The New Madrid Run

Rating:
Summary: Engrossing.
Review: The New Madrid Run

The post-apocalypse genre of novels has always been one of my guilty pleasures. (My wife kids me that it's a "sure sign of a sick mind.") While this novel doesn't rank with "Lucifer's Hammer," "The Stand," "Alas, Babylon," or "Warday," I enjoyed it nevertheless.

I noted in some previous reviews that some readers found cause to savage Mr. Reisig's writing abilities. To a degree, I concur with some of them. (Although certainly not to the extent that I'd agree with one reviewer that his writing is "amateurish.") The sentence structure is awkward at times, the dialog doesn't always flow so well, and character development is a little sketchy.

However, those limitations notwithstanding, the story line of this novel has loads of punch, and Mr. Reisig's spare, direct, journalist's style fairly careens the reader through the plot. The author seems much less infatuated with the thesaurus than most new novelists, and that's refreshing in itself.

All in all, I found "The New Madrid Run" pretty doggone engrossing, and for readers who enjoy this genre, that's recommendation enough. HJ

Rating:
Summary: Don't bother
Review: Don't bother. If you're expecting a tense, insightful sci-fi/apocolyptic fiction, read elsewhere. If you're looking for the Old West meets cliche Hollywood action, this is more your speed. Story predictable, characters flat and stereotyped (strong silent type, hot blonde, Japanese sensei, drunken southern boat pilot, mute boy, silly Latino etc.), plot mildly tense at rare times. Not very insightful or reflective for a cataclysm book. Good for NBC movie of the week, not for good reading.

Rating:
Summary: Quite A Ride!
Review: This novel is based on the theory by Richard Noone that an alignment of the planets on 5-5-2000 will shift the earth's rotating axis and possibly cause massive earthquakes and tsunamis. Well, obviously that has not happened (yet), but who knows what disasters await us in the future, man-made or not.

Nevertheless, this story is a fascinating account, how the survivors meet, and how they managed in a hostile world after the loss of civilization. One of them, Carlos, will have you laughing a lot. Travis Christian is the principle character, and with him as with the others character development is excellent. Travis was an owner of a charter air service in the Florida Keys before the catastrophe, and attempts to lead a group of survivors out of harms way. At times (most of the book) the story will have you turning the pages to see what happens, as I found myself caring for these characters. If you like action, there is plenty of it here.

Rating:
Summary: Three and a half stars - decent, original post-apoc. book
Review: While some reviewers tend to focus on the negative aspects of a book, I would prefer to look at a work's positive points. Michael Reisig's first major novel, The New Madrid Run, published by an independent press in Arkansas, is an interesting experiment not only in post-apocalyptic literature but in publishing itself.

The premise of the novel is a little far-fetched: a violent shift in the Earth's magnetic poles causes massive earthquakes and tidal waves, and the main character, a pilot and sailor in the Florida Keys, makes for some property he bought a long time ago in Arkansas for this express purpose. On the way, he picks up some characters, meets some other characters, and eventually heads to a showdown with the main bad guy, a kind of survivalist general who has commandeered much of the local National Guard supplies.

So the story isn't original (even if the disaster premise is), it ends too quickly, the characters don't show much real development, and the villain is a cutout stereotype. So what? Reisig breaks post-apocalyptic convention on two important counts: first, New Madrid Run, like The Postman (from which it obviously draws inspiration), does not revel in the downfall of civilization. It isn't some big free-for-all, where extreme libertarians don't have to pay taxes to the Evil Gub'ment ™ no more, and might makes right (although the bad guys are dispersed by guns). Second, like The Postman, the survivalists are the bad guys. In an overmined genre, it's refreshing to see at least a semi-sane take on the realities of a post-disaster America.

All in all, Reisig has created an interesting read. The prose, while not Nabokov, flows nicely, and there are only a few times where the reader thinks that an experienced editor might have helped the novel. For that is the other means by which Reisig defied convention; going through a small, on-demand press, he circumvented normal publishing routes and created a book and successfully marketed it both on the Internet and in his area. No mean feat, that, and it beats having to pay an agent to sell your manuscript (although another editing eye is always helpful). Certainly not a method for every writer, but one that is to be admired. The product of these endeavors, while entirely satisfying, belongs on any post-apocalyptic aficionado's shelf, if only for the premise alone. For those who enjoy a decent action romp, there are worse ways to spend your time.

Rating:
Summary: Predictable Inept Bigotry
Review: The New Madrid Run is a clumsy attempt at a post-apocalyptic action novel. The writer's paranoid political opinions are obvious throughout the book and their inclusion does nothing to advance the story. To say this book is poorly written is an understatement. More organized and coherent prose has been written in junior high fiction classes. The New Madrid Run is a novel of survivalist self-masturbation which applauds itself for hatred of centralized government, cities, technology, packaged goods and office workers.

Characters are one-dimensional stereotypes that are racist more often than not. Apparently, after the apocalypse the only people left alive in Arkansas will be white (I thought a high percentage of the South was black).

Many characters are introduced merely to be used as obvious victims in a weak attempt to gain a quick emotional reaction from the reader. This method is used in books and movies when the writers don't invest the time to develop good stories, but seek shortcuts because they're too lazy to create the emotions to tell their story. When will writers stop creating characters which are either all evil or all good!?! Actual people don't exhibit these absolute positions, so why must readers continue to be subjected to psychopathic villains with no redeeming qualities and toothy heroes with no flaws.

I wish I had back the hours I spent reading this book. Twenty pages into it, I knew I had a stinker.

You have been warned!

Rating:
Summary: Terrible prose - if you can stand it, you might like plot
Review: There are few books I abandon after only a couple of chapters but this was one. Cliche-ridden prose, with a number of grammatical errors, finally ran me off. As far as I can tell from paging through the book the plot is kind of interesting, but you should only read this book if truly bad writing does not bother you.
(Maybe there's a reason one of the author's other books extols the advantages of "self-publishing.")

Rating:
Summary: A "Rocker" of an EarthQuake Story!
Review: This was a great book. Some of the characters were shallow, in fact, some of them were virtually transparent. However, the story line itself was wonderful. A suspenseful "killer-earthquake" novel, it took me only ONE day to finish it. The dialogue was cheesy at times, but I would recommend it either way!!! ...

Rating:
Summary: Talk about overhyped
Review: This book was...well, words fail me. I suspect if you are not terribly picky about what you read, you might enjoy it; it is a page-turner in the sense of not taking too long to read any single page. The stereotyping, however, blew me away, and really detracted from what might have been a better story otherwise. I further suspect a lot of folks may read this and think it describes the world the way they wish it worked, or the way they think it should work, so it's probably nice escapist fodder.

But not nearly as good as some reviews had led me to believe.

Rating:
Summary: Great Adventure!!
Review: I really enjoyed "The New Madrid Run" by Michael Reisig. He took
all the "much predicted" climatic and archaeologic catastrophes
and made them into an adventure. A "what it could be like".....
adventure. Along the way he developed some great characters, the
Sensei, the Preacher (my favorite), Carlos, Mom & the boys, and
more. A very good read - I wish it had been longer.
R. J. Best
P.S. The wife couldn't put it down. Sharon Best

Rating:
Summary: The New Madrid Run
Review: "What a teriffic read!
One adventure after another packed into 300 pages.I'm a fairly picky reader, but I could not put this one down.
I just started Resig's new one,"Brothers Of The Sword"--It's
the same high adventure, with a more refined writing style.
Keep it up Resig, I'm waiting for the next one!
A southern reader.