The Deep
- 178
- Pages
- about 3.5 h
- Reading time
- Lambda Literary Award
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Our view
“The Deep” fits a heavy, moving idea into fewer than two hundred pages: an underwater people descended from enslaved women thrown from ships. The story is charged with grief and turns on finding an identity, personal and shared. Some readers find its metaphors blunt and wish its world had been given more room, while granting that the brevity excuses the first. This is speculative fiction for those who want it thoughtful and dark.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
The Deep is a 2019 fantasy book by Rivers Solomon, with Daveed Diggs, William Hutson and Jonathan Snipes. It depicts an underwater society built by the water-breathing descendants of pregnant slaves thrown overboard from slave ships. The book was developed from a song of the same name by Clipping, an experimental hip-hop trio. It won the Lambda Literary Award, and was nominated for Hugo, Nebula and Locus awards.
Where the score comes from
The sources average 7.6 across 235 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 62% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Science fiction average of 7.8. That is how 7.7 comes out.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 8.0 | 8 | 3% |
| Hardcover | 7.5 | 227 | 97% |
Frequently asked
How long is The Deep?
It has 178 pages — shorter than 98% of the ranked books in Science fiction.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
Same shelf — Science fiction — with scores between 7.6 and 7.8, closest to this book.
