Customer Reviews

The Rift

5 star:		(38)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(13)
2 star:		(12)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

The New Madrid Fault lies in the south central part of the United States right on the Mississippi River. It is very real and very ominous last heard from in 1811-1812 in an 8.9 earthquake. So "The Rift" is not an apocalyptic fantasy, but a meticulously researched epic of what could happen tomorrow. You well may ask why isn't the earthquake of 1812 a part of every American child's history book as famous as the Chicago Fire or the San Francisco earthquake of 1906? The answer is how lightly populated the area was at that time; the number of people who could report on the catastrophe were few, so at present day we have little documentation.

Mr. Williams has done an awesome job of investigation from everything concerning an earthquake to nuclear reactor plants. Every chapter is interwoven with contemporary accounts of the 1812 earthquake. We read what transpired over miles and miles of countryside, and then the author shows us what the same devastation would be like if that "countryside" had the City of Memphis sitting on it as it does today. I learned a little about the Richter scale: an 8.5 is not just a "little" stronger than an 8.3, but a thousand times stronger. An 8.9 (the top of the scale) is just short of affecting the entire planet. For comparison purposes the San Francisco quake registered 8.25 on the Richter scale.

To bring us a story and give us a human's eye view of such mass destruction, Mr. Williams gives us a cross-section of characters, most of whom were sharply defined and realistic. From Jason, a young teenager who is Kalifornia Kool but displaced by his parent's divorce to Cabell's Mound, Missouri to Nick, an unemployed weapons engineer recently separated from his wife. (For some reason, I pictured Nick as Bryant Gumbel in the middle of the earthquake.) The hustling dealmaker Charlie struck me as the most poignant. He only existed in the cyberworld of suppose; when the earthquake hit, all he could think to do was dial 911 on his cell phone.

"The Rift" is a monumental work in all senses of the word, but unlike many worthy tomes, highly readable and entertaining. Grade A

I love this book. At the age of three, 'way back in 1939, my parents brought me to Reelfoot Lake in the heart of the New Madrid fault country. I've never forgetten the eerieness of that experience and look for books about the historical earthquake or sci-fi projections of future ones. Most, like Hernon's 8.4, aren't any better written than a Robin Cook, but THE RIFT is different. It's literature!

I am sure it's no accident that the plot is far more than a disaster novel. It's a picaresque travel-tale and its structure parallels the greatest of all American novels, HUCKLEBERRY FINN, with a rebellious white boy and an intelligent black man confronting dangers and weirded-out characters on the Mississippi and along its banks, and finding great depths of resourcefulness in themselves, as well as friendship and trust. And you get a delicious sci-fi disaster story on top of all that! Who could resist?

I've lived in the South about half my life and found the characters entirely believable. Like Mark Twain, Williams shows us the murderous underside of fundamentalist religion, yet at the same time doesn't demonize the preacher and his surprisingly creative wife. Murderous fanatics they turn out to be, but a lot more likeable than the Ku Kluxers and the drugged-out Militia creep from Detroit. (I've lived in the Detroit area, too, and that little piece of smarm could be patterned after a few racist haters and baiters who got in the news.) Yet even he is not without a soul. Williams understands the politics of the American lumpenproletariat, the reasons for resentment and their unfortunate tendency to blame everyone but their genuine enemies. So you get a political analysis, too.

Samuel Clemens, I am sure, must have read this novel in Heaven about as many times as I've read it down here.

I have to say before anything else that I am a huge Walter Jon Williams SF fan. This may cloud my review somewhat, because I came into the book with high expectations. Unfortunately these were really not met.

The highs of the book were (for me):
1. very good character development, not as good as some of his other works, but very good.
2. well researched
3. reader develops genuine feelings about the characters (see 1)

The lows:
1. He spends hundreds and hundreds of pages meticulously building this little world, then just seems to lose interest and throws it all together in the end. The book doesn't build to a crescendo, the characters just all end up together, good beats evil, and everybody goes home. It's almost as if it was looking like it would drag out to another 500 pages as he was writing it, so he just wrapped it up. He took one character he had developed over several chapters and just unceremoniously mashed him with a barge in a short paragraph and moved along smartly.
2. Related to 1, there are tons of loose ends left untied at the end of the book. What was the nature of the Sheriff's chest pains? What happened with the General's vision? her political future?

