#The Devil and the Dark Water

[nokkiart]

A friend let me borrow “The Devil and the Dark Water” recently because I loved “7 1/2 Deaths” so much, and I desperately needed something to clear my head after being laid off.

I had no idea that I’d end up coming out of this murder mystery novel with a new otp, but I absolutely love Arent and Sara! They are such a fantastic duo and are too adorable together! 💖

So once I finished the book, I immediately started doodling them 😅💕

[moon--boy]

can all of you promise me you’ll read the devil and the dark water by Stu Turton . . . Like guys it’s Sherlock Holmes type shenanigans but they’re trapped on a ship and the sherlock one is imprisoned and his 6’5” fat titted bear of a watson is forced to figure out who is impersonating a devil before three unholy miracles kill everyone on board

[midnights-wish]

''The sea was keeping her secrets, as usual.''

Stuart Turton, 'The Devil And The Dark Water'.

[bookcoversonly]

Title: The Devil and the Dark Water | Author: Stuart Turton | Publisher: Sourcebooks Landmark (2020)

[niezrownanyananiasz]

I drew this giant today (instead of studying ❤️)

[noahsbookhoard]

📚May 2024 Book Review (Part 3/3)📚

A slight change of plan: this review was supposed to include a french thriller, Le manuscrit inachevé by Franck Thilliez but since it's a trilogy and I read all three books it will be easier to speak of all three at once!

The Devil and the Dark Water by Stuart Turton

India, 1634. Detective Samuel Pipps is arrested by governor-general Jan Haan for reasons unknown. He is to be brought back to Amsterdam aboard the ship Saardam with his sidekick Arent Hayes, the governor-general, his wife and his mistress. As they board the ship, a leper appears and curse the ship before bursting into flame. With Pipps under arrest, Arent will have to solve this mystery by himself and make sure the ship reaches its destination, despite the lepers prediction.

Stuart Turton's The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle has been a total hit for me earlier this year, I wanted to read another book of his. I couldn't get his latest book yet but this one was available!

The premise intrigued me, historical novel, a nautical story (with an author's note indicating that there were licenses taken, I knew next to nothing on the subject and the period so if there were, they flew past me) and a murder mystery with a pinch of horror. The balance is really well built, the ship and period create interesting obstacles to the investigation and nook and cranies to build a horror atmosphere. The main character is not the weathered detective who guesses everything and withhold his discovery à la Poirot, we get to see his deduction as he makes them, and it adds to the threat until the very end.

The characters are nicely drawn, I felt like I knew them already and had read about other cases they solved before. The author is great at giving tiny details that makes the characters and their relationships feel life-like, it made the ending hit that much harder.

Nonetheless I wasn't awed by the resolution: I had seen not of it coming, which is frequent eniugh in murder mystery but some aspects of it didn't feel like they had been set up upstream. It was also very down to earth, and I was expecting some supernatural elements to actually be supernatural in the end (I can't be much clearer without spoiling the end). That one is on me but it still tinted my feeling.

In conclusion, I found it a bit less awe-inspiring than The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle but a nice read and a good thriller. Specialist of sailing, and the 17th century might find some historical incoherence but the book is really enjoyable.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy #1) by Douglas Adams

Arthur Dent is the last human survivor of planet Earth, destroyed to make way for a galactic highway. His friend Ford Prefect, an alien in disguise saved hit at the last second. Together they will explore the new planets, guided by Ford's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and solve such grand questions as "where did all the ballpen go?" and "what is the meaning of life, the universe and everything?"

This is a cult classic and, as I get acquainted with SciFi and British absurdism, I gave it a go.

This was a wierd experience. Fun but wierd: I was a bitclost and Arthur's reaction to everything was so far out of what I would have felt that I had difficulty identifying with him. Other characters were really fun, I love Ford and Martin most of all. I admit most of the longer names are blurry for month after reading.

The different adventures were fun, I'm really growing fond of the absurd. Zaphod's ship and its propulsion system, the Impossibly Drive is such a funny yet efficient mechanism!

This was a fun discovery, I probably missed 48% of the references but I finally have context for that "42" easter egg on Google. The Restaurant at the End of the Universe is on the TBR for late September or October and I'm looking forward to it.

The Start Beast (Doctor Who 60th anniversary novelisation) by Gary Russel

The Doctor just regenerated, and this new face is strangely familiar. The coincidence is too much when he runs into Donna Noble, still amnesic. She can't remember him, it would be fatal; but as an alien called The Meep crashes in London and has to run to escape pursuit, the Doctor and Donna will run into each other again and work together to save planet Earth.

I was so excited for the 60th anniversary episodes!! David Tennant and Catherine Tate are such an awesome duo and Russel T Davis back on the team was a great news to me! I loved those new episodes and this one especially.

Aaaaand that's about all I have to say! Unfortunately, the book adds very little to the show. I hadn't rewatched it recently but it was still fresh enough that I didn't rediscover it through the book. I should have expected it. So yeah, novelisation doesn't add much but that's still one hell of an episode!

[pb-dot]

Reading a new Stuart Turton novel is so delightful. I'm like "Oh ho ho, exciting setup, Turton. In what fresh yet coherent way will you upend the apple cart this time?"

[dude1818]

The Devil and the Dark Water

I finished The Devil and the Dark Water by Stuart Turton (same author as The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle). Also technically a supernatural mystery novel, but this time a full pastiche of Sherlock Holmes, and whether the supernatural aspects are real or not is part of the mystery. This one wasn't really my kind of thing, but it was still an interesting enough story.

