Darkness Absolute: A Wreck Diving Story

Learn more about Kindle MatchBook. Kindle Cloud Reader Read instantly in your browser. Customers who bought this item also bought. Page 1 of 1 Start over Page 1 of 1. In the Wrong Hands: A medical mystery Jack Rogan Mysteries Book 4. Survival in a Powerless World Boxset. She has a great talent, a gift. Character development is exceptional, the scenes are set so carefully that I found myself immersed in each. Throughout the book you feel like something is coming, something big - it just keeps building and building to its ultimate crescendo.

Ghosts of the abyss: the story of Don Shirley and Dave Shaw

I thoroughly enjoyed Absolute Darkness, it's a fresh and intense read with a fine mix of the supernatural and real world elements. The idea of other beings able to manipulate the time stream of our lives is one with so much potential for further books and I'd love to see this world expanded upon".

This author has got it perfect for me.

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The story will totally entertain you in every possible way. Very unusual setting, super love story and heart pounding pages. Here's what you need to know about Absolute Darkness: Time travel, gore, romance, caving: I had an absolute blast writing this and sharing a little bit of caving life.

You'll hold your breath when you read it. See all Editorial Reviews. Product details File Size: July 5, Sold by: Share your thoughts with other customers. Write a customer review. Read reviews that mention absolute darkness unique alexander caving paranormal exciting knew twists adventure details genre idea romance vampire. Showing of 22 reviews. Top Reviews Most recent Top Reviews. There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later. I love when storytellers go "all in" on a genre. In other words, they "go deep" and commit to a specific audience without a superficial need to attract the mainstream.

O'Hailey does this and that is what I really loved about this book. If your'e into vampires and your tastes lean towards the quantum or even the metaphysical in terms of story premise, this book is for you.

O'Hailey reveals a unique story-world that definitely has potential for more novels and her take on the "vampire" is unique. The caving aspects are legitimately terrifying and will generate some sweaty palms for those with a fear of small spaces. At times the writing can become confusing, especially when it is describing alterations in time and space, but I really feel that this is because the concepts themselves are confusing. You just have to roll with it.

It's a fun novel and precisely what you're looking for when you pick up a book to get out of this reality and spend some time in a refreshing take on a fantasy world. Kindle Edition Verified Purchase. Absolute Darkness is a haunting and heart-stopping, paranormal, time-travel novel filled with love, fear, adventure, and mystery. First of all, set aside an entire day to read it because you will not be able to put it down. One person found this helpful. I just finished this book, and it's probably one of the most unique storylines I've seen in a long time. The idea of a time traveler bent on keeping balance in the universe captures your interest almost from the start.

The love story seemed fast at first I don't want to give anything away, but the ending chapters were my favorites! I also love the 'twist' on the traditional vampire story. The author clearly knows a lot about caving, and in some scenes, my palms were sweating. This was a bit of a difficult read for me to get into, but I stuck it out; I don't not finish a book once I started.

The uniqueness of the premise, a Watcher who travels through time versus a fiend who intentionally tried to wreck the established timelines, was a big cause of my interest in this book. The unlikely love affair between the Watcher and a "linear", that was kind of a stretch, but let's see what the author can do. The entangled story, with its attacks by the antagonist and the modified timeline after Alexander fixes it was a little confusing at times, and the characterizations of some of the cast were stereotypical, but overall, the book redeemed itself during the second half, work the pacing flowing much more smoothly.

I'm rather glad I stuck it out. Definitely one of the best novels I've read. There was adventure and danger and love and time travel and a vampire. Everything I like in a novel combined into one novel. Very well written, and also well edited. To compensate, on deep dives nitrogen is replaced with helium, but this too can cause convulsions. On top of that, as a diver ascends using his buoyancy-control wings, if the external pressure decreases too quickly, the gases form tiny bubbles in the body causing decompression sickness - known as the bends- an agonisingly painful condition with symptoms ranging from fatigue, joint pain and nausea, to paralysis, coma and death.

To avoid this, divers, following a guide rope or line, must stop at pre-determined depths on their ascent for specified times to give the nitrogen and helium in their bodies time to slowly release and prevent the bubbles from forming. Deep diving is therefore a delicate balancing act between the gases and the divers' activity at different depths.

But when the balance is right, there's no experience like it. It's just total serenity. In September Shirley met an Australian pilot named Dave Shaw when he came to dive at the mine - a meeting that would change the course of Shirley's life. Before long the pair became both diving partners and firm friends. Shirley has little time for those who seek depth for its own sake, but Shaw's attitude was different. A deeply committed Christian, Shaw - who looked so much like Shirley that onlookers sometimes mistook them for brothers - began his career as a crop duster, going on to fly for the Christian charity Mission Aviation Fellowship in Papua New Guinea, before joining Cathay Pacific and rising to become one of its most senior training pilots, flying Airbus s and s.

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He lived in Hong Kong with his wife, Ann, his childhood sweetheart and a mathematics teacher. They were polar opposites - not only did she not share his love of adventure, she could not bear to watch him fly and never wanted to know in advance when he was diving. Shaw only took up the sport in with his son Steven during a holiday in the Philippines, but his progress was lightning fast.

