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Flood | 
 enlarge | Author: Stephen Baxter
Publisher: Gollancz
Category: Book
List Price: £12.99
Buy New: £7.04
You Save: £5.95 (46%)
New (22) Used (3) from £7.04
Rating:  7 reviews
Sales Rank: 6324
Media: Paperback
Pages: 480
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6 x 1.5
ISBN: 0575080582
EAN: 9780575080584
ASIN: 0575080582
Publication Date: July 17, 2008
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews: Read 2 more reviews...
 A bit wishy washy.... August 26, 2008
R. Burgeman (London, UK)
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
I have read some stuff in my time, but pseudo psycho science babble like this really takes some beating. To call the book implausible is doing a misservice to the word implausible. Not the science, mind you. That I can live with and why it gets two stars rather than one.
No, it is the stream of two dimensional cartoon characters that populate the drowning world that drove me to distraction and the endless clichés. And to say this book shows mankinds humanity as one of the formal reviewers does above makes me think that whoever it is has read a different book to me.
This is OK as a book to read on the beach (if you'll pardon the pun), but The Kraken Wakes it is not. That said, I did finish it!
 it could have been a good film - but it's not August 11, 2008
F. Lane (London UK)
0 out of 12 found this review helpful
I read the book that this film purports to be based on back in the 70s - I live in the East End of London and knew the places described in the book and could imagine them under twelve feet of water - and I avoided the Underground for quite some time after reading it!
I'd heard that this film was'nt much good, so I waited till it was cheap enough on the High Street for me not to care if I wasted only a few quid.
Let's take the points that led me to that conclusion: the Barrier is run by a woman with the American accent that's obligatory in British films; her ex-husband runs the engineering firm responsible for maintaining the Barrier, and his father is the "lone voice" that no one believes until it's almost too late. Cue unneccessary family tensions, rows, and eventual reconciliations in the compulsory happy ending.
So far, so bad. Now, let's take the scenario: You are on one of the Barrier "islands" when the storm surge hits. It's so big that it actually overtops the closed Barrier gates and so strong that the whole Barrier creaks and groans with the force of it. What do you do? Stay with the Barrier in the hope thatit will withstand the force of the water? or do you jump and swim through water that a moment before was poweful enough to threaten the structure of the Thames Barrier but which miraculously now becomes as just a bit of a current?
And when the flood sweeps you down into the Underground tunnels and you're running from the water that's chasing you (but never quite catches up) and you get a little ahead of it, do you a) keep running like hell or b) stop and have a rest with violins in the background? and when the water catches you up and you slam a thin metal door in its face do you a) contineue running like hell or b) stand there and watch the door until it bursts open?
When the "one voice" decides that the only way to get the water out of London is by opening the sluice gates of all the rivers that flow into the Thames, and he and his family go to the Barrier to open the gates to let the receding flood out. the room that they need to get to is flooded and the access tunnels are flooded - and then we find out that there's only one oxygen bottle on the whole Barrier and whoever goes to open the gates will run out of air before the room drains. No one thinks of getting more oxygen - no one thought that the tunnels might be flooded so we'd better take some more air with us - no, it's left to the last minute before the "death sentence" is unveiled.
There are a lot more egregious moments in this film but these are all I can remember offhand. Too much Hollywood, not enough real people.
I was also disappointed that there were no documentaries in the Bonus Material - nothing about the 1953 flood (which is my earliest memory), nothing about the real chances of future flooding.
All in all, I'm glad I waited before buying this - I only wasted four quid.
 Disturbing but gripping August 8, 2008
Andrew M. Colin (Australia)
I've not read such a disturbing end-of-the-world account since 'On The Beach'. Humanity's gradual extinction in the face of relentless and unstoppable events is troubling but fascinating. And the description of an England buried beyond all recovery, overrun by deep-sea creatures, will stay with you for a long time. I can't wait for the sequel.
 So So Disaster Epic August 5, 2008
Time Traveller
Entertaining, if unexceptional, eco-thriller based on an extreme and wildly improbable scenario, presumably for those who find the realities of Global Heating just a little too mundane.
The author does a reasonable job of maintaining human interest, but it suffers from predictability and being just too much a book of its time.
 Damp and worrying August 5, 2008
Mr. M. Hanlon (London, UK)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
For some reason the end of the world is rarely terrifying. From even the nastiest plagues, the most ferocious wars, the most apocalyptic asteroid strikes or alien invasions there is usually hope - hope of recovery, of rebuilding, a glimmer of light at the end of a long dark tunnel.
The brilliant thing about Flood is the sheer lack of hope. For once you lose the land you lose everything. Any terrestrial species, however brilliant, is doomed from the moment the waves lap around the highest mountains. Baxter at his hard sci-fi best here, providing a plausible mechanism for an implausible catastrophe. The episodic treatment works well and the characters, although a tad cliched (the grizzled old astronaut, a brace of plucky hardbody female scientists, several annoying teenagers) are engaging enough to carry the story along.
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