Whalefall.
(By Daniel Kraus. Published 2023 by MTV Books. Oceanic survival story.)
Whalefall (the term is taken from oceanic biology where a "whale fall" is the ecosystem that occurs around the decaying seabed carcass of a whale or other large animal) is the story of Jake Gardiner, a young diver who has undertaken a clandestine dive off the coast of California's Monastery Beach, in an attempt to find the remains of his deceased father, a salty old fisherman who had committed suicide by jumping off his fishing boat after being stricken with a severe case of mesothelioma.
The quest is cut short though when Jake is, no way to put this really other than to just say it, swallowed whole by an 80 foot Sperm Whale who accidently (and apparently unknowingly) swallows the diver while consuming a giant squid.
With only an hour of oxygen left in his tank Jake must survive and find a way to escape all while dealing with coming to terms with both the death of and his strained relationship with his father.
Book wound up being pretty solid overall. Not a classic but worth a read.
The attention to detail is admirable. It doesn't have the full on "Attention to Detail Porn" level of say, the Martian (The book compares itself to the Martian in the marketing material so I feel I can make the comparison myself) and doesn't quite scratch the same "Competence Porn" itch but there's no denying that the environment, literally inside a whale, is inherently claustrophobic and scary and off-putting and the story follows the "Protagonist struggles one step forward, new crisis knocks him two steps back" story beats fairly well. It maintains the "Okay how is he ever going to get out of this?" cycle and the ways he "gets out of it" while not always believable (and there's on that was a total eye roller for me that I'll put down in the spoiler space) none of them ever feels like a full on cheat, which is really all you can ask for from a survival story.
The story gets dangerously close to my hated "Magical Realism" at few times. Never fully crosses the bar but as the stress and lower and lower oxygen levels send our protagonists further and further into delirium he starts to do that thing that magical realism love to do, have conversations with loved ones who aren't there. It never crosses my line, which is when the protagonist gets information from a figment of their imagination that it is impossible they could have gotten from just analyzing their own surroundings so the story can do the "It was all in their head... or was it tee hee hee?" thing I absolutely despise, but I think the story is using it as a narrative crutch a little more then it should. There are more organic and diegetic ways of getting across a character's thought process. Still it's not like this narrative device is uncommon or anything.
I also wish survival stories of all types could get over "The disaster happening to the protagonist and the protagonist's personal inner turmoil are the same thing you see it's a metaphor do you get it do you get DO YOU GET IT?" being the only subtext. One of the reasons the Martian is one of my favorite books of all time is that at no point are we supposed to treat Mark Watney surviving on Mars as a metaphor for literally anything.
Also... I hope the book isn't expecting me to come away feeling that the protagonist was WRONG for hating his father. The boy's dead father becomes more and more the loudest "voice" in the aforementioned circle of imaginary people he's talking to and everything sort feels like we're supposed to see it as a "boy understands why his father was so rough on him" sorta message but not the father ends the story exactly as he starts it, as an insufferable and pompous ass.
Okay and for my one eyeroll moment.
Still this is one of those books with a solid core where the rough edges are just more interesting to talk about and pretty much everything I didn't mention is perfectly fine. 3 out 5, worth a read.
