"Ledgard writes from deep immersion in his well-imagined characters and setting, telling a strong central story involving a terrorist hostage-taking and a perilous deep-sea dive, and deploying language at once precise and flexible . . . Submergence is a hard-edged, ultracontemporary work about people a reader cares for, apart and together, through extraordinary precarious conditions." --New York Times Book Review

"An extraordinary fusion of science and lyricism . . . [A] darkly gleaming novel about love, deserts, oceans, lust and terror." --Alan Cheuse, NPR

"[A] stunning novel." --The Atlantic

"Every once in a while, a critic will be mesmerized by a book that stands out from -- even wipes the floor with -- all other books that have come his way of late. . . . Prose merges with poetry; shocks detonate like depth charges, and characters' fates actually matter in Submergence, an astonishing novel that utterly immerses the reader." --Malcolm Forbes, Star Tribune

"Ledgard's Submergence offers a compelling investigation of a world (our world) in which doom and largess sit side by side. Thoughtful without being dogmatic, beautiful without being precious, it is exactly the novel we need right now."--Denver Quarterly

"What makes the book remarkable is its poetically rendered and remarkably intelligent glosses on Islamic fundamentalism versus the West, on Africa, and on the oceans....[P]rofoundly readable and unfailingly interesting." --Publishers Weekly, boxed review

"[A]n intensive, coruscatingly beautiful book that plumbs the will to survive." --Library Journal

"Easily one of the best books I've ever read." --New Hampshire Public Radio, "Summer Reads 2013 Edition"

"[James More and Danielle Flinders's] stories become dramatic explorations of conditions far larger than their individual destinies--a meditation on our species and our planet at a time heavily shadowed by the prospect of extinction." --Philip Gourevitch, The New Yorker blog

"Submergence wonderfully superimposes two seemingly irreconcilable worlds. . . . Like the depths of the ocean, there is much about this strange book that is hard to understand, which makes it all the more worthy of exploration."--Wall Street Journal

"Submergence delivers with its striking understanding of terrorism and its advocates. . . . Ledgard can mesmerize like Philip Gourevitch." --Cleveland Plain-Dealer

"Profoundly readable and unfailingly interesting, this beautifully written novel tells two stories in parallel. James More, a British spy posing as a water engineer, is taken captive by jihadists in Somalia; the counterpoint to this viscerally horrific tale is his love affair with Danielle Flinders, a 'biomathematician' working in the field of oceanography." --Publishers Weekly (Best New Books, Week of March 25, 2013)

"It's no surprise that [Ledgard] offers not just an acute portrait of a man and a woman on the edge (or dangerously submerged) but an almost defiantly intensive novel of ideas. . . . Highly recommended for thinking readers." --Library Journal

"Offering myriad pleasures in its prose . . .[Su