Jeff’s Reviews > The Maw > Status Update

Seems like a more elegant reason for the bleeding would have been that some people reacted badly to the single-celled slime mold, but okay, Marburg virus, only for a few people...

"Even a perfect mental model won't get us out of the anthill in the dark"? Since when?

"If this works she might--might--have a chance." Five paragraphs later and she might be fine.

Rending instead of rendering.

Why mention that you have to go somewhere else before returning to an injured caver when you have to walk by her to get there?

How could your senses be heightened to the point that you can detect body heat and heartbeat from several feet away but you don't notice when a dead person jumps up and starts running through a cave?

Flashes of brilliance still appearing amongst the mess:

“What’s that sound?” asked Charlie. Straining his ears to listen, Milo soon heard it too—a distant dripping into hollow calcite flutes, the tinkling notes like music.

Effects of the cave are conceptually very compelling, but in practice, nebulous and selective. Some characters seem much more affected or affected in totally different ways without any particular explanation or even implication.

Are they considering cannibalism or do they have super strength and endurance? Did they lift a boulder without noticing or are they hyper aware of themselves and their transformations?

Characters change without sufficient cause and there's still not enough time spent on environmental description. Too vague, too consistently dire, and the editing is increasingly sloppy with missing words and typos.

Really great chapter endings with major revelations, but surprisingly little suspense. I'm not fully convinced of anyone's vulnerability or capability, their competence seems to adjust to the scene they're in. Also, Zajonc's subterranean world imagery is so close to being realized, but it gets fuzzy around the edges. That being said, this is very cool cave lore, almost rivals Long's Descent duology.

I am repeatedly convinced that Zajonc might have made a masterpiece of this story if it'd been allowed another hundred pages. Milo being the one to lead the team up to the hydraulic door when he wasn't aware of the plan in the first place and initially argued against it makes no sense, especially when he's the least experienced and physically fit. But then, his psychological reaction to the climb, nearly perfect.

I guess there wouldn't be much tension without the storm hitting this way, but it's unconvincing that this kind of group would be this naive about flooding when descending an unmapped cave system. Milo gets a little melodramatic when it would serve the narrative better to surprise the reader or at least behave authentically. Suspension of disbelief in jeopardy despite the solid prose.