From Below

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I have read many scary stories in my day. I am very familiar with the sentiment of fear both in a tangible, literal sense as well as what the emotion means logically; the way our brains transform within our bodies grasping for coherent rationals to the events transpiring around us. It is the gift of a great writer to provide the reader with an experience of immersion. The beginning of this book saw us meet a cast of characters in the present day as well as view the cataclysmic events leading to the sinking of the Arcadia, through the introspection of Harland, a crew member on the ship in 1928. The stones of the walls are broken off, and hurdled down at hideous creature. And it just might be enough to Don't go merely by my review on this one, because there were a LOT of parts that I truly loved. I think I just wanted a faster pacing, and more of the horror NOT being interrupted by technicalities. With that being said, I found the first 70% of this book absolutely riveting. I am constantly on the hunt for a world-altering scary story. Being a fan of both the Horror & Historical Fiction genres this book appeared to be my ideal match. Had Coates held steadfast in the general malaise which was being crafted throughout the first part of the story I am certain that this would have been one that I would have been loath to put down. Unfortunately, we read about the diving team, set in the present tense, who are exploring the Arcadia that lies 300 feet into the ocean deep. This group of people grows to become insufferable as they seem to willfully neglect logical thought & decision-making in the hopes of capturing more footage for the documentary they are shooting. 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!

From Below - Horror DNA From Below - Horror DNA

Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976. Are individuals entitled to the truth as a basic human right? Or is it acceptable to disguise facts if they ultimately do more harm than good? In the modern day, where we’re exposed to government cover-ups and ingenuous PR campaigns from mega corporations, most people believe the truth to be an ultimate good. How can a lie be wholesome ? How can deceit be kind? But I would posit this is one of the few instances where deception would have no victims. Perhaps you would not be in the wrong to protect others from this.”Darcy Coates makes good use of the claustrophobic setting and her characters, even though they are making some dumb decisions here and there, are more plausible in their actions as is usually the case in books like this. She also employs a dual timeline that lets the reader slowly uncover what had happened aboard the Arcadia in 1928 while in the present timeline our crew of divers will find out as well. This form of storytelling was working perfectly here. 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.”

From Below Movie Review | AVForums

So, yeah, nothing like starting with an already scary plot foundation, deep sea diving, and adding a ship that went missing under weird circumstances, and supernatural elements. Like our protagonist mentions, professional divers can die in familiar waters. The unskilled and barely qualified crew in this story, plus the truly unsettling features of the area they're diving, begin us on a high level of Scary from the start. 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. Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic , Beacon Press, 2004. It is these silences—within the historical record and the conscious or subconscious choices of many historians—that history from below seeks to recover. But what exactly is history from below? Who is below? Given that modern historians of any worth must consider the aims and methods of social history, as well as taking into account class, gender and race, is there still value in the label history 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.” 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. 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. This was an unexpected and extremely enjoyable read by author "Darcy Coates". I appreciated the atmospheric and tense storytelling and I also became very engaged with all the characters. The story starts slowly and continues to build while giving hints of what is to come yet the reader will be completely surprised by the turn of events and the last forty percent of the book had myself holding my breath at times and feeling nervous at the disturbingly creepy happenings within the ship and what the poor crew were experiencing. I really was sitting on the edge of my seat by the time I finished this book. This was a terrific, eerie and spooky story for anyone who loves a good horror story taking place deep within the ocean. I now am a true fan of "Darcy Coates" and will look forward to reading many of her books.

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 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! 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 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). Okay, budgetary constraints are a lot to do with what makes this film what it is and a lot of its shortfalls can be forgiven because of that. But it isn't just the dreadful compositing or weightless CGI fish that bring the film down. It's a mess from beginning to end. In short… take it away, Sharky: 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.

My personal problem was all the technical details made the read more of a "chore" to get through at times. My attention would be on a great scene, only to be derailed by silt moving (for the 500th time), or something else that took me "out of the moment". There was also one part that could have added so much more, if elaborated on, in my opinion. I can see how some of the deep water diving details could be a bit much for a reader, but I actually liked it. 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.