Customer Reviews

Tsunami

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I love natural disasters, both written and as a movie. I loved this story.

Lani faced those who would deny the evidence before them, thereby killing millions, and those who would destroy her reputation in order to continue making money.


That being said, the characters would profit by being more fleshed out, and there were too many threads that were added rather abruptly, and ended the same way. A smoother transition would work better for me.

Overall, this book was well-written. However, it is incorrect to say Purvis's. It should be Purvis'.

This book kept you interested all the way to the end. I don't usually write reviews, but this book was excellent and I await for more books by Gordon Gumpertz.

First Line: The container ship Moro Prince, bound from Manila to Los Angeles, had enjoyed three days of smooth sailing.

Add to my penchant for post-apocalyptic fiction a love of books about killer natural phenomena: tornadoes, hurricanes, volcanoes. I'm not quite sure why I enjoy them so much, unless it's the simple urge to see humans triumph over seemingly insurmountable odds. I found the premise of Tsunami fascinating: a huge underwater volcano out in the middle of the Pacific is ready to blow, and if the worst case scenario comes true, a 200-foot tidal wave will hit Southern California. Millions of people could die.

Seismologist Leilani Sanches has been watching this volcano, and she believes that the worst case scenario will indeed come to pass. The trouble is, when she tries to alert people, no one really wants to listen...especially real estate developers and other scuzzy capitalists.

Some plot threads in the novel work better than others. Gumpertz' strength does not lie in characterization. I found most of the people to be rather two-dimensional, and the author never made me really care what happened to any of them. The Good Guys were too good (and lucky); the Bad Guys were too bad (and unlucky). Where Gumpertz' strength does lie is in the plot threads surrounding the volcano, the resultant waves of tsunamis, and their effect on the Southern California coastline. When he wrote about these events, I was glued to the page. When the tsunamis did hit California, the author started bringing in more characters, showing us what happened to them. This would have been a powerful addition to the book if these characters had shown up earlier so the reader could get to know and care about them. Their brief appearances occurring when they did were poignant but weren't the knock-out punch they could've been.

All in all, I'm glad I read the book because it did contain a lot of information about sciences that fascinate me. For a character-driven reader like myself, Tsunami was a bit of a letdown, but I will be on the lookout for other books by this author.

Dangerous rumblings in the mid-Pacific. A hotshot woman scientist,Dr. Leilani Sanches, born in Hawaii and educated at Princeton, has a theory. But nobody will listen ... except the Coast Guard. Her unlikely critics include sleazy real estate developers, educators on the make and international gun runners. This cast of characters weld fast-paced action to real world science. You'll love it!

Tsunami, written by Gordon Gumpertz is one of my favorite genres and one that, unfortunately, seems to be on the decline - catastrophic novels!

I can well imagine how much of a challenge it must be for an author to write a book about these type of events - somehow, these things seem to translate better on film than on the written page.No matter, Gumpertz does a fantastic job and made me feel as though I was right in the thick of things - right from the beginning where most of the scientific community is convinced that a Tsunami could not possibly result from that dormant volcano up until the actual event in inevitable (you know it HAD to happen).

Dr. Sanches, who has been predicting this event works feverishly to get her colleagues on board and then to try to figure out a why to prevent it from happening.

The writing is top notch - as I mentioned, it takes a special writing skill to be able to bring these types of events to live from a written page and author Gumpertz does an excellent job of making me feel as though I am RIGHT there!I also enjoy the feeling of dread that I had from the beginning of this book - you just know there is a veryyyyy bad thing about to happen and you find yourself cheering those who are trying to find a way to fight it - yet, at the same time, you want it to happen so you can read it through and experience it!

I really enjoyed this book - it was a tad technical in some areas and a tad long, but it was worth it - this book is fantastic.