I don’t know James Patterson. I know of him, I know of his work, but I don’t know his work. I do know that I love Michael Crichton, and I haven’t found a book of his that I didn’t fall in love with.
So it is with that in mind that I’m only so-so on Eruption.
Maybe I need to experience something Patterson wrote on his own to understand. Perhaps that’s why the collaboration that some of my friends did enjoy didn’t hit me the same way.
It’s enjoyable, it’s thrilling, and it’s all the things that I expect from a Crichton novel, but for some reason, this isn’t one I care to reread or add to my permanent library.
The back cover of the dust jacket lays out the stakes of this fictional tale in two sentences: “A history-making eruption is about to destroy the Big Island of Hawai’i. And the U.S. Military has made a terrible mistake that could mean the end of life as we know it.”
Arguably, it was in reading the interior of the dust jacket and the acknowledgments that I found myself wanting more. From the interior dust jacket, “Michael Crichton, creator of Jurassic Park, ER, Twister, and Westworld, had a passion project he’d been pursuing for years ahead of his untimely passing in 2008. Knowing how special it was, his wife, Sherri Crichton, held back his notes and the partial manuscript until she found the right author to complete it: James Patterson, the world’s most popular storyteller.”
Maybe it’s because I’m interested in the process of things, but I think I’m more interested in just how “partial” the original manuscript Patterson started with was. I also wonder what it was like to collaborate with someone who was, at a minimum, your equal in storytelling if not your superior, all in their absence.
If you’re looking for something new and thrilling, with edge-of-your-seat destruction and chaos, then you may not be able to do better than Eruption.
While it wasn’t my favorite, it is fun, engaging, and hard to put down in some places. Though I didn’t love it, there’s not much more you can ask of any work of fiction than that, is there?
So, while I don’t really know Patterson from Baldacci, I know Crichton. I’d say if you are a fan of either, this is probably a must-read.