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Supervolcano: Eruption (2000)

by Harry Turtledove(Favorite Author)

3.02 of 5 Votes: 2

languge

English

genre

Fantasy

series

Supervolcano

review 1: After finishing this one, I have to scratch my head in wonder at the numerous backlash and overwhelming hatred it seems to garner. I'm not saying this is an amazing novel (it isn't), but at the same time, I'm not saying that it's as flat-out awful as a lot of readers would have you think.Look, I'm a reasonable guy, so I would be remiss to not mention that there are some issues with "Supervolcano". I'll agree that the book moves at a glacier's pace. It's ridiculously slow, even by general fiction standards. When it's in this genre, it's even worse. I'm surprised that doctors don't give this out as a prescription instead of Lunesta or valium. It's snail's pace could probably put the most hardened insomniac to sleep in a few minutes.Then there are the characters. They all suc... morek. Well, aside from Colin (although he has his own negative attributes). I'll just do a quick rundown of these unlikable players. There's Vanessa who is probably one of the most suck up, royal pain in the ass, bitchy fictional characters I've ever had the misfortune to read about. I mean, seriously, she's awful. Everything that happens to her is rightfully deserved and I don't know if it was Turtledove's intention, but anytime a negative situation came her way, I cheered inwardly when she couldn't cope and put herself in even a worse place than before.Lousie Fergusson isn't a whole lot better than her daughter. Serves her right for what happens to her (I won't post it for potential spoiler alerts). When she goes on to accuse her ex of not helping her, God, I wish Yellowstone would have opened up underneath her and boiled her alive.Bryce, Marshal and Rob: All these guys do is fill in plot holes and are vehicles for Turtledove's political and historical beliefs. Nothing too bad, they were just boring as hell and brought nothing to the story except more words than necessary. Speaking of Yellowstone and the supposed (and oft repeated) Supervolcano that is even now boiling up there, we don't get to see a whole lot of either of them. I couldn't care less about Yellowstone itself, but we see very little action of the damn thing blowing up (or going Kabloie as Turtledove likes to say). Maybe this wouldn't have been such a big deal had not the entire title of the book been emblazoned with the word "SUPERVOLCANO" on it. Oh sure, it does (SPOILER ALERT) blow its top, though it takes 130 pages to do so, and is described for all of about 10. The rest of the story plods along with the drama of a severely dysfunctional (and separated) family, only once or twice returning to the titular event. And that titular event is left more open than the doors at Wal Mart on Black Friday. There's a few mentions of things (coming ice-age, shortages, nuclear war?), but good luck trying to see if Turtledove goes beyond the mere suggestions of them. Hint: he doesn't.But dammit if this book wasn't at least somewhat entertaining. Sure Turtledove ain't the next Shakespeare (how many freaking times were we subjected to his clunky writing style and all those horrid elipses?),yet somehow, he kept me reading along, enough so that I'll probably end up forking over 9 bucks for the next one in this series. So I guess for that, it get's my 3 star rating. I think people have grown to expect too much from the whole "disaster porn" genre. That's exactly what it is. Porn. Much as one can't expect any pornographic film to be the next "Citizen Kane", we shouldn't expect Turtledove (or any other in this niche) to pen the "Pride and Prejudice" of destruction. They're not supposed to be deep or insightful. What happened to the times when we could just read a book for its fun and not pick it apart for its content?
review 2: I will admit right up front that I love a good disaster pr0n book, movie, TV show. It's sick, I know.This wasn't such a bad book. In fact, the actual story is really good. What happens if the volcanos under Yellowstone blew? What happens if you're away from home and get stuck across the country? What happens if the city you lived in was buried under ash and you just got away in time only to land in a refugee camp? What if you're a single parent, just laid off from her job, trying to make ends meet in a post-eruption world? How do you pay for gas when it's $20 a gallon? What would you do when the electricity is infrequent at best? How do you survive? Is it even worth it?The only issue I actually have with the book (and book 2, which I'm reading now) is that there are very few sympathetic characters. And the ones you do like get little air time. You have Collin. He's a cop who's wife left him for a younger man citing their dead marriage as the reason for her infidelity (although she rarely ever sees it as infidelity). He meets Kelly who is a volcano/Yellowstone geologist expert. She's a 30-something grad student who at least has interests outside of herself. Collin has three grown children who act like pot-smoking know it all brats. Rob is in a band and is traveling the east coast when the eruption goes. By this point he's pretty much done with the pot and turns out to be interesting. The middle child, Vanessa, is exactly as Turtledove describes her in the book: paranoid, know it all. She's done it and done it better than anyone else but only whines because her life is just so hard. You'd feel horrible for her if she didn't come off as such a whiner from the get go. But it's hard to like someone who's own dad doesn't like. Finally there is Marshall. A slacker, quintessential stereotypical SoCal college student smoking pot his life away trying to stay in college forever so he doesn't have to grow up. He's not bad but the laziness until he finds a bit of his niche gets to be annoying.And that's why I gave this book 3-stars. The characters just aren't redeeming enough. I mean, I like that all of them are flawed human beings. There's no false happy shiny people here. They're human. Unfortunately, most of the characters are just annoying. I guess, though, in some sick fashion I am kind of okay for the situations that Vanessa finds herself in because she's the one who put herself there. Even though the world is definitely out to get her (by her own admission, not necessarily reality), I'm okay that she's really struggling. I think that is the saving grace of the characters. They either find their way or they keep struggling the way they always have. I do wish there would be more focus on Kelly and Rob though. To me they're the ones who have the most interesting lives. As for the writing style, it gets a bit tedious. This is the only book I've read by Turtledove so if I'm wrong about the style don't shoot me. The style is choppy. Thoughts are cut off mid-sentence, mid-thought. There is a lot of backtracking. Multiple characters will give the same information. And it's not necessarily that character's opinion of the information, just giving the same information as the previous character. Each chapter has a couple of paragraphs in which all the characters give the exact same information if not almost the exact same wording. What is the purpose here?I'm off to book 2. I'm glad the book is popular amongst my library's patrons. I need a bit of time between books because of the heavy, pessimistic tone of the books. It would be hard to be optimistic if the sun rarely shone and life had taken a century jump backwards all of a sudden. But the heaviness of the book can be overwhelming at times.Overall, a good read. less

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