevator pitch I can think of to describe this is extreme claustrophobia creepiness under the deep sea.. For the first time in 30 years, there is a new game for the Nintendo Vs. Arcade Systems: Vs. From Below! A feature length documentary entitled ‘From Below’: a film by Matthias Kispert celebrating the mutual aid projects during COVID-19, and how they are moving forward to help people in the future (the trailer can be viewed here). When it comes to the later chapters up to the end, I wasn’t a fan of how they abruptly ended right when good stuff happened. It was very frustrating since when it happened and brought a little bit of a spark while reading, I was left hanging until the chapter after next when it returned to that specific timeline. Combine that with the slow pacing of this novel and it’s just something that leaves much to be desired. I have read quite a few books by author, Darcy Coates, but I think this book is one of her best books yet! The story just grabbed me right away and took me on a fast pace into the deep sea as the tension of the book took me on a roller coaster ride of emotions from breath-hitching moments of anxiety to throat closing claustrophobic atmospheric intensity as I barreled my way through the storyline!

From Below - Horror DNA From Below - Horror DNA

Coates just keeps adding elements to make the walls close in on you, literally - having both hydrophobia and claustrophobia, I was genuinely creeped out, rare for me in all my horror reads. She skillfully leaned on the idea that when drifting in the dark, your path only lit by a headlamp, even the mundane becomes terrifying. That specific concept of abandoned places, but with incongruous things like tables, glasses etcetera left behind, as terrifying spaces. At least the sharks are good!” No, Sharky. The sharks are not good. They are bad. They are sub- Sharknado bad. When they are CG they flop about, moving through the water (and occasionally the air) with no physical presence. When they are puppets they are adorable, like sea puppies, making the way they are treated seem, frankly, unreasonably cruel. They pop up for all of thirty seconds at a time – budget, I assume – not making their appearance until easily past the one hour mark. Added to this the fact that the total time they are on screen for is easily under 10 minutes so not only is the majority of the movie gaspingly inept, it’s also a huge disappointment to fans of shark movies (and fans of James Woods' legal dramas). If you are able to suspend disbelief, even for horror stories that aren't going for all-out silly, then you are in for a treat.

The only downside for me was that there were some sections that felt slow but the overall sense of unease and tension, helped me to overlooks this. Coates uses the ol' dual timeline narrative to tell this story. On one hand, you have Cove and her team exploring the ship in present day; on the other, you have the events in 1928 that lead up to the sinking of the Arcadia. I often find that stories that rely on this type of story-telling have the same problem: one plot-line tends to be more interesting than the other. This book is no exception. Thank you to Poisoned Pen Press and NetGalley who provided me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All the thoughts and opinions are my own. Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic , Beacon Press, 2004.