Eyewall

By: H. W. "Buzz" Bernard

Narrated by: Marshall Seese

No one was aware of the storm's sudden force. Not the Hurricane Hunter crew trapped in its center. Not the family marooned on a resort island while searching for their missing teen. A deadly Category Five hurricane has never hit the Georgia coast in modern times.

Until now.

No one predicted the storm's sudden force. A crippled Air Force recon plane, trapped in the eye of a violent hurricane. An outspoken tropical weather forecaster, fired from his network TV job before he can issue a warning: the storm is changing course and intensifying. A desperate family searching for a runaway daughter on Georgia's posh St. Simons Island, cut off from escape as the hurricane roars toward them. A marriage on the rocks; an unrequited sexual attraction; a May-December romance. All will be swept up by the monster storm. Get ready for a white-knuckle adventure.

H.W. "Buzz" Bernard is a retired meteorologist who worked for 13 years at the Atlanta-based Weather Channel. He considers St. Simons Island his second home. Visit him at www.buzzbernard.com.

©2011 H.W. Buzz Bernard (P)2012 BelleBooks, Inc.

Critic reviews

"You can't put it down." (Jack Williams, science author and founding weather editor at USA Today)

"A one-sitting, white-knuckle read." (Vicki Hinze, award-winning author of Deadly Ties)

"An angry hurricane collides with the frailty and heroism of human nature...exciting and emotional." (Michael Buchanan, co-author and screenwriter of The Fat Boy Chronicles and Micah's Child)

A good first novel By Dr. Bernard

What did you like best about Eyewall? What did you like least?

Action surrounding the Hurricane Hunter aircraft was riveting, palpable. Good descriptions of St. Simons Island also. Author may need to flesh out his characters a bit more. But all in all a very entertaining listen. I intend to watch for his next 2 novels Dr. Bernard is working on.

How would you have changed the story to make it more enjoyable?

I would have worked less with the meteorological data explanations and built more backstory into the characters.

What about Marshall Seese’s performance did you like?

Enjoyed it. Good characterizations.

Do you think Eyewall needs a follow-up book? Why or why not?

I don't think a sequel is appropriate. Author tied up most of the character loose ends fairly well at the end of the work.

The book is kind of stormy, no pun intended

“Eyewall” written by H. W. "Buzz" Bernard and narrated by Marshall Seese is a natural disaster story in the likes of “The Poseidon Adventure” or “The Towering Inferno”. This story takes place during a hurricane that rapidly increases in intensity and goes off course decimating an island off the Georgian coast. The author wraps in various relationships that are not directly related to the story. If you are someone who enjoys book of the natural disaster genre or likes learning a great deal about weather, Eyewall might be a good book for you. I was amazed by the amount of research and depth that went into that part of the book. If you decide to pick up this book, I recommend you do it in digital format and not the audiobook for reasons I will cover later in the review.

The author did a great job of telling this story and educating the reader on the complexities of weather forecasting and the wonderful people who chase hurricanes and report on these massive storms. The author clearly understood his subject matter around weather related details and you can clearly see it is his passion. I did find the relationship and romantic aspects of the story lacking and rather forced or flat compared to others I have read. I did not find myself attached to any of the primary or secondary characters so I found it difficult to sympathize with their situation apart from it being another human facing tragedy. I just did not feel attached to any of them.

I wanted to really like this book, but I found it too flawed to recommend at least the audiobook edition. I was also somewhat disappointed at the amount of vulgar language used by almost all the characters; often when there was no need to be expressive where other words could have been used instead. I never pictured the characters speaking that way and it often cheapened my view of their level of education. Not only did the book contain strong language, it cannot be recommended for younger readers, it also included some graphic or crude sexual scenes or language that was not relevant to the story in any way. Again, most of this seemed flat, forced, and unnecessary. If you are easily offended by either of these, I would say that you may want to choose a different book.

Let me turn to the one aspect that ruined the book for me. First let me acknowledge that I know how difficult it is to narrate and record an audiobook, but I have listened to more than my share and often I do not come across one that has been so poorly edited as this one. There were issues with volume consistency, pauses not removed, page turns in the background, and often issues with the use of inflection. Again, these could be tolerated if you were talking about one or two events. That is not the case with this audiobook, almost every chapter has one or multiple and noticeable audio artifacts.

Still on the narration portion of the book, the multiple characters were at times confused and/or their accent changed mid-sentence. For a book that also has many female characters, I would rather a narrator not use a falsetto voice, but instead use a more normal voice (even if it is lower) for female characters. Often the female voices were painful to listen during long dialogue periods. Lastly, the inflection was often off or questions not read as a question. It seemed the narrator did not know the content until he turned to the page he was reading. For me, all the narration issues made the book one that I could hardly complete, but I wanted to see how it ended; and in some ways, I was happy when it did.

If you can suspend belief quite a bit and tolerate relationships that seemed flat, the book is quite exciting and it may be more enjoyable in its written form.

Enjoyable listen

I listen to books while I stitch. Any book I listen to needs to be exciting and after a half an hour I need to be involved. This story was great. Characters well developed, plot tight, an area I knew something about but the author was very knowledgeable in. All in all exactly what I like in a book.
The narration was HORRIBLE. Poor quality, clicks, pauses, throat clearing, different volumes. All the things I hate in a narration. The readers fault????? The producers fault???? It was B. A. D. Yet the story was interesting so I listened all the way to the end. You will need to choose. I purchased a second book by Buzz Bernard but I made sure it wasn't the same narrator!

Can't...just can't

Second chapter and I just have to stop. Performance is awful, so I have no idea if the story gets any better. I just have no interest after the initial scene in the hurricane plane.