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Dark Waters
Jörmungandr is an ancient Norse sea monster. Thought to be purely a myth until a battleship is torn a part by one.
With his brother on that ship, former Navy Seal and deep-sea diver, Miles Raine, sets out on a personal vendetta against the creature and hopefully save his brother. Bringing with him his old Seal team, the Dagger Points, they embark on a mission that might very well be their last.
But what happens when the hunters become the hunted and the dark waters reveal more than a monster?
With his brother on that ship, former Navy Seal and deep-sea diver, Miles Raine, sets out on a personal vendetta against the creature and hopefully save his brother. Bringing with him his old Seal team, the Dagger Points, they embark on a mission that might very well be their last.
But what happens when the hunters become the hunted and the dark waters reveal more than a monster?
150 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 16, 2018
97 people are currently reading
55 people want to read
About the author
Lucas Pederson
44 books57 followersLucas Pederson is an American novelist and short story writer of horror, dark fantasy, young adult and science fiction. He lives in a small Iowa town with his family and they're all pretty sure their cat is an alien. He can be reached at lucaspederson@yahoo.com, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
May 25, 2018
Be very afraid
Lucas Pederson at his finest. Edge of your seat underwater terror. Would you risk it knowing there were mutated monsters in the ocean to rescue your brother? Miles does and all hell breaks loose. Hold on tight. You're in for a wild and bloody ride. A+++++
Lucas Pederson at his finest. Edge of your seat underwater terror. Would you risk it knowing there were mutated monsters in the ocean to rescue your brother? Miles does and all hell breaks loose. Hold on tight. You're in for a wild and bloody ride. A+++++
August 18, 2021
En realidad son 3,5 estrellitas, las razones es que el libro tiene mucho potencial, está ambientado en un futuro podríamos decirlo "postapocalíptico" donde la tierra ha sufrido enormes variaciones debido "Al gran cambio climático" que no solo produjo grandes terremotos, sino que se derritieron los polos, la mayor parte de la tierra quedó bajo las aguas, los océanos cambiaron sus características, sino que a todo eso se suma que los animales, tanto terrestres como acuáticos han mutado. Mutaciones que van desde que una tortuga tenga seis ojos, pasando por enormes peces o criaturas con dientes enormes que hacen parecer al gran tiburón blanco una simple mojarrita.
Y ese es el mundo que se nos presenta en las primeras páginas, y a lo largo de gran parte del libro iremos conociendo a los personajes involucrados en una misión de rescate de un submarino atacado por lo que parece ser Jörmungandr, sí, la gran serpiente de la mitología nórdica, hija de Loki.
Con todo esto, el libro tenía el potencial de ser una gran aventura pero... y sí, hay un pero, la mayor parte de las 150 páginas fueron pura introducción, de conocer los personajes, el pasado de algunos, tener vistazos muy breves de ese mundo postapocalíptico, y el viaje en el mini submarino enviado en misión de rescate y al llegar a las últimas páginas se desata el pandemonio y una se queda como ¡Que demonios! porque la acción se concentra ahí, en unas pocas páginas donde ocurre de todo pero a la vez nada porque pasa todo como un vendaval para llegar al final en donde te quedas peor que antes, porque te sabe a poco y ese es el punto negativo del libro. Pudo ser mucho mejor, haber más desarrollo de los personajes, no solo pantallazos, más desarrollo de ese mundo y sus criaturas y un poco más de acción e intervención del monstruo en cuestión.
A todo esto ¿Lo recomiendo? La respuesta es sí, porque se devora en poco tiempo, conoces un mundo diferente pero ya saben, pudo haber mucho más.
Y ese es el mundo que se nos presenta en las primeras páginas, y a lo largo de gran parte del libro iremos conociendo a los personajes involucrados en una misión de rescate de un submarino atacado por lo que parece ser Jörmungandr, sí, la gran serpiente de la mitología nórdica, hija de Loki.
Con todo esto, el libro tenía el potencial de ser una gran aventura pero... y sí, hay un pero, la mayor parte de las 150 páginas fueron pura introducción, de conocer los personajes, el pasado de algunos, tener vistazos muy breves de ese mundo postapocalíptico, y el viaje en el mini submarino enviado en misión de rescate y al llegar a las últimas páginas se desata el pandemonio y una se queda como ¡Que demonios! porque la acción se concentra ahí, en unas pocas páginas donde ocurre de todo pero a la vez nada porque pasa todo como un vendaval para llegar al final en donde te quedas peor que antes, porque te sabe a poco y ese es el punto negativo del libro. Pudo ser mucho mejor, haber más desarrollo de los personajes, no solo pantallazos, más desarrollo de ese mundo y sus criaturas y un poco más de acción e intervención del monstruo en cuestión.
A todo esto ¿Lo recomiendo? La respuesta es sí, porque se devora en poco tiempo, conoces un mundo diferente pero ya saben, pudo haber mucho más.
July 19, 2018
I am in favor of a smaller, leaner business model. When e-pub really hit the scene and opened up publishing for smaller, fresher authors on a budget, I was admittedly skeptic but ultimately interested in where things would lead. My foray into e-reading has been small, though, still preferring the feel of a book in my hands and how they look on my shelf. But I recently began reading a bit more on my tablet and finally purchased a Kindle so I could enjoy the e-pub only works that now littered the market.
But it has also revealed the dark side of the easier, cheaper publishing deals: lower quality.
Dark Waters: A Deep Sea Thriller is neither of the things the title promises. The water never seems exceedingly dark, they rarely venture into the deep sea and it's as much of a thriller as "Dick and Jane". Very little original thought went into this story beyond "Wouldn't it be cool if we had Norse mythology involved somehow?" The book desperately tries to weave some kind of shared universe with Lucas Pederson's previous book, Leviathan: Ghost Rig. And it really doesn't work.
For one, if you are making a shared universe then you need to be upfront with it. Don't ambush me with connections and then proceed assuming that I've read your previous work. Cause I hadn't. The lore and the world itself was a complete mystery to me and took me utterly by surprise when they revealed something new. "Oh, so this world has mutated life forms now?" "Oh, the world is flooded because of reasons?" "Oh, Norse gods were real now?" Things that really should've been laid down as a foundation for the book or be treated as big reveals are merely tossed out there as an aside. And so many plot threads were left dangling and unattended at the end. SO MANY!
The best way I could describe this book is that the author started writing without any real plan, changed his mind but then didn't go back to change any details. Then they did it again... and again... and again. The ending is an utter mess of conflicting writing, one moment casting the sea serpent as a vicious killer just... killing things only to then in the next sentence cast it as a planning, conniving god who wants to bring back the old pantheon. And it can also make you insane only not really but haha, just joking, you were insane all along except not really, just for the last five minutes and... and... just pick a damn story and stick to it!
There are two chapters dedicated to a woman being attacked by some kind of mutant coming out of the sea to kill her, she escapes and goes after the main character and it's never mentioned again! It just... goes away! There was never any point!
Characters are never written very well, beyond their most basic traits such as "I am big." or "I make jokes." or "Asian sexy assassin". Most of them were utter mysteries to me to the very end and when they were finally "dispatched" it was about as shocking to me as water still being wet. There's desperate attempts to build lore here but it doesn't work because I don't care. "It's still not as bad as Romania. Remember Romania? Huh? Do you remember that?" NO! I don't know anything about Romania and I don't want to, can you please tell the story you're telling now first?
And if I ever hear a character described as "badass" again I think I might puke.
There are aspects in there that could've worked if the story had been written better, if they were taken seriously and/or if the author had a shred of skill in him. This is written like a movie, a desperate attempt to write a script that could be picked up by a studio like "The Asylum" and be made into an awful movie. There are so many moments that only work if you think about them as scenes in a movie you're watching. Taken at face value in the book they're odd, nonsensical paragraphs but in the context of a movie, they make a bit more sense.
They're still bad, though. This wouldn't make for a good movie.
But perhaps most damning of all, and the serious downfall of such a lax publishing situation, is that the book is just not well written on a technical side. It's absolutely littered with spelling errors, strange sentences and just flat out mistakes in the writing. If this book had an editor (a decent one), I'd be extremely surprised cause there were mistakes in here that no spellchecker in the modern IT world wouldn't catch, let alone an editor. Ten years ago and this wouldn't even have seen the light of day outside writer forums and that would've been bad enough. I've seen and read better things than this from actual children.
