Sean Barrs 's Reviews > The Drowned World

I’m so very disappointed with this one. The Drowned World has such a dark tone, and the post-apocalyptic imagery of a sunken world is hauntingly eery, but the novel suffers because of a lack of plot and direction.

Indeed, there’s something off about The Drowned World. It should be a good book. Most of the vital parts are here, though it fails to come together. The prose is heavily descriptive and almost poetic at points. The setting is certainly the book’s strongest point, and the way it’s so vividly captured is striking. The images will stay with me because they have a dream like quality to them: they’re almost haunting in effect. However, the book just didn’t seem to go anywhere.

And that’s the problem because it so easily could have been sorted out through a process of revision. There just needed to be a little more direction in the beginning, and an idea of where the story might go, for the novel to be a success. Frustrating is the word that comes to mind because this really could have been a great book. I realised around halfway through that the book was just layering descriptive setting on descriptive setting without any sense of movement forward. It became repetitive and dull. A plot did eventually emerge, but it was rushed and shoved into the final few chapters of the book.

On the surface, I don’t think this is a very well written novel at all. However, what makes it worthy of note is its anticipation of the modern climate crisis. It’s what drew me to it. Sure, in the book man hasn’t caused the problems, solar radiation has caused a global warming here, but the effects are the same: a rise in sea levels and a sunken world. It’s a speculative future and it’s quite visionary. Though it must be noted that Ballard wrote numerous novels like this where he created future scenarios, some anticipate modern concern and others are wildly off the mark. So, it would be remiss to hail him as a writer greatly concerned with ecology and the future. He got lucky here.

The world-building is undeniably clever. The setting is good, but without any real sense of plot the characters failed to distinguish themselves and become interesting. Reading this was a real effort, I was not drawn in and I was immensely glad to finish. For a short novel, it’s quite a chore to get through. Ultimately, it’s worth a read but don’t expect much from it.

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