Mayday

Title: Mayday

Author: Thomas H. Block

Genre: Thriller, Mystery, Suspense

Pages: 346 pages

Synopsis:

Twelve miles above the Pacific Ocean, a missile strikes a jumbo passenger jet. The flight crew is crippled or dead. Now, defying both nature and man, three survivors must achieve the impossible. Land the plane. From master storyteller Nelson DeMille and master pilot Thomas Block comes Mayday, the classic bestseller that packs a supersonic shock at every turn of the page….the most terrifyingly realistic air disaster thriller ever. Like a growing tidal wave, the escaping air was gathering momentum. A teenaged girl in aisle 18, seat D, near the port-side aisle, her seat dislocated by the original impact, suddenly found herself gripping her seat track on the floor, her overturned seat still strapped to her body. The seatbelt failed and the seat shot down the aisle. She lost her grip and was dragged after it. Her eyes were filled with horror as she dug her nails into the carpet, as the racing air pulled her toward the yawning hole that led outside. Her cries were unheard by even those passengers who sat barely inches away from her struggle. The noise of the escaping air was so loud that it was no longer decipherable as sound, but seemed instead a solid thing pounding at the people in their seats……

(from Goodreads)

My Thoughts:

Mayday is a story about survival after a military exercise went wrong and a missile hit a passenger airline. Five survivors now have to find a way to safety, all while dealing with trying to find a place to safely land the plane, deal with the brain damaged passengers and a storm.

Mayday is an interesting story, as there is so much going against our protagonists that it makes their journey for survival all the more interesting. In addition with dealing with issues such as a storm and not running out of fuel and how to land the plane, they have to deal with the brain damaged passengers, a military commander trying to cover this up and the Insurance Company of the Airline wanting to make sure the plane doesn’t make it back.

While I hate to call the brain damaged passengers “zombies” as technically they are not dead. They do exhibit enough of the typical “zombie” behaviour that they practically are zombies. And it definitely does help raise the stakes and the tensions for our main characters.

The characters of John Berry and Sharon Crandal were great characters that when we get their point of views, we really understand what they are going through in this book. And I do like the ending that these two characters got in the end. John, Sharon and Linda are characters you want to see survive.

However, I do have a few issues with this book. Some of the POV changes very abruptly which made me a little confused at times.

Also the beginning of the story started being a little boring but fortunately it does get interesting.

I was also a little disappointed with the ending of the novel. While I am happy for our three main character’s ending. I hated the way the main antagonist, Commander Sloan of the novel was defeated. We don’t see our main antagonist get defeated, instead we are told about his defeat that completely happens off-screen. I’m sorry but we need to be shown how our main antagonist was defeated. As Commander Sloan was the true antagonist of this novel and we need to see his defeat for closure and it would have made the novel’s ending better in my opinion. Simply being told what happened is very anti-climatic and such a lame way of knowing what happened to our main antagonist. Show don’t tell!

Overall, I still like Mayday despite it’s flaws. It’s a good story with characters you want to see survive and it’s a pretty good time overall. I recommend it if you want to have a quick read about an airplane disaster.

Rating: