Publisher's Weekly Review
A solar storm known as a coronal mass ejection has struck Earth in this intelligent near-future thriller from bestseller Forstchen (The Final Day), his best book to date. Parts of the U.S. are without electricity, and some cities declare martial law to maintain control. But even as Americans struggle to deal with limited resources, a team of astronomers at the Helio Observation Center, headed by Dr. Richard Carrington, have detected an intense solar flare, nicknamed Sauron's Eye, which has the potential of wiping out humanity. Carrington is summoned to the White House to report his findings directly to the president, who wrestles over how to respond without causing mass panic. Meanwhile, Darren Brooks, a former police chief who now heads security at a massive underground storage facility in Lake of the Ozarks, Mo., must resolve a moral dilemma after he learns that the site, which includes supplies that could enable thousands to survive the calamity, is to be taken over by the military. Fans of apocalyptic thrillers such as the movie Deep Impact will be engrossed. Agent: Eleanor Wood, Spectrum Literary. (Jan.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
Forstchen knows how to terrify readers with realistic end-of-the-world scenarios, and his latest dive into humanity's endgame concerns an interstellar disaster with some historical precedent. The sun frequently blasts material from itself, and that coronal mass ejection usually heads out into space. What if this geomagnetic solar storm fell in the path of Earth's orbit? This happened in 1859. The so-called Carrington Event caused damage to the magnetosphere along with frying a lot of telegraph lines. With our reliance on technology much greater today than it was in the nineteenth century, how would we handle a similar catastrophe? Forstchen uses a mix of accurate science and history to construct a thriller centered on this frightening possibility. The characters are designed merely as tools to move forward the plot (and what appears to be the inevitability of doomsday), but the premise is so strong that many readers won't find the lack of multidimensional characters too much of a stumbling block. One hopes this book will serve as a wake-up call to protect us from the next solar storm.--Jeff Ayers Copyright 2019 Booklist
