Turbulence

Rating:
Summary: Interesting but ultimately choppy and wooden
Review: Interesting premise, but Nance unfortunately writes his characters as black or white - either poor victims or outrageously mean and nasty airline employees, and neither rings true. The novel almost reads like a parable masquerading as an act of fiction, but the dialog is so choppy and repeats so often (if you had a nickel for everytime a character says "Sorry?" in response to another character you'd probably equal Nance's royalties from this book) that this novel ultimately lands with a thud. If you don't mind overlooking such flaws then go ahead and enjoy yourself, but I really expected a lot more. I actually thought the first chapter was pretty well written, which is why I bought this in an airport, but as soon as I dug into it I realized the rest of the novel from a stylistic perspective quickly goes downhill. Plot is interesting though.

Rating:
Summary: Just When You Weren't Afraid to Go Near the Airline
Review: John Nance has written several good, suspense-filled stories about troubles in and around airplanes. Turbulence may be his scariest. In part, this may be because of the times, when we are much more conscious of security and when that heightened security has increased the time passengers spend processing in for their flights. As I read, I remembered the promotional line for the horror movie Jaws II, something like "Just when you weren't afraid to go near the water again."
Recall all airline employees - ticket agents, flight attendants, pilots, security staff, baggage handlers - whom you ever encountered who were having a bad day and wanted to share their frustrations with you. Put them all together in a busy airport and on one single flight - Meridian Flight Six, Chicago to London and continuing on to Capetown - and delay the flight for hours. Add a mix of passengers with all of the wide range of characteristics you might find on any jumbo jet, but especially the African student who is returning home suddenly because he can't locate his mother; the Asian-American dot.com millionaire who built his fortune on customer service and can't stand the behavior of many airline personnel; and a physician who is suing the airline because his wife and newborn died when the pilot on an earlier flight refused to land so that the wife could have medical attention. Stir in a little more spice when the crew changeover in London brings on a captain who is new to international flying and very tentative, a first officer who is impatient and who is having domestic troubles, and a senior flight attendant who just doesn't like people but who keeps her job by constantly accusing others of harassing her.
As the pot begins to boil, take a national security concern that terrorists might take advantage of an incident of "air rage", and throw in a tip that something big is imminent and it will involve a major airliner and an African flight.
The result is a well-told story that generates anger, apprehension, thrills and excitement. And also an appreciation for many, many people - airline employees, passengers, and just plain folks - who go out of their way to help others and who far too often are overlooked as we focus on all the bad things that happen.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing!
Review: Rip the first 300 pages! Nance apparently are too upset about deregulation and spent the first 300 pages creating an outrageous airline which is a product of deregulation. He tries to make its employees as bad as possible to the extent that it is just unbelievable.

I am a Nance fan but this one is just too un-Nance style. If you want to try his books look for Scorpion Strike. It is the best.

Rating:
Summary: Great adventure
Review: See storyline above.

John J Nance's newest novel is not only suspenseful but invigorating and downright addicting. This is one of his best adventures to date. Character driven non-stop suspense will keep you from putting this one down (I know that's a cliché but this book proves it). A well rounded thriller from an author one soon expects to see on the bestseller lists.
If you've ever flown, this will hit home.

Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Been there, done that, got the T-shirt
Review: Some folks here bagged on Nance and his black-and-white characters and his over-the-top portrayal of nasty airline types. I'm here to tell you I had to do business in Dallas and flew weekly (weakly?) from Southern California to there; I do not consider the nastiness and poor customer service descriptions by Mr. Nance to be overstated. Stuffed in an unair-conditioned aluminum cylinder with 250 of my brothers and sisters for two hours plus while a line of thunderstorms ambles by is an experience that is not to be savored as a fond memory. That they are regular occurrences with American out of Dallas -- just because they don't want you wandering around the airport like a herd of cats -- was enough to cause to relate very intimately with Nance's mistreated passengers on Meridian.

War and Peace it is not. It *is* a comic-book adventure, granted, but I thought it more compelling, more fun to read, and less condescending than Finder's extraordinary Powers. (Yet another gratuitous swipe at that poor unfortunate piece of literature!)

As Steve Wright would say, "You can't have everything. Where would you put it?"

Rating:
Summary: The Turbulence of Error
Review: Soon after 9/11, it seemed that novelists had done the best job of imagining such an apparently unimaginable event. We can only hope that, in this era of daily terrorist warnings, that another tragedy does not occur -- one imagined by the novelist John Nance in this, his most ambitious work to date.

As always, Nance spins a good yarn, although the opening chapters may not be as fast paced as usual. Hang in there, Nance fans, for the stage setting and character development leads to an edge of your seat conclusion.

Then, after you've read the book, enjoyed the story and come down off the concluding rush, reread the last few pages. There, you'll find Nance's other, more substantive purpose -- to essay error....to take us inside mistakes, large and small, as they're being made, real time.

