Product Description

The chances that Lucifer's Hammer would hit the earth head-on were one in a million. Then one in a thousand. Then one in a hundred...and then even less.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #416096 in Books
• Published on: 1981-12-31
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 638 pages

Customer Reviews

Gripping Stuff
I read this book about six years ago and just had to give it a review. Have you seen the films Deep Impact, or maybe Armageddon? You know - big asteroid heading for Earth, eek, send out the astronauts to sort it out, near miss ending etc... Well what if the asteroid hits? What happens then? Read this and find out.
Proper riveting survival-against-the-odds type of stuff. Well researched and splendidly written. Buy it and read it.

LUCIFERS HAMMER
I had looked forward to reading this book but halfway through I got bored .
I suppose for an American it must be quite entertaining to read about places in America and this book is like a tour of America with disasters along the way but being English I didnt recognise any of the places , also being America everybody has a gun and it quite wiling to shoot anyone in the way.
I cant help feeling it would be done very diferently this side of the pond .
Cheers

Brilliant in Parts Disturbing in Others
The book is about the effects of a comet hitting the earth and in particular the effects upon a varied group of individuals living in California. I have taken off one star for the amazingly slow start. I don't mind a decent build up but at 200 pages I was struggling to get through it. The attempts at suspense during this phase of the story fail as anyone reading the book knows the comet hits (it says so on the backcover!). Some of the characters preparations are interesting and I did look forward to the reactions of some of the characters but it took a while to get there.

Thankfully though the book really is pretty good once the comet hits. The descriptions of this and the natural disasters that follow are very good. There is then a part of the book which shows how the main characters coped and found saftey or didn't and again this is very good. I really felt for Tim Hamner when he got to the saftey of his observatory only to find it occupied by other survivors and for him to be refused entry. It was also a nice touch that they were not murders or maniacs but normal people who just wanted to survive and had to do what they were doing. Both Hamner and Randall's journey's through the flooded wasteland of California are suspense filled and scarey. Some characters disappear and are never heard from again during the novel and again I feel that this is realistic as many people would lose touch and never know what had happened to former friends.

The last section of the book focuses on "The Stronghold" which is a valley surrounded by high ridges that form a natural defence against nature and other groups. It is ran by Senator Jellison who had a Ranch House there. This part of the book is exciting although it did become a little more far fetched. The formation of the cannibal army is done well at first but it is later rushed when Armitage and his band join and this detracts from the realism. However the battle scenes between the Cannibals and the Stronghold are good and the fear and urge to run are well played out.

All in all this is a very good book. The start should have been shortened but otherwise it is very good. However I have taken another star of for some fairly pointless text (is the sex offender character at all necessary) and some dodgy racial sterotyping. There is only one black character in the book that is not a murderer, robber. general criminal or cannibal. In fact the cannibal army are started by a group of mostly black soldiers who kill their officer and start maruading the countryside who then join up with a group of all black criminals who were using the threat of the comet to rob rich white folk's houses. Far be it from me to doubt another reviewer but at 640 pages and with the first 3rd of the book being pretty slow I doubt that anyone has read the full thing in one night but stick with it through the first section as it does offer some rewards in the later sections.