Philip José Farmer's The Dungeon, Vol. 2 (The Dark Abyss): A Critique

Continuing on to the second of  Philip José Farmer's Dungeon series, the next installment is The Dark Abyss written by Bruce Coville. You can read my critique of the fist book here. Published in February, 1989, the copy I found in a Chambersburg used bookstore has become somewhat fragile with age, but still serviceable as a readable copy.

When we last left Clive Folliot and his companions, they were on the second level of the Dungeon and fleeing for their lives from the ruler of a dark castle. Originally, Folliot found himself transported to the Dungeon of Q'oorna with two companions:  Quarter Master Sgt. Horace Hamilton Smythe and a mysterious guide known as Sidi Bombay. Having lost Sidi in an escape from the first level, in the opening pages of the second book, they have picked up an odd mishmash of companions:

1. User Annie, a descendent of Folliot's from the cyberpunk world of 1999,
2. Finnbogg, an anthropomorphic bulldog, a Finnbogg from the planet known as Finnbogg and where every member of the race shares the name, Finnbogg,
3. Shriek, a huge anthropomorphic arachnid with strong telepathic powers,
4. Tomas, a sailor who was snatched into the dungeon from the crow's nest of the Nina when traveling with Christopher Columbus,
5. "Nrrc'kth, a seductive white-skinned, green-haired alien who wishes to be Folliot's wife,
6. Gram, Nrrc'kth's nanny of a sort, and
7. Chang Guafe, a very pragmatic cyborg from an unknown alien world.

Along the way they will lose some members of the group, some of them tragically, and they will attract others to the group and some of them will be lost as well.

In the second book, they are able to enter the 3rd level of the dungeon to discover it mostly a vast sea peppered with small islands. Eventually they end up in the fourth level and in the closing paragraph, they make a mad dash for the fifth.

Along the way we learn:

1. There are nine levels to the dungeon,
2. The dungeon is the site of a war between two alien races only known as the Ren and the Chaffri, one or both possibly being the dungeon's rulers,

Also, be aware that religion is not portrayed as anything nice in this universe. From a mad cannibalistic cult to a city of trapped Catholics who believe the dungeon is actually Purgatory, not one religion practices the universal Golden Rule, unless they happen to be one of the numerous races of people in the dungeon who have no religion at all.

The biggest difference in the writing style between the first and second books is that Coville slows down the pace so you avoid the feeling of rushing pell-mell through the narrative without taking in all the odd wonders and horrors of the dungeon. As the third level is one vast sea, Coville spends time introducing us more to the odd group of characters and the adventures they have along the way.

Not to say the second book is lacking in the pulpish atmosphere that Farmer wanted the book to represent, but that you don't feel out of breath as you read the tale. Also, you develop a fondness for the characters so that when one of them is removed from the story, regardless of the circumstances in which it happens, you come to miss them.

As the series was only published once and the copies in existence are shy of thirty years old, it may take me some time to find the third book at a reasonable price. Somewhere, in some used bookstore, the third book awaits and I plan on diving right back into the Dungeon of Q'oorna and its myriad number of mysteries.