Review of "Eruption: A Novel" by Michael Crichton and James Patterson

This book, about a VERY dangerous volcano, is a collaboration between Michael Crichton and James Patterson. In the backstory, Michael's wife Sherri explains that Michael was interested in volcanoes, and had begun a book, whose working title was 'The Black Zone', before he died. Sherri found the partial manuscript in Michael's archives, and felt the book should be completed. Sherri considered various collaborators, and when she met James Patterson, she knew she'd found the right guy. The result is 'Eruption.'

*****

As the story opens, the Mauna Loa volcano - one of the five volcanoes that form the Island of Hawaii - is heating up, causing earth tremors, and getting ready to erupt.



Volcanologist Dr. John MacGregor (Mac), head of the Hawaiian Volcano Institute, determines the volcano will explode in about five days.



A volcano eruption is dangerous enough, but Mauna Loa is especially treacherous. Mac learns this when he's summoned to a meeting with some military brass, one of whom is Colonel James Briggs.



Briggs takes Mac to a huge lava tube (like a cave) in Mauna Loa, which is filled with storage receptacles containing radioactive herbicides.



The herbicides are SO souped up they can kill an entire tree in minutes. The bottom line is this: Should the herbicides get into the environment, they'll enter the atmosphere, contaminate the whole world, kill all the plants....and everyone will die. So, if the lava from Mauna Loa's eruption reaches the lava tube, it's all over.



One might ask, why did the military leave these SUPER dangerous storage receptacles in Mauna Loa? The answer is the army couldn't get funding from Congress to move the containers, and couldn't make a public fuss because the receptacles were filled with classified hush-hush pesticides.

For the rest of the book, Mac - along with his crew and the army - maneuver to divert Mauna Loa's red hot lava so it doesn't reach the receptacles. This involves things like blowing holes in the volcano; building walls; building dykes; and so on. All this must be done in five days, and in secret, so the public doesn't panic.



Of course the secret does leak, and a pair of volcano chasers and a narcissistic billionaire businessman descend on Hawaii. This trio thinks THEY should direct the 'rescue operation', and things get complicated and dangerous.

There are some striking scenarios, like people taking helicopters into Mauna Loa (before it erupts) so they can get pictures. The heat and ashes compromise the helicopter's rotors.....and you'll have to read the book to find out what happens next.

Of course there's plenty of death and destruction in the book....can you imagine falling into a lava flow?



The book is formulaic, but it's exciting, with engaging (if somewhat two-dimensional) characters. A movie is in the works already, which will probably be a popular action thriller.

Rating: 3.5 stars