Rating: 
Summary: Looking for a thrill?...
Review: ...Well, you won't find it here. If it's an aviation thriller fix you need, you'll be better off re-reading Coontz. If it's a doomsday pathogen thriller you want, just stick to Outbreak or Hot Zone. Nance's horribly derivative and tediously predictable little book deserve kudos for being well timed, riding on the coat-tails of the better written hysterical germ scare boom books, and for having a good basic plot idea, but Nance's ham-handed generic style ruins it. Characters are shallow, plot "twists" transparent, character action is so contrived and the logic is unbelievable. Nance was perhaps swept up in a mediocre mini-series mantra, as ultimately that is the only thing this novel is suited for, unless one counts it as a good example of bad writing and plans to learn from it. Yes, I know, "If the book was so awful, why did you finish it?" Because I am an optimist, a foolish optimist. I was hoping against hope that the book would improve and show some originality, display a little cerebral flair, just a little... But it didn't. From start to finish it was a "bad" book, an awful waste of ink, glue and paper. Lucky you if you purchased the audiotape version; get a little Scotch tape over those holes and use it to preserve something more worthy of the time. To the thrift shop is my copy banished, doomed to languish on dusty shelves without anything interesting to say. And if you absolutely must read about a doomed airplane, read Mayday!Mayday! Now that at least is a fun read, dealing with depressurisation of an airplane. Unlike Payne Stewart's Learjet, there are survivors of the depressurisation. While there are some similarities between Pandora's Clock and Mayday!Mayday!, the latter novel's publishing precedes it by some twenty years, and the tone is not derivative but absorbing.
Rating: 
Summary: YOU HAVE TO READ IT
Review: A story that won't let you put down the book until you reached the last page. ....This all can happen to anybody of us every day.....
Rating: 
Summary: An OK book until the disappointing ending
Review: At the end of this novel, we find that all the passengers have been infected with the virus. Luckily for them, the virus has mutated into a nonfatal strain. Mr. Nance doesn't seem to have realized that an entire population does not mutate spontaneously to produce a new, avirulent population. Mutations are random events that happen to individual organisms. This was an incredible letdown.Also, at the end of the novel, Captain Holland asks Rachel, one of the passengers, to marry him. Excuse me, he's known her for what, a few days, and he's decided he wants to spend the rest of his life with her? What is this, a Harlequin romance? I'd say the only good part of the novel was the start, where the plane is constantly being turned away from airports. That was well-plotted and written. Unfortunately Mr. Nance needs to do some homework on genetics, and get the rose-colored stars out of his eyes.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent read!
Review: Best Book i've read in a long time. Definitally worth reading, no doudt about it. Amazing book.
Rating:
Summary: Just incredible!
Review: Do not miss this extremely suspenseful airborne thriller, written, I must add, by a commercial pilot who knows what he's on about when it comes to flying! The story starts in Germany when an American tourist is acosted by a fugitive from a bioresearch lab. Later, on board Flight 66 from Frankfurt to New York, the tourist dies of a heart attack. But it is later learned that the fugitive was carrying a disease engineered by a germ warfare weapon in an East German lab, and soon enough, several people are ill on the flight fall ill with the deisease which is apparently deadlier than Ebola. The European authorities refuse to let the plane land, even at Mildenhall air base in the UK, and the 747 is rerouted to Keflavik in Iceland where it is kept under guard. One passenger is shot trying to escape. The CIA, under orders from the President, reroute the 747 to Africa and a remote airfield . . . but hang on, this isn't all! Add to this a rogue CIA officer trying to do a deal with a Middle Eastern terrorist to blow up the plane, a final solution plot to nuke the 747, two FBI agents trying to uncover the truth X-Files style, terrified passengers and a crew doing all they can to overcome their problems which get worse and worse as the odds are stacked higher . . . you have a first rate thriller which I dare you to put down! Anyone who loves thrills in the highest league will love this novel. It was also made into an excellent 2-part TV mini-series which was known as DOOMSDAY VIRUS in the UK - Richard Dean Anderson was perfect in the role of Captain James T. Holland, the story's main character. A must purchase.
Rating:
Summary: Swift and suspenseful - totally brilliant!