In this sense, Turbulence surely is an extraordinarily provocative ride.

Long after Turbulence has served its initial purpose -- as a fun summer read preluding Clancy's door stop due out next month -- Nance's work will likely continue as required reading for anyone seeking to prevent error and enhance safety, especially in large organizations.

Rating:
Summary: Too many inconsistencies in the plot
Review: The problem with this book is that the author isn't trying to tell a story. Instead, he has a MESSAGE that he wants to get across to the reader: American airlines aren't treating their passengers the way they should, and this is going to backfire on them sooner or later.

In order to push this message the author had to concoct a story that would bear out the message. And this he did, but the story is too unrealistic to be believed, and it even contains several inconsistencies that highlight how unbelievable and poorly constructed the plot is.

Inconsistency no. 1: The plane lands in Katsina in Nigeria in the middle of a battle between rebels led by Jean Onitsa and the Nigerian government troops. Onitsa stages a mock hostage taking of the passengers and demands ransom money from the USA and the Nigerian government. But this mock hostage taking will only work if the pilot of the airplane either backs up Onitsa's claims or at least does not dispute Onitsa's claims that he has taken the passengers as hostages. Onitsa had no way of expecting this to be the case, so the whole idea of the mock hostage taking is crazy. (In fact the airplane happens to have a radio failure so the pilot is unable to dispute Onitsa's claims and Onitsa succeeds in getting a $10 million ransom from the Nigerian government! But Onitsa had no way of knowing there would be a radio failure, so Onitsa's "clever" stunt makes no sense.)

Inconsistency no. 2: James Haverston, an airline employee at Heathrow airport, is worried about one of the passengers, Brian Logan, and checks him out on the airline's computer database. The next day he gets a frantic call from Washington. Does Haverston recall anything special about a passenger named Logan? If there was a problem with passenger Logan it is VERY important that Haverston confirms it. But by then Haverston has forgotten the name of the passenger he was worried about the day before, and therefore refuses to confirm that he had a run-in with a passenger named Logan, even though he would otherwise like to help the man in Washington. In reality all Haverston needs to do is to check the flight's passenger list to get Logan's first name and then to check the database again, at which point he would recognize Brian Logan's history and could confirm his encounter with Brian Logan.

A more general inconsistency or unbelievable twist in the plot has to do with the relationship between Brian Logan and the pilot. Logan, with much justification, becomes more and more antagonistic towards the pilot, and inspires an uprising among the passengers against the pilot. At one point they even try to break into the cockpit by force. The pilot is equally antagonistic towards Logan and the passengers. But then suddenly and without much justification they settle their differences and start cooperating! One gets the feeling that the author felt that he had gone too far and wanted to steer towards a Hollywood happy ending, and that's what he wrote, with Logan and the pilot becoming friends at the end! But considering the pent-up situation and the degree of enmity between Logan and the pilot their sudden reconciliation rings very false.

I've just talked about some of the negative aspects of the book so far. To conclude this review I'll just say that if you can ignore these problems with the plot and the author's promoting of his message then the book is fairly good and keeps you reading. So it's definitely not a total failure.

Rating:
Summary: High Comedy?
Review: The reviewer who said that the only way this could be made into a movie was if it were a comedy featuring Leslie Nielsen hit the nail on the head.

This incredibly silly book goes from bad to worse with cartoon villains who are so over the top I busted out laughing during moments of what were supposed to be high tension.

I still can't decide who was funnier, the evil stewardess from hell or the looney doctor who tries to comandeer the airplane...but then again, if you appreciate high comedy, the moronic pilot was right up there.

Rating:
Summary: White knuckle fliers - beware!!
Review: This is the best Nance book yet. I don't know if this is the direction that commercial aviation is heading, but if it is...
This man has taken ordinary hard-working people and turned them into "monsters", just doin' their job! The twists and turns in the plot keep you glued to the book for hours. I hated to put it down. As usual, Nance has documented the storyline with his vast aviation knowledge and, in this book, that is plenty scary. Just an absolutely wonderful, exciting, action packed read. I highly recommend this to all your readers who like adventure. It is definitely thought-provoking and unfortunately plausible.

Rating:
Summary: Nailbitting but overdone with detail
Review: Throughout the tale, Mr. Nance went above and beyond with the details that would be the focus of the story. It would however be these details that would be the downfall of the story.

From switching back and forth between plots and different settings, it became increasingly hard to put the book down. The tale of this plane, almost surreal as it made its way through Africa and Europe after encountering what we see every day in the airline industry.

This novel has left the impact of what ifs, what if something like this were truly to happen, in this crazed 9/11 world, how would we respond? The legacy of the attacks that day will never be forgotten, but at the same time it has not been remembered as a mistake of shooting down an American plane could easily occur.