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The way that we would dive at this level was like ballet. In cave-diving folklore, one dive site stands out - Boesmansgat, or Bushman's Hole, one of the world's deepest submerged freshwater caves or sinkholes , so deep its precise size is still to be verified. Long a popular destination for South Africa's technical divers, Bushman's, on Mount Carmel Game Farm in the Northern Cape, attained mythological status in when the year-old South African Deon Dreyer died while diving with friends.

Unlike any other casualty there, Dreyer's corpse had never been recovered, even after several search teams and a miniature submarine were sent to look for it. Bushman's became known as a place that could seemingly swallow a human being whole and for Dreyer's parents, Theo and Marie, the absence of a body arrested their grieving process. It was as if their son were missing, rather than dead. As Dreyer's disappearance proved, it is not so much getting to deep levels that is ultra-hazardous.

The difficulty is in coming back alive. Bushman's Hole could have been made for Shirley and Shaw. In the arid semi-desert on the edge of the Kalahari, it contrasts impressively with the scrub that surrounds it, with sheer cliffs plunging down to a small boulder-filled pool. What lies beneath is even more stunning. An underwater channel runs from the pond's surface for about 40m, opening up into a vast cavern.

In cross-section, it measures over m wide, far beyond the beam of any torch. With Shirley acting as his deep support diver, Shaw reached the cave floor, m underwater the floor then slopes downwards, which is why no one knows its exact depth , setting four world records for deep diving in the process. As he swam out over the silt, his torch illuminated a body. I needed to try to make a recovery of the body.



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Abandoning his plan to venture any deeper, Shaw attempted to lift Dreyer's remains, but the effort proved futile - the corpse, embedded in silt, was wedged firmly to the cave floor - and was in any case terribly dangerous at such depths. As Shaw had already exceeded the maximum time he had allowed himself on the bottom, he thought, 'This is not wise,' and turned back for the surface. More than nine hours of staggered decompression later, he emerged from the water - and immediately told Shirley that he wanted to go back as soon as possible.

Preparing for the next dive at Bushman's Hole took months. With the added element of a body to recover, it became the biggest event in cave-diving history, with scores of media on site and a documentary crew following Shirley and Shaw's every move. In light of the tragedy that unfolded, it has become a much bigger story; now, three years later, it is the subject of a new book, Raising the Dead: Dozens of different plans were drawn up prior to the dive, sheet after sheet of tightly packed figures detailing exactly what mixture of gases were to be breathed, at what depth and for how long, depending on how deep the divers went and how long they spent at the bottom of the cave.

All those going to depth Shaw, Shirley and seven support divers would be using rebreathers, extraordinary machines that recycle the gases breathed by cleaning carbon dioxide from a diver's exhalations and adding in a small amount of oxygen. Unlike normal scuba, where everything breathed out is lost, a few tanks will last for hours when using a rebreather, even at depth.



We weren't thinking that the dive was something threatening. It was something we were happy doing. It happened to be a m dive, but there wasn't anything more to it. By January 8, , they were ready.

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With a police body recovery team standing by and a mobile decompression chamber on site in case something went wrong, Shirley and Shaw had every eventuality covered. Dave moved out across the pool slowly, dumped the gas [from his buoyancy-control wings] and was gone. That was the last time I saw him alive. It was the end of a lot of planning. You are very focused on what you want to do.

There are no emotions. Video footage from a camera mounted on Shaw's helmet - which was recording the dive for the documentary - later revealed exactly what happened. Watching the video with Shirley it shows that, initially, everything was going to plan, with Shaw reaching the bottom on time and moving across to Dreyer. Shaw had brought along a makeshift bodybag, made by his wife Ann from two silk Cathay Pacific sleep sacks. Expecting to find nothing more than a skeleton in a wetsuit, Shaw planned to put Dreyer's remains inside the bag to hold them together as he travelled upwards.

But the body, which had been stuck fast on Shaw's previous dive, somehow detached from the mud when Shaw moved its legs, and started floating free.

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As Shaw grappled with it, the head came off and, as the video footage revealed, bobbed in and out of the frame, at one point peering directly at the camera, the blackened goggles staring straight at Shaw. Struggling with the body and he bag, Shaw's torch, attached by a cord to his drysuit, became tangled in his guide line - a potential disaster. He cleared it, but his breathing, initially calm and measured, became faster and laboured - each shallow intake leaving more carbon dioxide in his lungs. Even though the floating body could now easily have been pulled up, Shaw stuck to his original plan - partly due to the onset of narcosis, partly due to instinct and training - and tried again to fit it into the bag.

Then, he lost his footing, slipping backwards along the sloping cave floor. Checking his wrist-mounted computer, he finally decided to begin his ascent, but again his torch stuck in the cave line. His breathing became harder. Taking out his diving shears, he prepared to cut himself free, but never managed to slice through the line. His movements became slower, and then ceased.