Thirteen hours into Deep Fathom at 1.25x speed, parked outside a client's office in Round Rock with Ranger snoring in the back seat, and I'm sitting there thinking: this book is dumb as a bag of hammers and I kind of loved it anyway.
Let me cut to the chase. Deep Fathom is early Rollins - his third novel, written before he found the Sigma Force groove that made him a household name. You can feel him swinging for the fences with every chapter. Air Force One crashes into the Pacific. An ancient underwater civilization surfaces. Tectonic catastrophe threatens to reshape the planet. A salvage diver named Jack Kirkland gets pulled into all of it. It's a lot. Maybe too much. But Rollins throws so much at you that you barely have time to question the physics before the next explosion hits.
The Submersible Fight That Broke My Brain
Look, I've suspended disbelief for a living. I once watched a lieutenant try to navigate with his map upside down for twenty minutes before anyone said something. I can handle implausible. But there's an underwater submersible fight scene in this book that had me actually shaking my head in my truck. Two subs going at it like it's a cage match at the bottom of the Pacific. The hydrodynamics alone - forget it. If you're the kind of reader who needs things to track with reality, this will test you. But if you can treat it like an Indiana Jones movie (which the publisher comparison invites, and honestly earns), it's a hell of a ride.
The deep sea sequences are where Rollins actually shines. He clearly did his homework on marine biology and underwater salvage operations, even if he takes creative liberties with the action. The interactions with deep sea life - bioluminescent creatures in the abyss, the crushing pressure of the ocean floor - those details land. You can tell the man did real research before deciding to blow everything up.
Characters Thinner Than MRE Coffee
Here's where it lost me, and where you can see the gap between early Rollins and the writer he'd become. Jack Kirkland is fine. Functional protagonist. Ex-Navy diver with guilt and a boat. But "fine" is about all I can give him. The supporting cast - a geologist, a CIA operative, various military types - they feel like they exist to move between set pieces. I found myself wondering why I should care about half of them, and that's a problem when you're asking me to invest 13-plus hours.
The villain situation is particularly weak. Without spoiling it, let's just say the antagonist's motivations feel about as deep as a puddle in the Mojave. Rollins would get significantly better at this in later books. Here, the bad guys are bad because... the plot needs bad guys.
Meagher Behind the Mic
John Meagher's narration is where opinions split hard, and I land somewhere in the middle. He's competent. He differentiates characters with distinct inflections - you can tell who's talking without the "he said, she said" crutch, which matters in a book juggling this many storylines. His pacing matches the action well enough.
But here's the thing - he doesn't elevate the material. A narrator like Scott Brick or Ray Porter would've taken those thin characters and given them enough vocal personality to paper over the writing gaps. Meagher reads the book. He doesn't quite inhabit it. During the quieter exposition sections - and there are plenty, because Rollins has to explain the pseudo-science holding this plot together - the energy dips. At 1.25x, those sections moved fine. At normal speed? I could see them dragging.
The production itself is clean. Standard single-narrator, no sound effects, no music. Just a man and a microphone, which is how I prefer it anyway. (Sound effects in audiobooks feel like putting a spoiler on a minivan - who asked for that?)
Worth Your Time? Here's the Debrief
Deep Fathom is a beach read for your ears. It's Rollins learning to be Rollins, and you can see the DNA of his better work forming here - the blend of history, science, and action that would pay off big in the Sigma Force series. But the characters are cardboard, the science requires generous suspension of disbelief, and the narrator does serviceable work without reaching memorable.
If you've already burned through the Sigma books and you're hungry for more Rollins, this scratches the itch. If you're new to him, start with Sandstorm or Map of Bones instead. Come back to this one when you're out of the good stuff. Honestly, when I finally do run out of Rollins, I'll probably end up back with something that actually earns its page count — the kind of plotting and character work you get in The Count of Monte Cristo, where the revenge architecture is so airtight it makes Rollins look like he's building with Lincoln Logs.
Ranger slept through most of it, which tells you something. Though in fairness, he also slept through a thunderstorm last week, so his critical judgment is suspect.
