Chapin City Blues

Rating:

Details:

Title: Eruption

Author(s): Michael Crichton and James Patterson

Let’s Talk About It:

The other day, I joked on Facebook about how Twisters probably had Michael Crichton rolling in his grave.¹ I have since been corrected on that matter now that I have finished Eruption, a Michael Crichton novel written by James Patterson.

When I saw Eruption’s book announcement last year, my reaction was less than stellar. Michael Crichton captured my imagination (and thus my heart) in elementary with the first Jurassic Park movie. Reading the novel fueled my imagination and I wanted to read more of his work. James Patterson, on the other hand…

I don’t want to base my entire opinion on James Patterson’s writing on Eruption alone. Before this novel, I had only read two of his works — and one of those books was during story time at the library.² But he is not someone I would consider asking to complete Michael Crichton’s unfinished work. Maybe Sherri Crichton saw something in his writing style that I missed, or maybe my bias is showing.

One of my biggest peeves with Patterson’s writing are the way he handles his characters. There are moments where attempts to flesh them out, but still manages to keep one-dimensional. His paint-by-numbers protagonist Mac is your usual go-to trope when it comes to these end-of-days stories. He is a divorced man, who has a complicated relationship with his female coworker, he has children who he loves, and he can solve the world’s problems while also carrying it on his back. But did you also know that he has a fondness for fighter jets because I didn’t until the end of the story when it was convenient for Patterson to add in that detail.

The dialogue and relationship between the characters often feels bland and unnatural while also dipping into the will-they-won’t-they type of interactions between Mac and Jenny.³ What is most upsetting (possibly insulting?) is the way Patterson peppers indigenous terminology/slang into the story as an attempt to give it an authentic Hawaiian feel to the dialogue. Except he fails because even among the indigenous characters it feels unnatural and forced.

Poor character development is present with J. P. Brett, an Elon Musk type millionaire and faux scientist, and the adventure-seeking couple, Leah and Oliver Cutler, who are introduced as one of many antagonists to the story. A near brush with volcanic death and the actual death of their cameraman changes their attitudes for a moment, becoming team players to move the story along. This is quickly dropped when they make a second attempt of flying near the actively erupting volcano later in the story.

Aside from the main characters, we often see Patterson introducing characters for two reasons: 1. to act as antagonists that are later forgotten in the story, and 2. for body count fodder. I’ll talk a little about the first idea while discussing the sub-plotline that is introduced and treated like a Snoop Dogg lyric. His method of killing people is wild. Not only will he kill main characters in bizarre ways, when he needs to fill a death coda, he’ll just introduce a random character, give us a cliff notes backstory, and boils them alive in the ocean or sweeps them away with lava.

At the opening of the story, we are introduced to Rachel Sherrill, a botanist who witness the mysterious death of her beloved banyan trees. She’s dropped instantly after the prologue only to be reintroduced as someone hellbent on exposing the military secrets. She garners attention from two New York Times reporters who are hot on the trail that leads to Mac and General Rivers. Then with a single phone call, the story is dropped, and the two journalists and Rachel Sherrill are forgotten. I’m not even sure if they made it to the end. There is no payoff to this plotline, no Rorschach’s journal that exposes the whole story and threat at the end. This is something that we’re just expected to accept.

And there is a lot of expectation of acceptance with Patterson’s writing. Michael Crichton made me believe that cloning dinosaurs was a possibility in our near future — not because I was in the sixth grade when I first read Jurassic Park, but because he wrote so well and explained the science behind it. James Patterson, on the other hand, cannot convince me that volcanoes exist, that their eruptions can be catastrophic to people living near volcanoes, or that something could wipe out the entire world should it spread.

The book is not written well, but I am certain it would make a hell of a popcorn movie when the inevitably adapt it for the big screen.

Anyway, until next time. Keep on hunting.  

1 For those not in the know, Michael Crichton coauthored the screenplay for Twister with Anne-Marie Martin.

2 The other book was The President is Missing which he coauthored with Bill Clinton, and I remember enjoying that novel.

3 SPOILER ALERT: They don’t.