I just was left with the feeling that he sat back and said, Geez, this thing is getting too long, how can I wrap it up? Well, I'll move this guy to here, these people over there, kill this one, stuff them all in here, kill some more, whiz bang done.

This book was incredible. I was impressed with the thought that went into this book. It not only dealt with the concequences of a major disaster in the USA but also the impact it would have on other countries waiting to exploit a weakness in America. The characters were very believable and you develop a fondness for Nick and Jason. The story could be right out of the headlines were this to take place today. The sheriff as a member of the KKK, the concentration camps, the crazy preacher with the end of world teachings, the General and her problems with directing this massive relief effort all these people seemed so real it was hard not to believe this could not happen. To top it all off the "New Madrid Fault" is a real geological fault that has shifted before. The last time in 1811-1812 and could bring this book from fiction to non-fiction in a heartbeat. A very, very good read.

I'd equate this book to the likes of Stephen King's "The Stand" or McCammon's "Swang Song" The story, which is hardly supernatural deals with a very possible earthquake that tears through the middle of the country. The New Madrid fault is very real, and the last time it errupted was back between 1811-1812. 8.9 on the richter scale. Literaly liquifide solid earth. It knocked down forests, and changed the course of mighty rivers, in this case the Mississipi river. "The Rift" takes place in modern day America (today). The story follows the lives of 5 integral characters.

Omar Paxton, card carrying member of the KKK, has been voted sheriff of small Lousiana town. Omar's hatred of all that is not white anglo saxon protestant ignites after the quake hits and he is cut off from the government. He takes his hatred so far as to imprison all of black people of the town in quasi-concentration like camps.

Rev. Noble Frankland. Fanatical Christian who forsees the coming of the Tribulation aka: Judgement Day. His visions become all to real to him as he mistakes the quake and its aftershocks as the start of the 2nd coming. He is the flip side of Omar Paxton, as he imprisons all that do not kowtow to his sermons or his warped views on Christianity.

Jason Adams. The son of divorced parents. He and his New Age flaky mother have just moved to the Mississipi Valley. Yearning to pull away from his wacked out mother and move back to California and his hands-off parenting father. Jason is pulled into a nightmare no child should ever go through as he witnesses his mothers death to flooding brought on by the quake. He is practically orphaned as his father tries to push him on a distant relative aunt in N.Y.

Nick Ruford. A unemployeed African-American engineer traveling to Lousiana to present a birthday gift to his daughter before she takes off to school in France. He and a friend are caught in the quake. Nick goes from one tense situation to another as his traveling companion is mistaken for a looter and killed, to getting caught in a ravaging flood of the Mississipi. He is saved by Jason, but only to fall into more dangerous ground elsewhere in the story.

General Jessica Frazetta. Heads the Army Corps Of Engineers. She fights against the time, the quake, and a emotionally and mentally impaired President Of The United States. Up against insurmountable odds as she deals with coordination a an enormous relief effort, to say nothing about helping contain a critically damaged nuclear reactor.

This is a fantastic piece of fiction, that depending on wheither the New Madrid fault ever slips, could become a piece of non-fiction. I give this book the highest recommendations for summer reading.

I enjoyed the story but it was almost like a chore to read parts of it. I loved the technical earthquake stuff with the spilled chemicals polluting the river, the effects on the ground and river, and in particular, the nuke part. I liked the characters too, especially when the KKK guys get their due. But it was also a chore to read as it went on and on. In my opinion, he could have told a much tighter story minus about 400 pages. That is my biggest problem with it. Mr. Williams is an excellent story teller, but to keep me interested, I would recommend keeping it shorter. I've been looking for other books by him but have not seen any yet. If his next story is also 800+ pages, I'm afraid I'll have to skip it.

