Look, I wanted to love this. I really did. I'd just come off a brutal stretch of four night shifts in a row, and my Saturday morning was supposed to be me, my car, and a giant prehistoric shark eating people on my drive home. That's the deal. That's what Steve Alten promised me. And honestly? The story mostly delivers on that promise. But the narrator - oh, the narrator.
Let me back up.
A Twenty-Ton Shark Deserves Better Than a Safety Video
The Trench is the second book in the Meg series, and if you liked the first one, the plot here actually levels up. Jonas Taylor is back, the Mariana Trench is back, and there are more teeth per chapter than my entire hospital's dental records. Alten knows how to structure a thriller - the California coast attacks, the body count climbing, Jonas having to go back into the deep after swearing he never would. It's popcorn fiction and it knows it. I respect that.
But Bruce Reizen narrates this thing like he's reading the disclaimers on a pharmaceutical insert. I'm not exaggerating. There's a scene where a Megalodon - a MEGALODON - is attacking, and his delivery has the same energy as someone explaining how to properly dispose of biohazard waste. I've heard more urgency from the automated voice on our hospital's PA system. Action scenes need adrenaline. They need your narrator to sound like they believe a sixty-foot shark is actually bearing down on someone. Reizen sounds like he's reading it for the first time and isn't particularly impressed.
And then there's the Sean Connery impression. I don't know which character it was supposed to be for, but I actually pulled over because I thought something was wrong with my phone's audio. It wasn't. That was a choice. A bad one.
When the Deep Gets Shallow
Here's where it gets complicated, because the story itself has some real problems too. The dialogue and character dynamics are actually pretty solid - Alten writes relationships with enough friction to keep things interesting between the shark attacks. But the science? The medical stuff?
As someone who's actually worked a code, let me tell you - when characters in thrillers sustain massive injuries and then bounce back like they took an Advil, it pulls me right out. There are moments in this book where the human body apparently operates on action movie rules. Which, fine, it's a book about a prehistoric mega-shark, I shouldn't expect Gray's Anatomy. But if you're going to set your story in the real world with real biology, at least make the human injuries track. I didn't yell at my dashboard this time. I just sighed. Heavy, disappointed sighs.
The pacing is uneven too. At ten hours, there are stretches - particularly in the middle - where the Trench exploration sequences drag because Reizen's monotone delivery flattens what should be claustrophobic tension. Being trapped in the deepest point on Earth should make my knuckles white on the steering wheel. Instead I was thinking about whether I needed to stop for eggs.
The Book Underneath the Bad Narration
Here's what bugs me most: there's a decent thriller buried under this performance. The concept of going back into the Trench, the escalation from the first book, the multiple threat lines converging - that's good structure. Alten isn't reinventing literature here, but he's competent at building dread and payoff. The character differentiation in Reizen's voice work is actually... okay? Like, you can tell who's talking. He does manage that. But telling characters apart is the bare minimum. It's like saying a nurse took a pulse. Great. What else?
I kept thinking about how this would sound with a narrator who actually committed to the material. Someone who could make the deep ocean feel oppressive, who could sell the terror of being in a submersible when something massive bumps against the hull. That book might be a genuine blast. Narration that actually earns the tension is rare enough that when I find it, I notice - Girl Before: A Novel had a reader who understood that dread has to build in the voice first, before the plot even gets there. This version? It's like watching Jaws with the volume at 2.
Who's Swimming and Who's Staying on Shore
If you're a Meg series completist and you can tolerate flat narration, or if you're willing to bump the speed to 1.25x (which actually helps - it gives the monotone a bit more energy), this is... fine. The plot is better than the first book. But if narration quality matters to you - and at 3 AM when narration is the only thing keeping you from zoning out, it matters a LOT - maybe grab the paperback instead.
Carlos asked why I looked annoyed when I came in. I told him a shark book let me down. He said, "Again?" He's not wrong.
Night Shift Prescription: Take With Low Expectations
The Trench is a case study in how narration can sink (pun intended, fight me) an otherwise serviceable thriller. Steve Alten wrote a book that should've been a fun, trashy, shark-filled ride. Bruce Reizen read it like homework. If they ever re-record this with someone who has a pulse during action scenes, call me. I'll be first in line.
