Rating: 
Summary: I will never live in a brick house in St. Louis!
Review: A massive earthquake along the New Madrid Fault shook the Mississippi Valley in 1811. This book is about the next major New Madrid earthquake and the violently changed landscape and societal devastation that result. Williams seems to have done his research, and this book makes it seem crazy that anyone lives in the Mississippi Valley. The book follows numerous characters, including an out-of-work aerospace engineer, an adolescent skateboarder from L.A. who just moved to the Midwest with his New Agey mom, a fundamentalist preacher, a KKK sheriff, the general in charge of the Mississippi Valley Division of the Army Corps of Engineers, the manager of a nuclear power plant, and the U.S. President. For my taste, this book was too long with too many subplots and too many bad guys, but it provided many hours of diversion, and it definitely made an impression on me.
Rating: 
Summary: Careful on this one!
Review: I have read many disaster novels over 40+ years of reading SF and alternative history, as it were. "When Worlds Collide" and its sequel are still the standard, though I can enjoy Harry Turtledove, among others. This one, however, left me limp. With this "disaster" (and I live in Memphis, these days), why focus on a racist deep south Parish and the like when there are hundreds of large cities all with real stories to tell? The urban stories should NOT be side bars to the main action... All I can say is I was extrememly disappointed in this novel - well written though it is. And, my local Goodwill shop got a bargain...
Rating: 
Summary: In the tradition of The Stand and Swan Song...
Review: An earthquake, measuring 8.9 on the Richter scale, occurs along the New Madrid fault and destroys America's heartland. Chaos ensues as no one is prepared for this incident - after all, everyone knows that earthquakes only happen in California and Japan. As the Mississippi and surrounding waters flood and cities are destroyed, this novel follows the lives of several individuals, among them the President, trying to deal with the crisis, a technician working to prevent a nuclear meltdown at his power station, and a black man and a white boy, thrown together by circumstance, who find themselves drifting down the bloated river in an eerie perversion of a similar voyage by Huckleberry Finn. The Rift was a huge and excellent novel. Often compared in reviews to Stephen King's The Stand and Robert McCammon's Swan Song, there is one vital difference between those post-apocalyptic thrillers and this one: The Rift is terrifyingly real. Not only has Williams clearly done an outstanding amount of research on the nature of earthquakes and the geology of the United States, but he also shows a keen eye for the politics and people of the region about which he is writing. And perhaps even more terrifying than the vivid and striking descriptions of the quakes themselves is the fact that there is precedent - an earthquake did indeed strike the New Madrid fault in 1811, and could very well do so again. Aside from the technical excellence of this tale, the author gives us a large cast of believable and interesting characters: religious fanatics convinced that the quakes signify the coming of the Apocalypse and Klansmen who use the opportunity to exact some "racial revenge." We see families torn apart and new friends made, people who keep their cool under pressure and people who lose it. And, keeping things realistic, the author doesn't hesitate to kill off characters, so the reader can never be quite sure of the outcome, but nor does he blatantly and uselessly kill them off just to keep the reader on his toes. It's a delicate balance and well handled here. Amongst all the relief efforts, rebuilding efforts, the chaos and everything, the author also confronts issues and situations that may not be immediately thought of by everyone: "The President stared, a new realization rolling through his mind. He had completely forgot that all this was going to have to be paid for." Overall, The Rift is one of the best novels I've read in a long time: realistic, thought-provoking, memorable, at times terrifying and at other times heartrending, the author has managed to produce a large, exciting book. As interesting as all the situations, all the characters, all the politics and geography are, the reason I gave this novel four stars rather than five is that it does stretch credibility, especially in that almost all of the main characters run across each other and interact with each other throughout the course of the book. Also, the ending is only quasi-happy, and I'm a sucker for a happy ending.
Rating:
Summary: Starts slow, then speeds, then S-L-O-W-S!!!!
Review: The book is based on an earthquake of a huge magnitude, and what life would be like afterwards. I thought the sex was very gratuitous and unneeded, and actually distracting.
The last few chapters really dragged, it was chore to force myself to finish reading. All and all, not a bad book, but it think it could have used a bit more editing.
