Book Review: Whalefall by Daniel Kraus

Whale Fall by Daniel Kraus

327 pages, Hardcover
Published August, 2023 by MTV Books

I am surprised more authors don’t admit to jealousy when they read a fantastic novel. For me, it is often a genius concept that makes me shake my head and think “What a lucky person” this writer is to explore this amazing concept. I think many writers had that reaction to this novel. A modern hard science horror novel retelling of Jonah in the Whale that uses the disconnecting way we as a culture dealt with death during the pandemic was nothing short of a stroke of genius. I knew it was genius when non-readers at my day job when hearing the concept would say “That should be a movie,” or “I would read that.”

The writer behind this strike of genius is a writer whose brain I got to pick once before.  Not everyone could be chosen by the Romero estate to finish the ultimate zombie novel he was writing when he died. That novel is filled with smart, bold, and inventive moments, so when I saw the concept of Whalefall I fully expected an amazing novel.

Then came the hype, blurbs from writers I trust Gabino Iglesias, Stephen Graham Jones, and outside of the unusual horror suspects Gillian Flynn. The readers that did beat me to it as I waited for my library hold, one after another heaping praise. The crime writer Daniel Vlasaty said he couldn’t put it down, and bizarro horror writer Grant Womack said simply amazing. On and on.

So the first question I have to answer. Is the hype real?  One hundred pages and I was hooked and having the same problem putting it down. Whalefall keeps you engaged and turning pages for a variety of reasons. As crazy as the set-up, Jay our hero's survival minute to minute is so impossible that shutting the book gets harder as the story goes. To make the book even more addicting Kraus uses a trick that I associate with action thriller writer David Morrell who mastered this technique. Short and powerful chapters that keep you thinking "I might as well read one more it is just a few pages." Next thing you know you read 50 more pages. Whalefall also uses parallel storytelling. Some crazy thing will happen in the present of the story and you will be on the edge of your seat, and get a chapter or two of backstory. The back story is emotionally rich and involving too. But even if you are less interested in the family drama, you want to read it just to get back the whale and present action.

The story of Whalefall follows Jay, who is just barely an adult, he has given himself an impossible task, find his father’s body after he went into the ocean to kill himself.  His father taught him to scuba dive but this mission is a crazy dive with little hope of working. What is crazier is he ends up getting swallowed alive by a giant whale. With oxygen tank and plenty of feelings of guilt over how he dealt with his father this becomes a tale of survival that I am surprised doesn’t get compared to Gravity. It has the structure of Gerald’s Game and the bleak survival aspects of Gravity or 127 Minutes.

The structure and pacing of the book is brisk. The chapters are generally short, but there are moments of character or description that show a real command of the form. You might think the flashbacks would drag down the pace of the whale story but it doesn’t do that ever. Interesting too, because it is one of the first books I read that kind of has the pandemic in the rearview mirror just a fact of time.  Daniel Kraus is an excellent writer, and beyond the high concept, he clearly researched the whale science and never cheated the concept.

So before we get into the details add my voice to the chorus of hype. Buy it, borrow it from a library, and spread the good word.  Whalefall is more than just survival horror, and family drama in not-so-subtle ways the book gives the reader a strong sense of the power, scope, and majesty of nature in the ocean.

“Rising.
A ship of gods for primordial tar, yard after yard of wrinkled black bulk, a farce of size displacing the entire ocean. There’s an Omega shape in phosphorescent white, and Jay’s stupor permits the dull understanding that this crescent is a mouth, twenty feet of closed mouth, and this obsidian skyscraper is no surfacing Atlantis. No colliding planet.
It is a living thing.”

Jay’s position inside the whale creates intense claustrophobia, moments of suspense and action but it is those moments when the reader is confronted by the power of nature that made this book special to me. Every scuba diver is kept alive with the equipment on their back gets a crash course in the power of the ocean, this novel puts you right there. Jay being in the belly of the beast, gets a lesson about the dangers the whale faces.  

These moments and all the tiny details sometimes based on science really sell the book. The action is not just propulsive but also well-written. It is a bit of a trick to imagine the inside of a whale, something Kraus does an amazing job of.

“A slam against the back of his skull, his body against the whale’s nose, a hard pop inside him, something broken. What feels like bottle caps grind into his left side, and when he rolls, he finds himself face to face with eggy pile of what look like eyeballs, except hard and sharp as rusty tin barnacles.”

Some of the most harrowing moments for me came when the whale was rising and lowering quickly in the ocean. The whale designed by evolution can handle but the change in pressure is deadly to humans, and unlike a submarine, the whale's stomach is not pressurized. This scene messed with me.

“A dull bang inside his right ear. Crackling sonic fire through his skull and hood. His right eardrum has exploded. Jay smiles, tastes the bitter cherry of collapsing lungs.
Everything’s fine.”

But Jay's inventiveness to try and survive was also neat. like when the whale grabbed a glowing squid to light his way...

“Jay’s left fist is a torch. Preposterous. Incredible.”

That is also a way to describe this novel. Preposterous. Incredible.  A preposterous concept so well executed it is Incredible. One of the best horror novels of the year, and this year has had some great stuff. This is an excellent example of high-concept action. This and Vertical by Cody Goodfellow were the worst tense action and survival stories I read in the year.