Rating: 
Summary: Very Slow!
Review: A galactic catastrophe releases radiation on the Earth, which in effect destroys all computer chips. As a result any technology created after 1980 is rendered useless. Additionally the radiation causes weather and other conditions that wipeout significant portions of South America and Asia. Like the novel Lucifer's Hammer, the remainder focuses on specific survivors to the tragedy. However, where Lucifer's Hammer had very intriguing characters and a fast-flowing exciting plot, this book lulls you to sleep for almost 300 pages until anything interesting happens. This is when group of Mars explorers attempt a very dangerous re-entry to the Earth's atmosphere. On top of this a serial child killer and a leader of a fanatical cult are released from "judicial sleep." (This is a method of keeping the person asleep during their incarceration. Persons with extremely long sentences would just sleep until they died). The child killer just happens to be one of the few people still alive that can help some terminal cancer patients. Yeah right! The other main part of the story centers around the president and his inability to perform sexually and his problem with a former girlfriend. I found it very hard to not just skip over these pages while I was reading them.
Rating:
Summary: Very Slow!
Review: A galactic catastrophe releases radiation on the Earth, which in effect destroys all computer chips. As a result any technology created after 1980 is rendered useless. Additionally the radiation causes weather and other conditions that wipeout significant portions of South America and Asia. Like the novel Lucifer's Hammer, the remainder focuses on specific survivors to the tragedy. However, where Lucifer's Hammer had very intriguing characters and a fast-flowing exciting plot, this book lulls you to sleep for almost 300 pages until anything interesting happens. This is when group of Mars explorers attempt a very dangerous re-entry to the Earth's atmosphere. On top of this a serial child killer and a leader of a fanatical cult are released from "judicial sleep." (This is a method of keeping the person asleep during their incarceration. Persons with extremely long sentences would just sleep until they died). The child killer just happens to be one of the few people still alive that can help some terminal cancer patients. Yeah right! The other main part of the story centers around the president and his inability to perform sexually and his problem with a former girlfriend. I found it very hard to not just skip over these pages while I was reading them.
Rating: 
Summary: What a dissapointment!
Review: After a slam-bang beginning, most of Sheffield's characters fall into idiot mode. Major world leaders make world-changing decisions based on fifteen minute interviews with 'experts' they've never met before. Insane bad guys set inexperienced teens to guard their captives while lots of more experienced people take the night off. Want to sleep in the White House? Just ask. Aides with no security experience will give you the run of the place. Perhaps worst are scientific explanations that drone on for pages, and are then repeated four or five chapters later. Nothing comes to any kind of conclusion, not even the execrable 'wait for the next episode in book two' sort of conclusion that S.F. has fallen prey to in the last twenty years. All that said, Sheffield's writing style is so deft and his characters so engaging that one can forgive him almost anything. His work is head and shoulders better that the dreck that many a best seller puts out.
Rating: 
Summary: Exhilirating,real,apocalyptic tune,very real and possible
Review: As a reader and absorber of scientic writtings,both science-fiction and real,this book is a great reading.And surprisingly,this is my first reading of shefield.very great science author.The apocalyptic tune of the book is real.Very inflaming,possible and a story that reminds us all that the technological gadgets around us may not be able to help[ us all someday,and both nature and our actions can render them useless ,and could fail us all.The book is a great apocalyptic masterpiece,and i enjoyed it.the book is also a serious reminder of how our last days could look,the end of time.A serious survivalism book,the events that will eventually put us all on the survival mode is the fear of all establishments and mankind,and we are doing all we can to avoid it,b=ut it can happen,it does happen everyday thru a lot of accidents that we all see.I think the book is great.A thumbs up
Rating:
Summary: The race to the bottom
Review: Here's a typical tale - you pick up a book that has a surefire plot - Alpha Centauri goes nova and all microchips on Earth are destroyed. You read the first few pages or so at the bookstore and become convinced you have a winner. At home, though, after the initial action over the nova settles down you begin your journey to Dullsville. There's the matter of survivors and they're not your next door neighbors. Group 1 is a cult that worships a lady who has been arrested and placed in a penitential coma (think "Minority Report"). Group 2- three cancer victims who just happened to need the help of someone who - guess what? - is also in a coma. Then there is a scientist and a madman joined in a symbiotic relationship. Where are the real people you and I know??? It gets worse. The "science" is, well, take one randome selecgtion: Millions of chips are found in a mountain hideout but are too old to use. So some guy "slaps a bunch together in parallel" and now they can create holograms. Right, and I'm Elvis. President Steinmetz gets in on the action with a lot of fakey dialogue...politics as usual. He tries to hold the world together and sure enough, gets the advice he needs at the last minute to save the day. But no, at the end we discover that the REAL danger is not here yet - "energy particles that can rip through both skin and the flimsy shield we've constructed. What to do, what to do? Oh well, the sequel will provide all the answers.
