Review: Well Done - should be adapted to video
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 07 7, 2014
Sedulity is a well done apocalyptic action thriller by Kindle standards, and I will certainly buy the sequel.  Author David Forsyth is imaginative and thorough with the plot, and his pacing had me ripping through it to find what came next.  I read Sedulity a second time the day I bought it, which is really unusual for me and evidence of Forsyth’s success in writing a good action story.The characters are marginally adequate but this is a Kindle story, and the loud offensive Texan will probably be improved in the sequel given the references to the cargo he is shipping on the cruise liner.I have major technical issues with the impact effects sequence on the liner, but this is an instance where the author had to Grandly Ignore reality for the sake of an effective story.  Movies and television do that all the time.  Plus, IMO, Sedulity has Hollywood potential both as a stand-alone movie and an on-going TV series.  Mr. Forsyth has created a background and plot/character setting which is well suited for video adaption and I hope he makes piles of money.  He deserves it and such success would inspire more good novels by imitators.Don’t let my technical quibbles below deter you from buying Sedulity. It is a cracking good story by itself and well worth buying on Kindle.  I’m just picky about the technical realism.  Gun people go off about firearms mistakes.  I do about simple physics.My technical issues are the complete absence of thermal pulse effects (in the first 30 seconds after impact), gross underestimation of blast effects, and unnecessary delay in official reaction to the impact.  The latter added nothing to the story while a prompt and realistic official reaction would not change any results.  Pacific rim coastal residents simply can’t get away fast enough from the impact and earthquake created tsunami effects even if the alert goes out an hour after the impact, while the long-term weather effects of the dead-on equatorial oceanic impact mean a Fimbul Winter followed by ice age onset.  Civilization of some sort might survive somewhere (Darwin is an excellent choice by Mr. Forsyth) but it won’t be anything we recognize.The thermal pulse problem is more critical than the underestimation of blast effects.  While a 33-37 psi blast overpressure from the 161 km distance between Sedulity and the impact site would quite bash in and rip away the ship’s superstructure, leaving it unnavigable and helpless against the initial blast tsunami wave amplitudes, that can be mitigated by moving the ship to a 250-300 km distance from the impact.  A 10-15 psi blast wave would IMO do the superstructure damage described by the author.But the initial thermal pulse from the impact fireball would, at 250-300 km, still fry everyone with a line of sight to the fireball.  Only those who could simply drop out of sight behind cover (such as bartender Armando dropping behind the bar in the Sky Room) might survive the thermal pulse.  Everyone in the Equator-crossing ceremony outside, i.e., all the other major characters save maybe the Texan, would suffer fatal burns in 3-10 seconds.  Even at 300 km from the impact.  The ship would be instantly ignited from the thermal pulse – even the exposed hull paint would char and possibly ignite.  While the blast wave would snuff out the exposed fires, the interior fires would destroy the ship, and certainly make it unmanueverable when the fatal tsunami impact wave arrives.Mr. Forsyth instead has all the impact heat effects on Sedulity arrive with the air blast wave.  This is utterly unrealistic but, for the sake of the story, also necessary.  I just hope this was a deliberate choice by the author rather than true ignorance by him.Plus the impact tsunami wave, to be as dramatically effective as he depicts, requires that Sedulity be 161 km from the impact.  The thrilling wave part of the story would be much less effective if the Sedulity was a survivable distance from the impact in terms of thermal pulse and blast wave effects.  Again, Hollywood is guilty here all the time, and Mr. Forsyth’s setting is well suited, if not ideally suited, for video adaptation.  I hope he pulls it off, and look forward to the next novel.