The prologue opens with MARTIN JEFFRIES frantically runs through a fire to rescue a young girl before passing out.
Twenty-one years earlier, Martin meeting MONICA at a bar in Gainesville, Fl. Monica convinces Martin to right an exposé on astronomer Dr. STEVEN HUTCHINSON. However, there is a fire the night of the Lecture so Martin has to send his field reporter JESSICA SCOBBLES to cover the story in his place.
After the lecture, Jessica has a private interview with Dr. Hutchinson, where he reveals that he has discovered an unknown object that will have a devastating collision with Earth within the next 20 years, but Martin thinks it is a joke. Martin then invites Monica to dinner where they become infatuated with one another. Jessica goes missing the day before her article about Hutchinson is about to run.
Two days …show more content…
While the characters and the romantic subplot are very strong, the overall flow is very choppy making it difficult for the reader to engage with world or the characters that inhabit it.
The fractured time-line really hurts the pacing of the narrative. The plot comes to halt around page one hundred. Martin just finishes his television standoff with Allison and reveals he knows she had something to do with Jessica’s death, but immediately afterward, the story jumps eleven years later and becomes bogged down by intricate explanations of how Monica can adjust the asteroids trajectory. These jumps not only make it difficult with the reader to fully engage with the events taking place, it also robs the narrative tension built from the first one hundred pages of the story.
Furthermore, the prologue leads the reader to believe that the apocalypse was preordained, but it turns out that scene was foreshadowing Martin saving Jessie from a wildfire. This coupled with the ambiguous ending felt like an abuse of the reader’s trust for a mediocre
Twenty-one years earlier, Martin meeting MONICA at a bar in Gainesville, Fl. Monica convinces Martin to right an exposé on astronomer Dr. STEVEN HUTCHINSON. However, there is a fire the night of the Lecture so Martin has to send his field reporter JESSICA SCOBBLES to cover the story in his place.
After the lecture, Jessica has a private interview with Dr. Hutchinson, where he reveals that he has discovered an unknown object that will have a devastating collision with Earth within the next 20 years, but Martin thinks it is a joke. Martin then invites Monica to dinner where they become infatuated with one another. Jessica goes missing the day before her article about Hutchinson is about to run.
Two days …show more content…
While the characters and the romantic subplot are very strong, the overall flow is very choppy making it difficult for the reader to engage with world or the characters that inhabit it.
The fractured time-line really hurts the pacing of the narrative. The plot comes to halt around page one hundred. Martin just finishes his television standoff with Allison and reveals he knows she had something to do with Jessica’s death, but immediately afterward, the story jumps eleven years later and becomes bogged down by intricate explanations of how Monica can adjust the asteroids trajectory. These jumps not only make it difficult with the reader to fully engage with the events taking place, it also robs the narrative tension built from the first one hundred pages of the story.
Furthermore, the prologue leads the reader to believe that the apocalypse was preordained, but it turns out that scene was foreshadowing Martin saving Jessie from a wildfire. This coupled with the ambiguous ending felt like an abuse of the reader’s trust for a mediocre