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A review by richardrbecker
Down to a Sunless Sea by David Graham
dark
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.75
Remove the first 30 percent of Down to a Sunless Sea by David Graham, and you have an excellent disaster novel with six hundred passengers and crew aboard a jumbo jetliner flying high above the end of the world. They are traveling from New York to Heathrow when the nuclear war breaks out, eliminating both their departure city and destination.
As the crew scrambles to find an alternative landing site, the nuclear exchange quickly erases each one from consideration. There is no safe place on the planet, except one small runway on an island in the Azores. The people there were hit too, but by a neutron bomb — a weapon deemed too terrible to mass produce at the time it was written. When the public looked elsewhere, world powers made them anyway.
Although criticized for modeling itself after On the Beach, Down to a Sunless Sea manages to salvage itself as an aviation-suspense story. Where the story works is that the crew doesn't witness the nuclear exchange as much as they hear about it from ground control and other aircraft. Later, they see some of the aftermath — dark and heavy radioactive clouds blotting out the sun.
Eventually, Captain Jonah Scott noodles out a solution with the help of onboard advisors and a few allies over the radio. Antarctica may be their only hope, assuming they can get there. The problem, of course, is that the math doesn't work out. The ratio of passengers to supplies is less than ideal, and the doomsday clock for the survivors is ticking.
The book is excellent overall, especially because Graham took the time to exhaustively research the business of flying planes. Had he researched the rest, he might have skipped the first third of the book that paints a near-future when America faces an energy-crisis-fueled economic collapse, making it an easy target for Russia after Israel launches an unexplained strike against its neighbors. All that is a little thin, but the balance still manages to carry it over the finish line.
As the crew scrambles to find an alternative landing site, the nuclear exchange quickly erases each one from consideration. There is no safe place on the planet, except one small runway on an island in the Azores. The people there were hit too, but by a neutron bomb — a weapon deemed too terrible to mass produce at the time it was written. When the public looked elsewhere, world powers made them anyway.
Although criticized for modeling itself after On the Beach, Down to a Sunless Sea manages to salvage itself as an aviation-suspense story. Where the story works is that the crew doesn't witness the nuclear exchange as much as they hear about it from ground control and other aircraft. Later, they see some of the aftermath — dark and heavy radioactive clouds blotting out the sun.
Eventually, Captain Jonah Scott noodles out a solution with the help of onboard advisors and a few allies over the radio. Antarctica may be their only hope, assuming they can get there. The problem, of course, is that the math doesn't work out. The ratio of passengers to supplies is less than ideal, and the doomsday clock for the survivors is ticking.
The book is excellent overall, especially because Graham took the time to exhaustively research the business of flying planes. Had he researched the rest, he might have skipped the first third of the book that paints a near-future when America faces an energy-crisis-fueled economic collapse, making it an easy target for Russia after Israel launches an unexplained strike against its neighbors. All that is a little thin, but the balance still manages to carry it over the finish line.