David Gibbins of Literary Review has recently reviewed acclaimed author Damian Le Bas‘ forthcoming book, The Drowned Places.

In the review, Gibbins praises Le Bas’ prose, finishing off the review as follows:

‘The Drowned Places is one of the best books on diving that I have ever read.’

You can read the review in full here.

Born by the sea and enchanted from a young age by the idea of underwater voyages, Damian was warned off them by relatives—Gypsies, travellers of the land who feared the power of the ocean.

Then he married into a family of divers. They’d seen things that sounded fantastical. Vertigo-inducing tunnels of blackness. Huge sea-creatures. Walls of eels, and ghostly wrecks.

Most haunting of all were the drowned places: ruins where humans had once lived, now entombed in the weight of water and home to the life of the sea. Under threat of rising seas, more places face this fate. Do their mysterious predecessors have anything to teach us?

The book will be published by Chatto & Windus in April 2025. You can pre-order your copy here or, better, via your local bookshop and Bookshop.org.