How on earth this... trash ever got a 3.5 rating on this site is beyond me. I am not someone who strives for "high art" or anything along those lines. A quick look at my reading list will tell you that. I like my monster books a lot and I make no pretense about the fact that many of them are not... great. But there's a difference between this and something like Greig Beck's Beneath the Dark Ice. One knows exactly what it is and is competently written, entertaining and exciting to the end. Perfect? No, but I'd read it again any day. The other is this book. And I'm embarrassed that I read it.
But it has also revealed the dark side of the easier, cheaper publishing deals: lower quality.
Dark Waters: A Deep Sea Thriller is neither of the things the title promises. The water never seems exceedingly dark, they rarely venture into the deep sea and it's as much of a thriller as "Dick and Jane". Very little original thought went into this story beyond "Wouldn't it be cool if we had Norse mythology involved somehow?" The book desperately tries to weave some kind of shared universe with Lucas Pederson's previous book, Leviathan: Ghost Rig. And it really doesn't work.
For one, if you are making a shared universe then you need to be upfront with it. Don't ambush me with connections and then proceed assuming that I've read your previous work. Cause I hadn't. The lore and the world itself was a complete mystery to me and took me utterly by surprise when they revealed something new. "Oh, so this world has mutated life forms now?" "Oh, the world is flooded because of reasons?" "Oh, Norse gods were real now?" Things that really should've been laid down as a foundation for the book or be treated as big reveals are merely tossed out there as an aside. And so many plot threads were left dangling and unattended at the end. SO MANY!
The best way I could describe this book is that the author started writing without any real plan, changed his mind but then didn't go back to change any details. Then they did it again... and again... and again. The ending is an utter mess of conflicting writing, one moment casting the sea serpent as a vicious killer just... killing things only to then in the next sentence cast it as a planning, conniving god who wants to bring back the old pantheon. And it can also make you insane only not really but haha, just joking, you were insane all along except not really, just for the last five minutes and... and... just pick a damn story and stick to it!
There are two chapters dedicated to a woman being attacked by some kind of mutant coming out of the sea to kill her, she escapes and goes after the main character and it's never mentioned again! It just... goes away! There was never any point!
Characters are never written very well, beyond their most basic traits such as "I am big." or "I make jokes." or "Asian sexy assassin". Most of them were utter mysteries to me to the very end and when they were finally "dispatched" it was about as shocking to me as water still being wet. There's desperate attempts to build lore here but it doesn't work because I don't care. "It's still not as bad as Romania. Remember Romania? Huh? Do you remember that?" NO! I don't know anything about Romania and I don't want to, can you please tell the story you're telling now first?
And if I ever hear a character described as "badass" again I think I might puke.
There are aspects in there that could've worked if the story had been written better, if they were taken seriously and/or if the author had a shred of skill in him. This is written like a movie, a desperate attempt to write a script that could be picked up by a studio like "The Asylum" and be made into an awful movie. There are so many moments that only work if you think about them as scenes in a movie you're watching. Taken at face value in the book they're odd, nonsensical paragraphs but in the context of a movie, they make a bit more sense.
They're still bad, though. This wouldn't make for a good movie.
But perhaps most damning of all, and the serious downfall of such a lax publishing situation, is that the book is just not well written on a technical side. It's absolutely littered with spelling errors, strange sentences and just flat out mistakes in the writing. If this book had an editor (a decent one), I'd be extremely surprised cause there were mistakes in here that no spellchecker in the modern IT world wouldn't catch, let alone an editor. Ten years ago and this wouldn't even have seen the light of day outside writer forums and that would've been bad enough. I've seen and read better things than this from actual children.
How on earth this... trash ever got a 3.5 rating on this site is beyond me. I am not someone who strives for "high art" or anything along those lines. A quick look at my reading list will tell you that. I like my monster books a lot and I make no pretense about the fact that many of them are not... great. But there's a difference between this and something like Greig Beck's Beneath the Dark Ice. One knows exactly what it is and is competently written, entertaining and exciting to the end. Perfect? No, but I'd read it again any day. The other is this book. And I'm embarrassed that I read it.
