Title: Challenger Deep
Author: Neal Shusterman
Publication Date: April 1, 2015
Publisher: HarperTeen
Format: Kindle Unlimited
Caden Bosch is on a ship that’s headed for the deepest point on Earth: Challenger Deep, the southern part of the Marianas Trench.
Caden Bosch is a brilliant high school student whose friends are starting to notice his odd behavior.
Caden Bosch is designated the ship’s artist in residence to document the journey with images.
Caden Bosch pretends to join the school track team but spends his days walking for miles, absorbed by the thoughts in his head.
Caden Bosch is split between his allegiance to the captain and the allure of mutiny.
Caden Bosch is torn.
I would read pretty much anything by Neal Shusterman. Even my own death warrant. Though, I’d gripe about the ending, I’m sure.
Somehow, Challenger Deep flew completely under my radar, and I heard about it really randomly from a fellow blogger. And immediately grabbed it off KU, because I am a trained monkey. I see the Shusterman, I hit buy, okay? No-brainer.
What this boils down to: was this book important and meaningful? Yes. Was it well-written? Obviously. But was it enjoyable to read? Ehhhh. Sort of?
It’s really hard to wade through a story that’s disjointed, with two simultaneous storylines that don’t seem to connect, and with a plot that’s basically indistinguishable. I stuck it out and trusted that Shusterman wouldn’t lead me astray and I don’t regret it. But I’m not going to lie and say I didn’t consider DNFing it multiple times.
❧ Okay, so here’s how the book goes:
First 20%: Wow, I’m so confused. I don’t get it …
25% – 50%: Oh, I think I see what’s going on here. Tricksy, tricksy.
50% – 75%: Ah, I get it now. I was right (obviously).
75% – 100%: Wait … do I know what’s going on here?!
It starts with an inkling that maybe something is up, because hey, the pirate ship is starting to seem a lot like an allegory for a certain setting-that-shall-remain-nameless-due-to-spoilers. And the people on the ship are starting to make sense in that setting. Then, bam, reality marries fantasy, and suddenly, the whole first half of the book starts to make sense and takes on a whole new meaning. Of course, it took half the book to get there, so do what you will with that information. Even after that point, it was sometimes hard to wallow through what was really happening during Caden’s delusions, but things mostly made sense after the halfway point.
❧ Caden is a wonderful protagonist. He’s snarky enough to whet my appetite for sarcasm, but he’s also just as confused as I am and, frankly, scared. As he should be. But some of the thoughts he has? So deep and inspiring I had to read them twice.
There’s a little bit of everything with this character, which is why I loved him. At times, he’s totally out of it and wrapped in his own world, and it’s really hard to wade through the delusions. Others, he’s so on point in assessing the people around him that it’s scary. There were several passages where his interpretation of the world and society in general are just so poignant that I had to read and reread and really let it sink in, because it was freaking marvelous.
Just when I felt like I had the character nailed down, he’d come out with something else to keep me guessing
He doesn’t know what’s wrong with him any more than the reader does, so we’re experiencing this thing together. Only, he’s suffering through it and I’m reading Shusterman’s lovely writing, so obviously, he’s got the short end of the stick.
❧ This book is such an important glimpse into life with a mental illness (well, Caden’s particular flavor of mental illness, anyway), and it’s a real eye-opener.
In fact, the story itself is based on Neal Shusterman’s struggle with his son, Brandon Shusterman, as far as his own mental health and diagnosis. It’s something you can’t know unless you go through it, but reading this book really brought to light the complexities of it, the struggle, the raw emotions (on all sides, because it affects way more than just the patient).
The book is written in such a way that the reader joins Caden on this journey, so we’re invited to experience his struggles first-hand with him and share in the confusion.
While it’s sometimes hard to parse what’s happening, that’s the whole point. It’s genuine to Caden’s experience, and he doesn’t know what’s real and what’s not at times, either.
❧ There’s no happy ending here, and I LOVE that.
I mean, it’s happy-ish. But for a lot of people with mental illness, there is no happy ending, and I loved that it stayed true to that. The monster is still lurking there, just out of reach, ready to devour Caden, and the idea and image was so powerful that it really resonated with me and struck just the right chord.
❧ The story is extremely disjointed, and there’s no real solid, tangible plot to pull you through it, so you have to really want to read it.
Technically, there are two plots: Caden on the ship seeking the treasure in Challenger Deep and Caden the mental patient struggling to get help with his illness. There are arcs within both and things that happen that carry the story forward, but in the end, it still feels very meandering. It doesn’t help that it takes so long for the two plots to marry and actually make sense, so the whole first half of the book was like wandering through a dark maze and bumping into random walls over and over again.
I loved this book when I read it for the first time, and I can’t wait to read it again! I flew through the whole book pretty fast, and even though I was also confused, the premise was so unique and special to me that I loved the whole experience. I’m glad you liked it 😊
It was very unique! And so important, I think. I didn’t fly through it so much. It was a bit slower for me, but part of that was because some of the concepts were just so interesting and things I hadn’t thought about, that I really wanted to mull over. I loved some of the comebacks Caden had and just the unique way of thinking about things.