The Rift has a lot of promise. Unfortunately, it also has a lot of problems.

There are a few storylines that start off and really lead you nowhere. These easily could have been cut out.

Parts of the storyline feel more text book than story. The inner workings of some software is described in detail, and yet there is really no reason for it to be explained at all. We are taken through every nook and cranny of a nuclear power plant, and it felt like I was studying for a test rather than reading a fiction book. As for the earthquake storyline, the author makes mention of Raleigh waves, Love waves, S waves and more. But I have no idea what those are, and Williams doesn't bother to explain what they are. So he leaves out details that actually matter to the storyline, and yet leaves way too much information in on subjects that have nothing to do with the storyline.

Then there were things that the author seemed to take for granted that we knew. For example, one character mentions a "samovar." He doesn't bother to explain what it really is. But hey, isn't "samovar" a word you say almost daily? Oh, it's not? And even after watching a ton of Hurricane Katrina news coverage, I have to say I did not know what a batture was, and I didn't feeling like running to get my dictionary in the middle of reading.

Some of the storylines were great reading, especially those following Jason and Nick. But there are constant excerpts from letters, newspaper articles, and narratives from an earthquake that occurred in the early nineteenth century which introduce each chapter. These passages also come in sporadically in the middle of chapters. After a few chapters of reading these citations, I decided to skip over them entirely. They only served to break the pacing of the storyline.

In conclusion, Williams was on a good track. But The Rift should really go through a few more rounds of edits before it becomes a worthy read.

Don't let this book's size daunt you or the sometimes terribly boring parts at the beginning stop you. Once you get past the first 250 pages or so we have a powerful book that will have your head spinning because it could happen! The largest earthquake in recorded history hits the central of the country. Thousands dead, millions homeless, and the nation's economy about to crumble.

The book has two very likable central characters. Firstly there is Jason, a teenager from a broken home, whose mother dies in the earthquake and whose father doesn't really seem to care about him, even after finding out that Jason survived. Jason floats a boat down the Mississippi (not quite like Huck Finn) and encounters Nick, a real kindhearted sort whose best friend gets gunned down by a deranged cop and who gets shot by the same cop and then has to do battle with a poisonous snake. Nick and Jason form a strong bond that is far greater than Jason ever had from his family.

Meanwhile, there is a crazy evangelist, a KKK sheriff, and an Army general that are each coping with the disaster in different ways. Though these characters are less interesting, they add important roles to the plot of the book.

I bought this book (from Amazon.com, of course) because the subject matter interested me. I had never heard of the author, and apparently he hasn't written much of anything else, except a book on English composition. What a wonderful surprise it was to find the book such a satisfying read!

It's a long book (almost 1,000 pages), but it never flags or drags. The author alternates the text of old letters and accounts from people who lived through the 1811-12 New Madrid earthquakes with his fictional narrative, and also includes some fascinating factual information about earthquakes--especially nice for those of us who avoided taking geology in school. :-)

The plot follows several characters who live through a new series of earthquakes in current times. All the characters are very well developed and believable--this author KNOWS people and he knows how to write about them. I especially enjoyed the interaction and relationship that develops between the middle-aged African American son of an Army general and the young white child of a "New Age" mother and lawyer father, who end up traveling down the Mississippi together after the first in the series of modern earthquakes.

There is plenty of action and a great deal of wry humor in this book. Now I only wish Walter J. Williams had another work of fiction available to purchase and read.

I saw this book at Barnes & Noble and thought it looked awesome. Every time I read a few pages, I'd fall asleep. I looked at other reviews for this book and saw it showed promise. I got past the first 200 pages and kept hoping it would get better. There are a few passages in this book that were great, but I had to quit reading once I got to Chapter 18. I kept pushing myself to continue reading, but I couldn't go on. I'm glad others have enjoyed this book and I think the plot itself was great to write about with vivid characters and the goal of survival. There was just too much information added to this book that had nothing to do with the story itself. This is probably the only book I decided to quit before reaching the end, but there are too many other good books out there waiting to be read.