Eruption: The Big One is Coming

“Eruption is summer reading at its finest—a lava-surfing, ground-pounding thriller that will have you racing through the pages to find out who—if anyone—will survive.”

On Hawaii’s Big Island, the monster volcano known as Mauna Loa is about to blow, and Dr. John “Mac” MacGregor, head of the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, may be the only one with the courage and experience to prevent a disaster of epic proportions.

However, when he discovers that the United States Army made the unwise decision several years ago to store toxic waste in a secret facility located directly in the path of the anticipated lava flow, Mac knows that all bets are off, and it’s going to take a plan like no other to account for this additional peril that could literally result in worldwide destruction.

But all he can think of is Mike Tyson’s famous quote: “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”

Eruption is the result of a collaboration between two masters of the thriller genre: the late Michael Crichton and the powerhouse of popular fiction, James Patterson. As Sherri Crichton explains in “A Bit of Backstory” at the end of the novel, when Crichton’s papers were being archived, she held back the manuscript and research material for her late husbands “volcano project” to find an ideal author to complete the work.

While another unpublished manuscript she’d also found in his files, Dragon Teeth, was finished and able to be published posthumously in 2017 without further writing, Eruption needed work—and Patterson was just the person for the job.

The result is something of a hybrid. It’s an adventure thriller along the lines of Clive Cussler, an epidemic thriller reminiscent of Andromeda Strain, and a disaster thriller that attempts to take classic Crichton stories such as Twister to another level.

Mac is a great protagonist—fearless and intelligent, just the way we like them in our thrillers. As his sidekick Jenny points out:

“My guy here is a fireman at heart . . . When others are running out of the building, he’s running in.”

The other characters around him, however, are less interesting and not as well developed. The introduction of Oliver and Leah Cutler as antagonists, for example, falls a little short of expectations, and they end up in a flat, stereotypical role similar to that of Dr. Jonas Miller and his crew of pretentious showboating tornado chasers in Twister. Patterson could have done more with them than simply pose them as foils to Mac’s serious-minded professionalism.

Just the same, the plot moves us along swiftly, as one would expect from two master storytellers, and the action keeps us fully engaged throughout. The destruction wrought by the lava flow comes through in the best tradition of the disaster thriller as the power of the volcano is vividly portrayed:

“In the distance Mac saw a sunrise-bright glow from the summit.

“The fireball outlined against the sky grew bigger, and then another violent quake shook Mauna Kea, upending one of the trucks; the men inside managed to dive out before the truck crashed to the ground and rolled over.”

And:

“The first lava appeared in crashing waves that seemed to flow in all directions—to the north and east, as Mac had expected, but to the south as well.

“Mac had witnessed multiple volcanic eruptions, sometimes at very close range, all over the world. He had imagined this particular moment for this volcano, had obsessed about it, had told himself he was prepared.

“He was not.”

Eruption is summer reading at its finest—a lava-surfing, ground-pounding thriller that will have you racing through the pages to find out who—if anyone—will survive.