At 900 plus pages was a long read but not a bad book if you like the mass disaster type of story. Takes about 200 pages to get all the charactors in place but worth the time.

The basic story is a massive earthquake that hits the mid-west along the new Madrid fault which runs
through the Mississippi Valley (The last one happened about 150+ years ago and changed the landscape). It does give a good picture of what would happen if it were to happen today, in our modern cities, farms, Levi systems etc. Plus populations in the millions rather than a few 100 thousand that lived on the frontier.
The author does manage to keep you interested and feel for the charactors ( )

This is the only Williams book I have read but I was astounded by his descriptions, attention to detail and depth of his characters. The historical insight to what "could be" is incredible plus the factual evidence from past quakes really transcends the "fiction" quality of the book. Very interesting read from what was, to what could be. ( )

I thoroughly enjoyed this book but I thought of putting it down several times in the 180 pages of character development that precede any action. There are several story lines deftly woven together in this book and in the end I admit it was probably necessary to take up those 180 pages, so hang in there. It's worth it. The book centers around a huge 8.9 quake that takes place along the New Madrid fault in the midwest. It throws the mighty Mississippi right out of its course and generally creates havoc and mayhem. It is a successful "disaster" story with bad guys and heroes galore plus lots of ordinary folk that we can relate to as well. The nine central characters are all sufficiently unique to present a good cross-section of human nature so that we are treated to a well-rounded speculative look at the ramifications of the failure of our society's systems and their effects on individuals. Throughout the book there are quotations from historical documents of the last earthquake on the New Madrid that took place in 1812 which while horrible elude to even greater horrors of the impending disaster of a large scale quake in our more complex and populated world.
The story lines expose several small fractures in our own society such as fundamentalism and the malice of white supremacy that are similar in their own ways to building a nuclear power plant over a major fault line. The plot shows us how foolish our failure to pay attention is and how easily these threats can one day open up and swallow us whole. While imprisoned by crazed KKK members a black man answers the frantic querey of "Why?!" by saying "Because somebody overlooked this damn place, overlooked it for a century, probably. All it took for death to take a grip on a community was a handful of crazy people and a lot of other people who weren't paying attention."
The book is well researched and very scary in its implications. Industry and expediency have caused us to build and invest and grow our civilization right over top of one of the most unstable places on Earth with our usual short-sighted "it can't happen here" attitude and our wishful thinking. There is and has been, for a very long time, plenty of evidence that a disaster of overwhelming proportions is inevidable but we have systematically chosen not to pay attention to the facts.
This book makes for very exciting and entertaining reading. It is full of edge of the seat action and thought-provoking ideas and insights. The characters are rich in detail and the message that floats in and out between the lines is a powerful one. ( )

It used to be that whenever I read disaster books I could tell if it had been written pre-9/11. Now the standard is pre-Katrina. It's obvious this book was written before the real U.S. government faced a catastrophe on the scale of the earthquake in this book. The governmental response in the book is so good, so competent, that it's actually a little distracting.

Governmental response aside, this was a fun, interesting book. It's a mamoth book, so it takes a commitment, but if you like disaster stories it's worth checking out. ( )

http://www.sfreader.com/read_review.a... ( )