They Came from the Ocean

Creature Encounters

By: Boris Bacic

Narrated by: Chris Gatterdam

Length: 7 hrs and 59 mins

Publisher's summary

Exploring the bottom of the ocean is scary. It's worse when something down there is stalking you.

Off the coast of New Zealand, there's an underwater mining facility 8,000 feet under the ocean. The crew stationed there knows that drowning is the least of their worries at such depths. That's why they panic when a maintenance member goes missing while out on a repair mission. He had only eight hours of oxygen, and almost a day has gone by since they lost contact, so the crew can only hope to retrieve his body.

Then, they receive a distress call from him - at a depth of 11,000 feet.

A small rescue team suits up and dives to find their missing crewmate. But descending into the unforgiving depths of the ocean is much easier than going back up, and the team learns that too late. Now, stranded at the bottom of the trench without the ability to call for help, they realize that coming down here was a terrible mistake.

There's something far worse down there than the crushing pressure, the ticking timers on their oxygen tanks, and the everlasting darkness that inhabits such depths. And it's hunting them one by one.

©2022 Boris Bacic (P)2022 Boris Bacic

It's rare to see a horror story utilize the bottom of the ocean

A pretty decent story! While creepy, suspenseful even at parts, it was very lacking in detail. The threat of the mermaids may have felt real, but we rarely got too see them (they also weren't very fleshed out). The characters fall a bit flat, as do most of their relationships. Some dialog feels clunky, if not down right odd. And the story falls victim to a shoe horned in sex scene.

It's a fun setting and premise, with a bad narrator, and aspects that could have been explored more. If things were fleshed out a bit more, this story easily could have reached five stars. If you like underwater horror and modern internet horror, then you'll definitely enjoy the book. It's nothing fantats, but it was a fun read.

pretty good

story and characters are solid. no complaints, pretty straightforward monster encounters which I enjoy, obviously.

My biggest complaint is the epilogue. it feels incredibly rushed and also like it's trying way too hard. it shoves a bunch of information to you in the last 2 mins which has no real payoff and just raises more questions that won't be answered because the stories in this series are unrelated. it also tried to impart some kind of life lesson which was unnecessary.

read the epilogue at your discretion, but I feel I would have enjoyed it more if I hadn't, there is 1 loose end that gets explained but tbh it doesn't affect the story at all and actually kind of detracts from it.

as for the narrator - he intonates most of his sentences the same way which is irritating and makes listening a bit confusing because you can't really tell what tone it's in. he also mispronounces several words

Good story, lousy narrator

The narrator isn’t particularly good. Very stilted reading, doesn’t try to alter his voice for different characters, and mispronounces words. There are also 1-2 spots where a section repeats.

DNF Speedrun

Story is average at best. Lots of wasted time and hollow characters. Worst part of all is the narration, it is truly abysmal. Made it 2/3 through before giving up. Easy skip

Good

Overall a great story, any questions as the story progressed was answered. I am assuming the narrator is newer, as the audio is not very crisp. They also just read the story, no voices or accents. Still alright to listen to though. I am terrified of the Ocean so, this definitely had me on edge.

More like Bacically Boring

While the premise of this book is fine, with common tropes found throughout damn near every outlet of media, the constant fear of underwater peril is simply not found. A group of ragtag adventurers dive down to an impossibly deep portion of the ocean to rescue a man that none of them know, or at least none of them mention knowing. Of course things go wrong and then the final girl does final girl things. My issue is that it takes four and a half hours of a seven hour long horror novel to get anywhere remotely near horror-adjacent. Yes, the setup is fine, but the foreshadowing is vividly clear. Yes, the ocean is terrifying, but it’s also completely glossed over because they have fancy scuba suits. Yes, the main character has a love interest, but it’s very heavy-handed and feels fairly underdeveloped. As for the technical issues, three separate times the track skipped backwards by almost 15 minutes each, causing me to either struggle to find my place or simply re-listen to that portion again. Then considering how the entire track is listed as two chapters ahead, due to the fact that the forward and the prologue are each listed as chapters. And now for my key issue with this track: the narrator. If the author had not explicitly stated which character was speaking in almost every single conversation, I would’ve gotten lost before the prologue ended. The narrator is monotonous and bland, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they had refused to put any sort of enunciation in their voice. The Russian woman, the Chinese man, the two Americans, and the British workers, all sound the same. It’s beyond infuriating, and it’s no wonder why this book took me so long to finish.

Awful narration

I have listened to well over 100 audio books and this is by far the worst narration I have ever heard. The story was fair but this narration totally ruined it.

kept me glued

I'm torn. This was a book that really kept my interest. I couldn't stop listening. yet, I'm so aggravated because there were characters I liked that died. I know that's life but working in a hospital, I like to read to get away from it and hope to have some happy time. It was also hard to believe how they crew were 10,000 ft below the surface. but play along.

I love mermaids so much that all this didn't matter to me. the fact it kept my interest was enough for me. If you listen to audiobooks, this narrator was just ok. not the best but good enough. He has a nice sounding voice at least.

Not a great narrator

I really liked this story, but it was hard to get past the robotic reading from the narrator. I ended up buying the kindle version so I could finish the story without hearing his voice.

Great story ruined by terrible narration

The narrator continuously mispronounces common words and has a very odd cadence. I’m usually not very particular about narrators, but this is one of the worst I’ve heard. Some sentences seem to be mistranslated as well? For example “he continually pounded the roots of his hands on his helmet”. Roots? I think the author meant palms. Love this author, but please be more particular with your choice of narrator. The wrong one can spoil the whole story.