John MacGregor is a volcanologist working for the Hawaiian Volcanic Observatory based on the Big Island of Hawaii. Unfortunately for MacGregor and the population of the Island the volcano Mauna Loa is showing signs of eruption, with earthquake swarms and rising magma indicating that eruption is going to happen sooner rather than later. Worse the volcano looks to be doing a Mount St Helens, with the eruption likely to completely destroy the Island’s infrastructure and population. Guess this would be more Mount Vesuvius than Mount St Helens, but let’s not get side tracked by which volcano Mauna Loa is like. Anyways to make matters worse, like a honking big volcano going total destruction isn’t bad enough, the U.S military have a nasty little secret hidden away, which threatens all life on the planet, and that secret could be released into the atmosphere due to the expected eruption. Hold onto your knickers folks, MacGregor and a mixed crew of experts have to somehow control nature to save life on the planet!

Michael Crichton, (1942 – 2008), is probably best known for his novel Jurassic Park which was made into the blockbusting movie of the same name, but is also responsible for The Andromeda Strain and Sphere, amongst other novels and subsequent movies. So yeah, the dude is one of the leaders of the techno horror subgenre, and knows how to write a good yarn in that subgenre. Eruption has clearly been a novel published after the Crichton’s death and was finished and polished up by James Patterson, you know the thriller writer. And oh boy does it show, and that would be not to the benefit of the book the reader has in their grubby little hands. While I like Crichton’s other books, have read quite a few of them, this one I found was rushed, it needed a decent Editor to point out the issues that rise to the surface faster than the lava spewing out of Mauna Loa. Let’s break it down, and try to find out what went wrong, oh yes this one has a deplorable number of faults.

The first two thirds of the book are good techno thriller writing. Our main characters are introduced, given some back stories, MacGregor’s entanglement from his kids for example, and the prose simply races off the page as the reader becomes engaged with the plot and the volcano which looms large both figuratively and in reality through the course of the novel’s formative pages. Then we get to the final third of the novel, spoiler the volcano hasn’t gone off yet, and the pacing picks up to the extent that the reader might be excused for putting the novel down and taking a breather. Usually I don’t have an issue with pacing spending up if the plot demands it, unfortunately for much of the final third of this novel quick pacing was used to paste over the cracks starting to appear in the narrative. It all simply reads like a rushed job to finish the novel quickly, rather than taking the time to craft it in any acceptable fashion.

Eruption is one of those novels where the conclusion comes rushing at you faster than lava down a 90-degree incline with the reader left wondering whether the author hadn’t run out of steam and simply wanted to get out of the book as quick as they can. I’m not going to give away what happens but the book builds up various strategies to save the day and pretty much they are not needed at that end of day. Even worse, we are talking a butt load of scientists who completely miss the obvious, seriously education standards have plummeted in the U.S clearly. Considering this novel is over 400 pages, you are left with a bad taste in your mouth, that’s a lot of commitment from the reader for a resoundingly poor pay off. I must admit I am definitely not in the camp of people who love a deus ex machina that resolves the situation without the main characters intervening in any meaningful way. It simply strikes me as the easy way out.

On the bright side the novel does attempt multiple story threads, always good to see a novel that doesn’t focus like an arrow on a single plot thread. Unfortunately, a number of the threads are left up in the air, the book needed another hundred odd pages to tie up the loose ends, but unfortunately no one is going near that idea. So the military issue has broken out into the population, trying to avoid spoilers here, but at no stage is this thread resolved. It’s almost as if Patterson ran out of steam, or couldn’t be bothered finishing things off in an acceptable fashion. There are a number of other ideas or characters that are left floating, with no full stop added to the development, which either points to author laziness or simply not caring about rounding out the novel.

To the benefit of the novel there are a number of deaths involved in the plot that are unexpected and add to the narrative. I was sort of beginning to think Eruption was going to be vanilla, all the lead characters would make it out alive and thus all tension is lost, but Crichton surprises the reader with the sacrifice of a couple of people the reader has been sympathetic with. I’m not saying we’re in Game of Thrones territory but I was giving grudging approval to this development.

So I guess everyone reading this excuse for a review are probably wondering where the horror elements intrude on a techno-thriller? Well honking big volcanic eruption to begin with, and the stakes couldn’t be higher if the eruption took place in Central Park New York. So we are sort of talking the disaster card from the horror tarot pack, or mother nature strikes back. Upping the horror stakes, and going straight to the dark heart, is something the military have hidden away which threatens all life on the planet. It’s nasty, it’s out, and its forgotten pretty quickly in the novels unseemly rush to the final paragraph in the third act. But it’s still there, I would like to think that Crichton would have made more of the device and not sort of left it on the low heat, to be forgotten about as things ramp up. Sorry it got out, how is it not spreading faster than the lava rivers? And that would be about it for the horror elements, but enough there to have us looking into Mike Crichton’s last novel.

Well that’s all I’m going to say about this one, if you are after a fast page turner then you are in the right place. Don’t expect anything other than a dime store book and you are going to be okay with Eruption. The book is well written, paced well, has sympathetic characters albeit lightly developed, what more do you want in a summer read? Mild recommendation, one of those novels that you will forget a month after reading. But hey could have been a lot worse, Crichton builds the house, the painting is already pealing, but the structure is sound. We’re not talking Jurassic Park here, but worth a look for Crichton fans and anyone after something quick and dirty to get their read on.