They believed Daeios would be a safe haven.They were wrong.Fleeing apocalyptic weather, survivalists Shea and her family seek safety deep underground in Daeios. Fear drives them to the shelter as the killer storm worsens. They reach the shelter just before permanent lockdown. Now they’re 140 feet down, protected from the storms to live out their shortened lives until the food runs out and they … starve to death. It buys them about a year.But it soon becomes clear that they’re trapped in a nightmarish existence. When the Elders who run Daeios announce their plans to breed with all fertile females to repopulate the earth, Shea knows they will force her to breed. She plans to fight off her seed-bearer. The punishments of the Daeiosians begin, including long periods of total darkness with the Daeios song blaring repetitively. Each time the darkness and music finally stop, several more people are missing. It’s especially clear that the Elders are getting rid of the other men. What happens to the people who disappear into the total darkness of Daeios?Shea’s time for her breeding arrives. She must make the gut-wrenching decision whether to breed with an elderly, sadistic man and bear his child, or to fight the breeding, knowing that defiance will endanger her life and that of the other Daeiosians. She vows that her family must not vanish into the darkness. A dystopian thriller with overtones of The Handmaid’s Tale, Shea’s chilling story will appeal to readers with an interest in family and survival.
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4 Cranky Stars
Shae’s family is headed to Daeios, 140 feet below ground because the end is near. Killer storm plague them with lightning related deaths and softball size hail. Add the newest drug addiction and society is crumbling. Even with all this, Shae doesnt want to go.
Situations arise that force her and her family underground against her will. What happens underground becomes a nightmare in the making.
This is not my normal genre and while I found it disturbing I appreciated the authors imagination. This story grips you from page one and doesn’t let go. The ending seemed rushed to me while leaving me with many unanswered questions but I still enjoyed the story.
I have to start out by saying I had some difficulty with the main character Shea. You start the book being told she is an adult in college living on her own with a confident personality. But from the moment they enter Daeios she doesn’t act like that person. Even later in the book when you find out about things that were going on it still felt like too quick of a transformation to me. She immediately falls for Julian the only guy in her age range. Everything else is an exciting read. You can envision this world created by Colleen as the pages keep turning. You have to know what is going to happen next. The ending ties up nicely with no dreaded cliffhanger.
“They believed Daeios would be a safe haven.
They were wrong.”
With a tagline that grabs the eye rather aggressively, ‘Daeios: 140 Feet Down’ by Colleen Eccles Penor is a dystopian thriller I couldn’t pass up.
Apocalyptic weather conditions have reached a peak and the ‘Elite’ at a million dollars per spot minimum, are fleeing the Earth’s surface. After a harried search for her drug-addicted brother Jace, Shea and her family barrel along the roadways in an RV trying to reach shelter before the storm is out of control.
Arriving at the underground stronghold moments before lockdown, they expect to survive only about a year with the supply levels.. and that year will be spent in a cave-like vault as protection from the climate above.
Soon after settling in, they start to realize everything is not as it seemed. Though Shea and her dad visited many times leading up to the lockdown so they’d easily remember the drive and have an idea how things worked within the community, once everyone is trapped inside.. things change and not for the better.
Daeios Elders who run the community claim direct instructions from God and roll out a forced ‘repopulation’ program for all fertile females amongst them. Little by little, the men who aren’t Elders are beginning to disappear, and soon.. others start to go missing as well.
Heavy handed punishments such as light deprivation and music torture are just the beginning.
This is really more of a dystopian survival/revenge story, like a sci-fi ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ version of ‘I Spit On Your Grave.’ So, beware.. lots of triggers here for anyone susceptible to violent assault, torture, rape, murder, gaslighting, sexual manipulation, suicide, and probably a few other things I’m not even thinking of. Mostly it’s mentioned in passing as dreamed memories or after situation observations, but it still might be a bit much for some readers.
For me, despite all the relatively wild elements of the story, it was still incredibly dull. A lot of what was happening was very obvious and the strange style the author chose to use.. almost felt closer to stream of consciousness than standard storytelling.
Though everyone’s in pretty dire straits, most characters slip in and out of their trauma with such ease it’s like they’re playing pretend with their emotions. While there were backstories present, with that manner of just shrugging them off, there was no investment for me and I really didn’t care much about anyone which made the book feel like it was just filled with violence without reason. Instead of utilizing what happened along the way to connect to the reader, it was just so much background noise.
Pretty disappointing, overall.
(I received this title as an ARC. All opinions are mine and freely given.)
This was a well-written book about what could happen when people think the end of the world might be coming and they find themselves living 140 feet down with like-minded religious zealots.
Shea is a typical college student, getting drunk and sleeping around when the storms hit. Her family has bought a place in a religious haven located 140 feet underground. From the moment that Shea and her family arrive, you just know that something ain’t right here! “Maybe you have to be a single old man to be called by God.”
Her brother, Jace, is addicted to a drug called Gloss, hiding in the world of addiction to avoid his fear of a disease that kills off almost all young men. Shea quickly falls for the only other young man in the compound, Julian, and hopes to be able to marry him. She soon finds out that things aren’t exactly what they seem, even though only herself and her mother seem to sense anything wrong. “We’re locked in with a bunch of religious maniacs.”
Shea has to make a tough decision: does she go along with the mindless command to be a breeder with one of the Elders or can she hold out for Julian? Be aware that there are some pretty graphic descriptions of rape/torture in this book, so this could be a potential trigger for some people. But, in the end, it is more a story of family and survival and what a person can and will do to save those you love.
As Shea says: “God hasn’t had a say in any of what happened to you down here. They used your faith in God for evil.” This is a chilling story and well worth reading if you enjoy dystopian tales like the Handmaid’s Tale. I will definitely be looking for more books by Ms. Penor because she has a true talent in spinning a good story.