Whalefall
-
-
4.0 • 1 Rating
-
-
- $16.99
-
- $16.99
Publisher Description
The Martian meets 127 Hours in this powerfully humane thriller about a scuba diver who's been swallowed by an eighty-foot, sixty-ton sperm whale and has only one hour to escape before his oxygen runs out.
'Astoundingly great. Whalefall is, quite simply, a beautiful novel-a must-read story' - GILLIAN FLYNN
'A crazy, and crazily enjoyable, beat-the-clock adventure story' - NEW YORK TIMES
'Fantastically gripping . . . Smart, surreal, and powerfully humane' - OWEN KING
'There is nothing else quite like Whalefall' - NEW SCIENTIST
Jay Gardiner has given himself a fool's errand: to find the remains of his deceased father in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California. He knows it's a long shot, but Jay feels it's the only way for him to lift the weight of guilt he has carried since his dad's death the previous year.
The dive begins well enough, but the sudden appearance of a giant squid puts Jay in very real jeopardy, made infinitely worse by the arrival of a sperm whale looking to feed. Suddenly, Jay is caught in the squid's tentacles and drawn into the whale's mouth where he is pulled into the first of its four stomachs. He quickly realizes he has only one hour before his oxygen tanks run out - one hour to defeat his demons and escape the belly of a whale.
Suspenseful and cinematic, Whalefall is an 'astoundingly great' (Gillian Flynn, New York Times bestselling author) thriller about a young man who has given up on life, only to find a reason to live in the most dangerous and unlikely of places.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This gripping sci-fi thriller from bestseller Kraus (who previously coauthored the novelization of The Shape of Water with Guillermo del Torro) takes readers quite literally into the belly of the beast. After local diving legend Mitt Gardiner dies in a suicide by drowning, his estranged high school–age son, Jay, sets out to bolster his own reputation as a diver by retrieving his father's remains. Returning to the water after two years away from his domineering dad, Jay makes the risky dive. Instead of locating the body, however, he finds a giant squid, and then a massive sperm whale finds them both. Accidentally ingested, Jay struggles to escape the whale's belly before the creature either digests him or retreats to depths that could crush him. Jay's struggle to free himself from his blubbery prison mirrors his struggle to free himself from his father's shadow, which forms the real heart of the story. Kraus provides solid nautical science alongside the stretchy coincidences that fuel Jay's survival. Just on the brink of horror fiction, especially for the claustrophobic, this deep-sea thrill ride will have readers on the edges of their seats.
