Dark Life by Kat Falls

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 Dark Life, Kat Falls’ debut novel, is about what life would be like under the sea. She sets the scene by introducing the main character, Ty, who is diving in a deep-sea canyon. This canyon is right where the East Coast coastline is today. Dark Life is set in a dystopian world where sea level rise has submerged almost all land. There are three different kinds of people: settlers, Topsiders, and prospectors. Settlers are the people who live on the sea floor and have homesteads. Topsiders are the people who live on the very small amount of land that is still available. Prospectors are people who will go down to mine or search for pearls. They typically live at the Trade Station, which is where all the Liquigen and such are bought and stored. Ty’s family is a settler family, with his parents and his little sister Zoe. On this dive into the Coldsleep Canyon, he meets a Topsider, Gemma. She is looking for her brother, who disappeared after aging out of the system. Ty and Gemma team up to find her brother as things start to go awry.

I really enjoyed reading Dark Life, which is a middle-grade novel written by Kat Falls. I like the way Falls wrote, using descriptive language and jokes about under the sea. An example of this is when one of the children makes a joke about Ty’s mom, calling her a black smoker, which is a kind of hydrothermal vent. It’s a niche joke that I wouldn’t have normally picked up on, except for my Marine Bio class. 

Kat Falls did an outstanding job using descriptive language about things that most people haven’t seen in real life. She is not a biologist or scientist, which makes her descriptions of the deep ocean even more incredible. She used words to create vivid imagery, allowing the reader to feel as though they are diving with Ty. In the initial scene, with Ty at Coldsleep Canyon, Falls describes a beautiful and haunting scene. She used phrases like “one fish glittered like an emerald”  and “squirted its radiant goo” to show the reader what Ty was experiencing. This helped bring depth to the story and to the characters themselves. Overall, I really enjoyed this book and definitely recommend it.

I would recommend this book to people who like dystopia, Daughter of the Deep (see review here), and underwater technology.

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