The main protagonist of the novel is Lieutenant Hayes, the Watson to investigator Pipps's Holmes. The setting is on board an East India Company ship headed back to Amsterdam in the 1630s. The twist is that Pipps was arrested right before they set sail, so Hayes has to solve the mystery pretty much without him. The governor general's wife is also investigating the mystery with some of the other women, and partners with Hayes instead.

The mystery? Ship's hella damned. From the moment they start boarding and a tongueless leper curses the ship and bursts into flame, to mysterious lights following them at night, the animals mysteriously slaughtered, and finally a good old-fashioned locked room murder. It all connects to the devil from Hayes's childhood, which makes it pretty obvious that it's the kind of myth that people hype up to excuse their own evil deeds towards each other. Except in the decades since and especially on the ship, so much more unexplainable terrors happen, and it ties together a lot of the characters' backstories, so you can't be confidant this isn't a setting where the devil is real.

It does all get resolved in the end, of course. It was very satisfying watching Hayes and the others work through the mystery as everything goes to shit around them, and the characters were all very enjoyable to watch in action. For a story set in the 1630s in the style of Sherlock Holmes, most of the protagonists act incredibly modern, which I can't say is a bad thing. Certainly not one of my favorite books, but perfectly enjoyable.

Until the very final twist. Spoilers for literally everything, including who's behind it all:

It was Pipps. He had himself thrown in the brig so that he could puppetmaster everything that happened, and no one would expect him to be around to help solve the mystery. This is obviously a betrayal in the eyes of Hayes, but it was also one step beyond plausibility that it almost felt like the narrative was betraying the reader. Even that I would've gotten over if he got his comeuppance in the end (and Hayes was certainly ready to kill him when he found out). But even though his plan to terrorize and murder the evil governor general was justified, his actions led to the deaths of hundreds of sailors and soldiers on this ship and likely more across the other ships in the fleet that were ravaged. But then they let that all slide in the comic book standard of "mooks don't count," and that pissed me off.

[evenaturtleduck]

Inigo Montoya + Fezzik, Blackthorn + Grim, Valery Kolkhanov + Konstantin Shenkov, Jeckran + Tsira, Samuel Pipps + Arent Hayes: romantic or platonic, Small Intense Person + Tall Scary Person Who's Smarter Than They Seem is becoming one of my favorite relationship dynamics.

[writingwhywhywhy]

With Someone Else

A/N: Day one of 15 days of fanfic. This is for the whole 3 other people who love Devil and the Dark Water

Arent looked at Sara. Their little group had been working as Old Tom for a few months now. It was all perfect except for the fact Sara kept pushing into him. She wanted something Arent could not give her.

Then one day he just popped. "I am in love with Sammy." He spat out, almost disgusted.

Sara breathed almost in relief. "I have been in love with Creesjie and felt I owed you."

Arent also sighed in relief. "So we can stop this facade."

"Yes"

And they each lived happily ever after in two separate relationships.

[bloodmaarked]

the devil and the dark water, stuart turton

released 2020

read: 12 february 2023 – 26 february 2023

not gonna lie, i didn't like this half as much as i did the seven deaths of evelyn hardcastle. i'm really surprised at the difference in quality from the same author. this wasn't awful, but a lot of what evelyn hardcastle did right, the devil did... really wrong.

for starters, the cast. TSDOEH had a big cast, (the author likes to make casts big enough to list each character at the beginning of the book for helpful reference), but it made sense as to why, and each character was given due importance to the story and time to develop. meanwhile, TDATDW's cast felt too big. i got pretty confused from the beginning trying to keep track of everyone. eventually, i got used to it, but i still think some of the characters could've been scrapped or amalgamated. i also think generally, the characters had less personality than those of his previous book. of the main characters, arent was okay. sara was okay. creesije i kinda liked (?) sammy was kinda cool with his sherlock vibe, but he wasn't present for the majority of the book.

in terms of the plot... it had the potential to be so, so good. the premise sounds awesome. the execution... fell flat. it dragged out so long, i was bored a lot of the time. there were small sparks throughout of the excitement that i'd seen in TSDOEH, but they would fizzle out. it wasn't until the 75%-80% mark that i felt truly engaged in the mystery. for the twist ending, let's just say i liked some parts and hated others.

i maybe didn't enjoy the setting as much either; i think the manor mystery was bogged down less by the technicalities that come with setting a book on an ocean voyage.

it sounds like i hated this book - i didn't, and i do think 3 stars is fair, it just paled in comparison to his other work. that said, i'll still be very interested in seeing what comes next from stuart turton.

rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

[hobert-gadling]

“Sammy was what Arent had left home to find.”

🥲 this 🥲 is 🥲 fine 🥲

[midnights-wish]

''On and on, horror after horror.''

Stuart Turton, 'The Devil And The Dark Water'.

[faineant-scribbler-blog]

[opulentquotes]

Guilt was like dirt. It got under the skin and didn’t come clean.

The Devil and the Dark Water by Stuart Turton

[libraryofbaxobab]

April 23, 2022:

A super fun read all the way up to the Reveal which was... fine? I for sure did not see it coming. Really bogged down a story that had been going full steam though. I felt a bit condescended to in passages here & there BUT overall had a good time. 7.5/10 #WhatsKenyaReading