Yellowstone National Park is the home of beautiful landscapes, hot springs, idyllic camp grounds and one of the world’s “super volcanoes”. Scientists estimate it has been approximately 640,000 years since the last time the super volcano's caldera erupted. Recently, the ground beneath Yellowstone has been steadily heating up and rising - classic signs of an impending eruption.

When researchers tasked with observing and recording changes in the Yellowstone volcano’s rate of elevation and rising underground temperature discover that the volcano appears to have magma rapidly rising to the surface, chief scientist Tucker Mayfield recommends the evacuation of Yellowstone National Park. Although Park Superintendent Ralph Barlow calls for the evacuation of the park as soon as possible, no one expects the caldera to erupt within hours.

All signs point to an upcoming eruption and the date of eruption could be in days or weeks. Our story follows chief scientist Tucker Mayfield and his band of survivors in their race to safety before disaster strikes.

Cataclysm is a novel is plenty of implausible escape scenes – including hiding underground from flowing lava which, if you understand the volcanic eruption of Pompeii, you would realize is completely impossible and everyone would have been instantly cooked. Regardless of obvious “flaws; if the reader is willing to suspend belief they will find Cataclysm a fun and compelling read. Washburn’s writing style is reminiscent of Clive Cussler’s writing style with plenty of action, impractical heroic moments and the typical “hero” trope in Mayfield.

Cataclysm is a fun, easy beach read with a steady stream of action that keep readers reading.

Finally, the newspaper snippets and interviews included in the novel was a fantastic addition. The eye witness interviews conducted in refugee camps were fantastic methods to fill in the gaps during and after the Yellowstone eruptions. Unlike The Three by Lotz, the interviews and clippings added a human element to the novel rather than an irritating serialization of events and also allowed for a break between chapters which was refreshing.

The biggest problem with this novel was by far the rushed ending. I found this more irritating that some of the outlandish action scenes. The author favored a large leap in time of a year (or two?) to briefly revisit the main characters and show how North America has fared once the eruption had run it's course. Unfortunately, I felt like the author ran out of ideas or time and hastily threw together an ending just to finish the book. Still a good read, but the ending wasn’t as satisfying as it could have been.

I would recommend this novel to fans of disaster novels, people who enjoy an escapist read with action right out of the gate, novels without a great deal of pre-story and simplistic language. Reader beware: although there is some science contained in the novel (eg: what a caldera is, super volcano definitions and the basic mechanics of an eruption), there is a fair amount of suspect circumstances and situations that require some flexibility in belief.

well written fast read that might make a pretty good movie. Washburn has clearly done a lot of meticulous research into the possibilities for disaster at Yellowstone, something I was not aware of before reading this. Thanks to netgalley for the ARC. Try this one if you like disaster scenarios.