Crustation Tremors
Crabquake is not your normal disaster/action-adventure novel. You won’t find a category 7 hurricane nor a meteor threatening the planet. What you will find is a rare Maryland earthquake followed by monstrous crabs crawling out of Baltimore’s polluted Inner Harbor. The descriptions of the visuals are adequate, but not inspiring.
On the other hand, characterization in Crabquakes is superb. The two main protagonists—Jesse and Haze—meet during the chaos of the flooded streets in Fells Point. We quickly learn Jesse is a bartender at a local pub and Haze is running with a bag of cash he and his bro, Damien, stole from a construction site. The dialogue is realistic and moves the exciting plot along nicely. My only criticism is about the dialogue between Damien and Haze. It doesn’t feel natural and their comments to each other is filled with racial slurs that didn’t feel as if they belonged.
If flooding, fires, and falling infrastructure aren’t enough problems to contend with, Jesse, Haze, and their group of survivors fend off crabs the size of Mack trucks. Meanwhile, personal issues frequently take the attention of the characters as we understand their past and anticipate their possibility of survival in this surreal Baltimore adventure.
Author SJ Stone’s adventure novel, Crabquakes, has a compelling plot that kept this reader turning pages until the dramatic ending. Put this book on your summer reading list and you won’t be sorry.
About the Author
A teacher by day, SJ Stone plies his wares at night on his laptop, where he’s cranking out silly blog posts, socio-political commentary, poetry, short stories, and novels at an excessive rate. SJ Stone lives in Baltimore with his wife, two yorkies and a weiner dog named Sloppy Joe. He’s been around the world 13 times with the Navy, has jumped out of a plane three times, has two grown kids and has this idea that later in life he’ll live in Aruba, kite surf all day and write bad novels all night.
Michael Thal is the author of the science fiction adventure, The Abduction of Joshua Bloom.
Wow : Crabs the size of Mack trucks. Sounds interesting.