December 21, 2019
The first thing I would say is that this book should be read after Leviathon as there are frequent and massive plot spoilers throughout this book. Knowing how it ends and seeing the reviews of it, along with my thoughts on this one, led me to just delete Leviathon off my TBR. I really didn't like this one at all. The plot sounded good enough-a huge sea monster attacks and sinks USS Cutter but some crew may have survived in escape pods so a rescue of some kind is sorted out by the Navy. Miles, the man chosen to lead the mission is the brother of a missing sailor from the USS Cutter. He is summoned by the Admiral to a meeting to plan the mission and it is in full swing when it is gatecrashed by slimy oil company owner Murdock Jones who wants to be involved. To stop MJ, the Navy arranges for Miles to be kidnapped outside the office by his former special forces team so the oil guy can't find him. Riigghht. So MJ won't think to look for Miles at the scene of the attack on the boat where the escape pods might be. Of course not. Doh!
The book has a dreadful assortment of female characters who are weird, psychotic or in love with Miles. We have the Jenna and Emma love Miles nonsense, psycho Sylvi who has no self control over stabbing people, the weird historian who says the sea monster can only be killed with a venom filled wolf tooth as per Norse mythology, two special forces men having fights about gummy bears, constant bickering, a dumb plan...it was all over the place! Add to that the repetition. Every time a new person enters the room, the whole sea monster tooth tale has to get repeated in full and by the third telling I was getting fed up with it. Why not call a team meeting and tell everyone at the same time??? The characters are too dumb to be special forces, the plot just doesn't deliver and I lost interest before they even got out to sea.
The book has a dreadful assortment of female characters who are weird, psychotic or in love with Miles. We have the Jenna and Emma love Miles nonsense, psycho Sylvi who has no self control over stabbing people, the weird historian who says the sea monster can only be killed with a venom filled wolf tooth as per Norse mythology, two special forces men having fights about gummy bears, constant bickering, a dumb plan...it was all over the place! Add to that the repetition. Every time a new person enters the room, the whole sea monster tooth tale has to get repeated in full and by the third telling I was getting fed up with it. Why not call a team meeting and tell everyone at the same time??? The characters are too dumb to be special forces, the plot just doesn't deliver and I lost interest before they even got out to sea.
June 6, 2018
This book kind of blew my mind. It is set in a world in the future where we have destroyed most of the world and those still surviving have to face mutated animals above and below. This book makes me want to not go swimming for a while! From beginning to end I was hooked! Can't wait for Lucas' next book!!!
October 4, 2022
A dumb fun book, and I say that in a good way, though it took itself maybe 10% more seriously than I was hoping for. At just 141 pages it’s a fast paced book, events that would take up chapters in other books take place over a paragraph here but that’s what keeps the book engaging, there’s rarely a point where the action stops making it primed for a one sitting read. Frankly it was sitting on 2 stars until about the last 30 pages where it kicked into high gear with a wrinkle I didn’t see coning and made the action much more interesting.
May 27, 2020
Good story line, yet...
This book had a great storyline, but definitely lacked follow thru. For instance, the main character takes an injury that is commented on being a major injury, but is then never mentioned again.. at all... characters could have used more detail and development.
This book had a great storyline, but definitely lacked follow thru. For instance, the main character takes an injury that is commented on being a major injury, but is then never mentioned again.. at all... characters could have used more detail and development.
October 7, 2018
This Story Rocks
US Navy Seals. Marine Biologist, archeologist. Mutants. Myths and Gods.
And one freakin' humongous sea serpent!
I love this book.
Great author.
Send me in Coach, I'm ready for another gigantic sea creature!!
US Navy Seals. Marine Biologist, archeologist. Mutants. Myths and Gods.
And one freakin' humongous sea serpent!
I love this book.
Great author.
Send me in Coach, I'm ready for another gigantic sea creature!!
May 21, 2018
?????
Yep. It is official. Last book I am reading from this author. Made no sense and the ending was just crazy.
Yep. It is official. Last book I am reading from this author. Made no sense and the ending was just crazy.
October 15, 2024
Review of this book.
A good read. The part before the ending was a little confusing. I was not sure what was really happening. I would recommend this nook to others to read.
A good read. The part before the ending was a little confusing. I was not sure what was really happening. I would recommend this nook to others to read.
October 3, 2025
Good book lots of twists and turns.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews