Book Title: Chain
Reaction
ISBN 9781465976987
Part of Series: Second of
two-book Series – See Extinction Event
Author: Nicole Stuart
Available at: Smashwords Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Sony, Apple, Diesel, Baker-Taylor
Price: $4.99
Number of words (approximately): 63 123
Star Rating (of five): Four
Summary: Ron, a New York businessman meets Jane, a Law Doctorate student
in the Bahamas Yellowstone is
about to explode. Convinced of the
danger, they set out on Ron’s new yacht to escape. The story tells of their trials and
experiences as they sail around the world, seeking the survival group that
Helen and John have established.
Extract:
- Jane moved back to the wheel, looked at the sea
behind them, brightly lit by the full moon.
What she saw frightened her beyond any experience she had ever had! There was a wall of water, reaching up
hundreds of feet, blanking out the stars near the horizon behind them! Its face, black and featureless, was in the
shadow of the moonlight, screened from the light by its almost vertical height.
“It’s coming, Ron!
Hold on!” He turned to look over
the stern. A massive wave, much higher
than any he had ever seen, was coming up fast behind them, interacting with the
standing wave train to build huge mountains of water in places. Jane quickly estimated the location of the
heap of water likely to be nearest to them, then hit the off switch on the
autopilot and took the helm, steering them slightly to the left of where she
expected the peak to be. If one of those
peaks were to collapse on them, there would be very little chance to
survive! They would be toppled over, or
hammered below the surface by the thousands of tons of water cascading down the
face of the giant mound of water! Ron
moved up quickly behind her, and fastened her safety harness to the ring in the
deck, provided to secure the helmsman in rough weather, then fastened his own
to it.
“Remember, Jane, if we turn over, you must pull this
toggle to release the safety harness!”
He took her hand and guided it to the toggle, making sure that she would
be able to find it in an emergency. Jane
nodded, then returned her hand to the wheel, not moving her eyes from the wave
racing up behind them. As Ron raised his
head to look back at it, the sea seemed to drop suddenly, plunging them into a
deep trough, then the huge wave came up behind them, eerily quiet, heaping up
and up, impossibly high and threatening.
The yacht stern lifted up, and the vessel accelerated as it started
surfing down the slope. The yacht tipped
ever more steeply downwards, the speed moving up to twenty-five, then thirty
knots, the hulls skidding down the slope and throwing spray out the sides. The hulls vibrated with the speed of their
motion through the water. The deck of
the yacht was already pitched forward over sixty degrees to the
horizontal. The speed indicator was off
the dial! The sensation was like running
down a mountain slope. They accelerated
fast, losing the ability to slow down or stop!
Jane turned the wheel a little, to take the boat diagonally along the
slope, rather than directly down it.
This tactic caused the pitch of the vessel to shift diagonally, and Jane
watched the port nose for signs that it was about to dig into the water, as it
surely would when it reached the bottom of the wave trough. That would cause the yacht to trip over its
nose and cartwheel!
Ron was watching the slope of the wave behind
them. The speed of the yacht was still
climbing, now well over the maximum on the dial of forty yachts! He asked himself how much more the yacht
could handle!
“We’re just about over the wave, Jane! Keep on as you are!”
The yacht’s angle decreased slightly as the crest of
the wave approached, then the stern dropped, the yacht coming back to the
horizontal. The speed dropped abruptly,
and there was a sensation that they had regained control. That lasted for a half-dozen seconds, then
the boat started moving down the back of the huge swell as it passed. The yacht pitched nose up to about fifty
degrees. The movement was not as
dramatic as before, as the wind pressed against the sails, holding the yacht
against the back of the wave and adding its speed to the rapidly reducing forward
motion of the boat.
“You did just great, Jane! You’re fantastic! Your steering was exactly what we needed!”
Jane did not have the time to acknowledge Ron’s
praise, but she felt a glow of satisfaction that she had passed her first real
test. She straightened the course of the
yacht as it wallowed in the bottom of the crest.
“The next wave is coming! It’s not as high as the last one!” -
Reviewer’s Comments:
Structure: The book is
well formatted, has good use of language, grammar and syntax. It reads easily, with the structure not intruding
into the experience.
Content: The book
flows through a three-year voyage, with an exploration of one probable outcome
of a danger that presently and really exists.
If you have ever asked yourself “What would I do if the Yellowstone volcano became reality?”, this book is a
must-read. The events described are
realistic, based on fact and real-life experience.
Reviewer’s Comments: I loved this
set of books. The characters are real,
the events, frightening as they may be, are not contrived. It is quite possible to put yourself in the
place of the characters, to experience the end of the world as we know it. This book tells of events and situations that
are entirely possible, and that will bring forth the exceptional in every
person. These two books are permanently
on my bookshelf!
Karin B
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