Review: From the opening pages, Pandora`s Clock grabbed my attention. It never wasted any time in getting straight into action. Despite the goofs with the plane crash dates (the Tenerife one was 1976, not 1986), this is highly entertaining and is a book you must read. The characters are not the usual run-of-the-mill airplane disaster movie stereotypes, Nance gives them much depth without going too deep. The story as a whole is about the right length and contains simple prose yet with all the technicalities explained so even if you are not an aviation expert, you will still find this fascinating. With hints of Clive Cussler and Alistair MacLean`s styles of sheer fast-moving thrills, and plenty of good locales used, this will knock your socks off. Slightly better than the TV adaptation which was called Doomsday Virus here in the UK, and broadcast recently. But then the books normally are. This is my first John J. Nance book and my wife will be next to read this. I`m certainly going to read more of him!
Rating: 
Summary: a must
Review: Great book! Read it if you like suspenseful novels
Rating:
Summary: TICK TICK TIME RUNNING OUT
Review: I am one of those people who is terrified of flying. I have only done it when absolutely necessary. After reading "Pandora's Clock", I don't think I'll EVER get on a plane again. Quite a chilling premise, and overall, well told by Mr. Nance.
I sometimes felt that the dialogue was not realistic, and some of the scenes felt redundant and not totally necessary. The characters are fun to "ride" with---Captain Holland and aide Rachel are typical hero figure and very likeable. Holland's nemesis on the plane, a smarty-pants "reviewer" starts out pretty obnoxious, but turns out to be okay at the end. The chemistry between Rusty and Sherry Ellis is fun and provides some additional levity. Eager beaver and acting CIA director Jonathan Roth is one of those people John Lithgow or Tim Roth would play, and is effectively menacing. The killer Russian pilot Yuri is an interesting character, although what happens at the end with him is a little far-fetched. Nice climactic scene at the end, though, and does offer that chilling fear of "What would happen if this really happened?"
RECOMMENDED.
Rating:
Summary: TICK TICK TIME RUNNING OUT
Review: I am one of those people who is terrified of flying. I have only done it when absolutely necessary. After reading "Pandora's Clock", I don't think I'll EVER get on a plane again. Quite a chilling premise, and overall, well told by Mr. Nance.
I sometimes felt that the dialogue was not realistic, and some of the scenes felt redundant and not totally necessary. The characters are fun to "ride" with---Captain Holland and aide Rachel are typical hero figure and very likeable. Holland's nemesis on the plane, a smarty-pants "reviewer" starts out pretty obnoxious, but turns out to be okay at the end. The chemistry between Rusty and Sherry Ellis is fun and provides some additional levity. Eager beaver and acting CIA director Jonathan Roth is one of those people John Lithgow or Tim Roth would play, and is effectively menacing. The killer Russian pilot Yuri is an interesting character, although what happens at the end with him is a little far-fetched. Nice climactic scene at the end, though, and does offer that chilling fear of "What would happen if this really happened?"
RECOMMENDED.
Rating:
Summary: Gripping thriller with some unnecessary character buildup!!
Review: I am starting to be a fan of John J. Nance after reading "Headwind." That book was fast-paced from beginning to end. It was like reading two books in one. Pandora's clock is good but not as compelling as Headwind. I felt that the story was coming from watching all those air disaster movies from the past. Pandora's Clock is about a biological virus that has infected a Boeing 747.
The story focuses on two parts of this deliema.
One: If the virus is contagious, will it infect the population
Two: What do we do with the passenger? In flight, the pilot of the Boeing 747 has to decide what to do when he finds out that his aircraft might be infected. But on the ground, the CIA suspects the aircraft as a threat. Now what does the pilot do? Does he follow orders or does he take things in his own hands. This is a gripping thriller that will have you turning the pages to find out what happens next. In beginning it might take some time to get into the story, but by the end it would have seem like time passed fast. I gave it a four star because the story moved and the overall book was good. I would have given it a 5, but there was some unnecessary talk with passengers that have nothing to do with the plot. I felt like I was reading a book version of past air disaster movies like "Airport", where there was unnecessary slowing down to create emotion with the passengers. Stick to the main characters and we will decide how the passengers would fell.
|
