Member Reviews
Max F, Reviewer
This was delightful.
A refreshing change of pace from the fantasy I've been reading.
Fox really does a fantastic job narrating an account of William beebe's 1930 Bathysphere expedition. The details it goes into, from the characters/nature of those involved, like Otis Barton who insisted on being one of the first pair to descend as its inventor, to just details about the bathysphere itself, like how one window had to be sealed shut with steel as they couldn't reinforce it enough.
The cramed, claustrophobic conditions of the vessel as well, honestly it sounded both awful and wonderful.
The book was filled with such wonderful photographs, sketches, lab notebook scans, everything you could want for this topic really.
You get a pretty comprehensive look at the backstory to most of the key players involved in the project and initial lives, their wacky and bizarre lives and what lead them to be in or witness that plunge into the dark depths...
The book does jump about a bit, which may put some people off, I have seen it described like a scrapbook and that's not a bad description. You have a chapter on one aspect of the dive or describing one creature, then you're whisked 40 years back in time to hear about Beebe following pheasants about for a while. But I really enjoyed this style of writing!
Overall, as an avid diver myself and ocean lover, this book was a treat to read, up there with books like Stars Beneath the Sea by Trevor Norton for just excellent accounts of pioneering marine research
Emma T, Reviewer
As another NetGalley user reviewed, the kindle edition of this is completely unreadable as there are missing letters and strange formatting.
I'm unsure if this issue is fixed if the Kindle edition is for sale to the general public.
Very disappointed as I was excited to read this one!
Emma D, Reviewer
The Kindle preview of this is unreadable, with missing letters all over the place. It looks as though the text was copied and pasted from a dodgy PDF file, without anyone checking the result. It’s impossible to get into reading the book when it’s so hard to piece together.
