Customer Reviews

Offshore

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Don Corace's "Offshore" is a fast-paced page-turner that combines financial maneuvering, offshore drilling action, murder, family conflict and forbidden romance. The novel is an inside look at the oil industry, and the daring people who push the limits of deepwater technology and brave the elements to find oil.

Although you don't have to know about the oil industry to enjoy this book, readers familiar with Houston and oil exploration will find much that is recognizable. Don Corace knows the oil industry and its people, and he uses that knowledge to create a fascinating story.

Discover this new author, and get caught up in the Drummond family saga. You won't want to put "Offshore" down until you learn what happens to Clay, Kate, D.L. and the rest of the Drummonds.

Cathy Stucker

Don Corace has put together a decent book. The story line is strong, the character development is good, all together "Offshore" is an engaging read which teaches the laymen amongst us a thing or two about the offshore drilling industry. Though (by the writer's own admission) with not a lot of detail. The writer explains rather complex subject matter in very simplistic ways, it makes for a much easier read.

Even though Offshore has a strong plot, the story is sometimes hurt by Mr. Corace's plodding prose. The book sort of reminds me of John Grisham's "The Firm", stellar plot, but the writer never completely wraps you up in the story. Perhaps a ghost writer would serve Mr. Corace well, he has a good mind for a story, but he may not be the best one to tell it.

All and all a worthwhile read.

Having a lot of familiarity with the oil industry, I read this book wondering if the modern industry could provide the setting for a good story. After finishing "Offshore," there's no doubt that it can--the premise of a winner-takes-all corporate bet over the industry's deepest offshore wildcat well is a great one. And I applaud the author for the plotline on this first endeavor.

However, the story is hampered by pedantic dialogue treatments, proofing hiccups, and some transitions that were unsatisfactorily abrupt (especially the ending)--all of which could have been assisted by an experienced fiction editor. I wanted to be engrossed in the plot but was distracted by lack of polish in the text. Please try again with more help, Mr. Corace. . . your story deserves to be a better read.

'Offshore' is a good tale about intrigue in the offshore oil industry.

I believe this was the author's first novel and it read like it. Although the story had great potential, it was hampered by having too many subplots, some of which were just not believable.

The author clearly has a lot of knowledge about the industry and does a good job of providing some insight into it. He also has good plot ideas and decent character development. He just does not tie it all up in a package that is polished.

Don Corace
Emerald Ink Publishing
ISBN 0-9760426-0-6
Offshore
Reviewer: Shelly Waxman for Bookpleasures.com

The genre of this book is "intelligent thriller". It is not of the NewPulp variety in which I write-meaning there are no sex scenes. This book taught me things I didn't know. That's what I liked about it. I learned about the oil business, offshore drilling and how Texas corporate tycoons battle in the courts and elsewhere for the same prize-one to get it and one to keep it. The author's life experience certainly qualifies him to be our teacher.

The characters are rich and colorful. The story is a good one, although it does get a little complicated and somewhat unbelievable. But it isn't a big distraction. At the end, there are short, choppy scenes with too many scene switches for a book. However, that doesn't detract from the excitement and suspense that the author creates. Moreover, this book would make a great movie-better than the book because there is a lot of action that only the camera can solidify. The book is an entertaining read. I recommend it.

Reviewer: R. G. Burke in Houston

Don Corace's debut novel Offshore is a stunning tale of personal challenge. Family patriarch D. L. Drummond is ailing and aging fast. His son Clay must take over to rescue a Houston drilling and exploration company or else lose the business to a corporate raider. How this is done and what happens to the family itself, is the heart of this engaging book, the soul of its existence.

Corace, a former oil-field roughneck, speculator in oil and gas leases, and an active investor in drilling ventures, examines the business of drilling in detail. For years, the industry was attacked in novels and non-fiction alike -- sometimes deservedly so. But this novel does something different. It explains how complicated the technical side of drilling offshore can be, how risky the chance of success really is. And it shows a human side of the business.

As a profession, oil and gas seem to attract a certain personality: tough, hard, rugged individuals. Failure in the industry is common; to last, a participant must be resilient, elastic, capable of change. The study of character is an important element in this book.

In brief, Offshore, a novel, is absorbing, clever, thrilling. In the critical drilling of a deepwater well far out in the Gulf of Mexico, action in the book practically explodes off the pages. The story satisfies on many levels. Cool, complex,

Written by a former "roughneck" in the Texas oil field trade, among many other careers, Offshore is an exciting novel about the fierce competition between an offshore drilling company and the family dynasty behind it, and the predatory cunning of a Wall Street corporate raider. Partly a tale of a father and his estranged son seeking to make amends, partly a love story, part redemption saga, and part plucky novel of determination to win a challenge, Offshore culminates in a devil's bargain that pits a family's drive to succeed against not only the ruthlessness of their enemies, but the force of an incoming hurricane. A saga that effectively captures the spirit of resilience and the can-do drive to succeed.

'OFFSHORE' offers a rare glimps into the double dealing and underhanded behavior of some individuals in the oil industry. Don Corace accurately crafts his characters and their motives and the development of the plot so that someone with no actual knowledge of the oil industry or the stock market can easily follow the story line and be 'sucked' in to the human aspects of the story. 'OFFSHORE' will make a great TV series or a major motion picture.