Rating:
Summary: Too many characters for the plot.
Review: This book could have used a good editor. As it stands, the idea is good but the delivery is lacking. Too many characters are introduced to possibly flesh out all of their storylines. The result is a book of mainly cardboard cutouts. The bad characters are evil, and the good characters can do no wrong. Jason has to be the most unbelievable teenager I have ever read. I can't remember exactly how old he was supposed to be, but he sounded forty through most of the book. Trimming some of the barely rendered characters and telling the story through only a few viewpoints would have made the tale much more powerful, as well as leaving more room for the main characters to develop. As it is, "The Stand" and "Swan Song" are far superior books with similar themes.
Rating: 
Summary: An entertaining epic with lessons
Review: This was a well-researched, well-written account of the ripple effect that an earthquake in the New Madrid fault in southeast Missouri has on the region, the nation, and the world. It's an entertaining adventure story and an epic that chronicles the journey of the heros and the (eventual) downfall of the human villains. One reviewer finds the characters unlikeable. I found the heroes more believable because they come with flaws that we all share--desire for power or fear of people different from ourselves. These are the ordinary heroes that we'll have to rely on if this really does happen. The lesson is that we must all make sure that the petty tyrants out there don't get a good foothold if disaster strikes!
Rating:
Summary: Interesting idea, predictable conflicts
Review: It's hard to argue with all the rave reviews, but I'm going to. While I found the research that went into _The Rift_ to be impressive, there was nothing about the situations or the characters Williams drew that struck me as interesting or new. Civil disaster causes racial tension to explode in an already divided south. Religious weirdos become weirder when cut off from the civilized world by disaster. Businessmen see it as financial oopportunity and struggle to get to a phone and make money. Youth hold the hope of the future. Etc. The book is positioned as being similar to _The Stand_ but carries none of the freshness that made King's epic of disaster so very good.
Rating:
Summary: Huge, ambitious and thoughtful
Review: A huge, ambitious and very thoughtful book. The first 150+ pages are a slow introduction to a collection of rather unlikeable characters. I did wonder: why am I reading this book? But once the action begins, it is as exciting an adventure as you can imagine - and not wholly unrealistic either. The strong side of the characters (some of them anyway) takes hold, and the scenarios are well researched and plotted and very believable. Only thing that would have made it any better was a map, but can also see why that might not work too. Never did quite understand the Charlie character, but General Jessica is my new hero. This would make a wonderful mini-series!
Rating:
Summary: Magnificent!
Review: This is a big, thick, juicy novel filled with adventure, suspense, and human ingenuity. The premise is "what if" -- what if the New Madrid fault caused the biggest earthquake in recorded history, virtually destroying a big chunk of the United States from Tennessee to Missouri, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana and rerouting the Mississippi River? There is a wide variety of richly developed characters, each of whom must cope with the disaster and find a way to survive. There are ordinary people, concerned only with providing for their families. There are some people completely ill equipped to cope with anything more annoying than an AmEx glitch, and others who see the destruction and mass confusion as an opportunity to seize some power and set themselves up as despots. Nick, an unemployed black engineer, and Jason, a white teenager whose mother has died in the quake, were my favorite characters. Jason, who is traveling by bass boat on the flooded Mississippi, rescues Nick from a treetop and a strong bond is forged as they travel at great peril from Missouri to Tennessee and back to Arkansas in search of Nick's family in this new land of diametrically changed topography and philosopy. People who loved the morality play of "The Stand" and the Apocalyptic adventure of "Lucifer's Hammer" and "Swan Song's" message of faith and hope will eat this book right up. Like the aforementioned books, this is one that I will read again and again.
Rating:
Summary: A Fantastic Read
Review: I quite frankly do not understand the negative reviews of this novel. If one always expects the same read from a given author why don't we just buy the same book over and over with a different titled jacket? I, for one, will place Walter J. Williams on my must read list. Great starting premise, good plot, totally believable characterizations and interwoven storylines. Perhaps living in California has me always thinking of the possibility of the "Big One". 8.9 on the scale would definitely fit the bill. Gives you cause for thought. I am thinking seriously of a gettting a disaster kit.
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