Rating:
Summary: The race to the bottom
Review: Here's a typical tale - you pick up a book that has a surefire plot - Alpha Centauri goes nova and all microchips on Earth are destroyed. You read the first few pages or so at the bookstore and become convinced you have a winner. At home, though, after the initial action over the nova settles down you begin your journey to Dullsville. There's the matter of survivors and they're not your next door neighbors. Group 1 is a cult that worships a lady who has been arrested and placed in a penitential coma (think "Minority Report"). Group 2- three cancer victims who just happened to need the help of someone who - guess what? - is also in a coma. Then there is a scientist and a madman joined in a symbiotic relationship. Where are the real people you and I know??? It gets worse. The "science" is, well, take one randome selecgtion: Millions of chips are found in a mountain hideout but are too old to use. So some guy "slaps a bunch together in parallel" and now they can create holograms. Right, and I'm Elvis. President Steinmetz gets in on the action with a lot of fakey dialogue...politics as usual. He tries to hold the world together and sure enough, gets the advice he needs at the last minute to save the day. But no, at the end we discover that the REAL danger is not here yet - "energy particles that can rip through both skin and the flimsy shield we've constructed. What to do, what to do? Oh well, the sequel will provide all the answers.
Rating:
Summary: After taste is more like it
Review: I enjoyed the first third of this book when the disaster was unfolding. Once the people moved front and center it was still interesting, if a lot less exciting. But, while the premise held promise (if no scientific credence),things started going downhill rapidly when the focus turned more to diddling than disaster. Am I the only one who finds pages devoted to whether two old guys get laid a bit out of place here? And, as we started running out of pages, I realized I was going to have to buy ANOTHER book to find out how it ends. That may make the author rich but it's patently unfair to the reader. I bought a whole book; I expect a whole story. Lucifer's Hammer is, hands down, one of the best. This is, hands down, not.
Rating:
Summary: Dull
Review: I gave it two stars because I never actually finished it and it could have magically gotten better at the end. The beginning never takes off in my opinion. If the nation is in chaos I want to know how people are surviving, not have to plod through pages of the prez's get together with his "beautiful" aide while he internlly moralizes to himself about whether or not he should sleep with her. YAWN. Lucifer's Hammer, Alas Babylon, Cancticle for Liebowitz all MUCH better.
Rating:
Summary: Disappointing and Moderately Chauvinist
Review: I generally like Sheffield, but this was a disappointment. He had absolutely no grasp of female reproductive biology on the fifth-grade level--which was not what the book was primarily about, but it was distracting. He also lifted the attitudes of an older middle-age man right now and set them down, whole, in 2026--when people my age (in college) will be that age. Not a good idea: social mores have changed a lot! If you want good Sheffield, read something else.
Rating:
Summary: Great along the way, forgot to have a climax.
Review: I have mixed feelings about this title. I liked the story fairly much, and would recommend it, except for one thing: It forgot to have a CLIMAX!! (Don't you just hate it when that happens?) I can't go into much detail without it being "spoiler territory". You've got much political intrigue with a splinter faction of congressmen plotting against the president. Will they get him thrown out? Would they assasinate him? You've got the lunatic group of underground folks led by the crazy lady, perhaps 10,000 strong, and armed, looking for the right time to start a "cleansing" revolution. You've got the general collapse of infrastructure, a la "Lucifer's Hammer", that could trigger any number of things. You've got a Hannibal Lecter mass murder-type, but a genius with gene therapy, with a highly charged symbiotic relationship between him and some characters that he becomes involved with. Wow, what a setup for 50-100 pages of multiple climaxes! (I'll skip the joke here). You know what happens? Nothing!! All these plotliines fizzle to nothing. Not even one is advanced to a satisfactory (IMHO) conclusion. <sigh> A good start with a very weak finish. I checked the cover of the book for a "Part 1 of 2" label, but there was none.
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