A clunky kitchen sink novel about catastrophe, salacious sex, and gritty businessisms contrived only for the sake of getting attention, with no thematic cohesion or style. Lots of bad stuff happens worldwide, but the author isn't able to convey this emotionally or globally. If you want to read a good kitchen sink novel about weather, sex, and grit, skip this and go immediately to River of Gods by Ian McDonald.

Not at all what I was expecting - far too much techno-babble for me, gave up after a couple of chapters.

One of my favorite near future scifi books of all time. Love the way Barnes thinks!

This is the book which introduced me to methane clathrates, and to the importance they could come to have for us all. Darn the luck that in this universe, clathrates are real and thiotimoline and cavorite are fictititous.The predictions in this book which have aged best are, unfortunately, the ones I would rather had not: the book opens in 2028 with a United Nations raid on an illegal weapons cache which accidentally results in the release of methane from Arctic Ocean clathrates. What we have in...

Eight years since I last read this? Time for a re-read.

Immense. That's the best word I can think of to describe this story. At first glance, it's the story of an apocalypse -- a nuclear attack accidentally releases enough methane into the air to cause catastrophic global warming and resulting hurricanes. But it doesn't take much of a peek beneath the surface to see that this story is a classic scifi lover's utopia. Who are we? Where are we going? What is the nature of humanity? I got all this and more as I slowly grew to realize that the apocalypse

Barnes is not one of those authors who finds a particular niche within the genre and fills it with novels of a similar style and content. His work includes the Galactic Human Society of ‘A Million Open Doors’ and ‘Earth Made of Glass’, the parallel universes of ‘Finity’ and here, a near-future disaster novel in which a small nuclear explosion in the Arctic releases a huge amount of methane trapped in the polar ice.The consequence of this is that Hurricanes, of a size and ferocity never before se...

This book is crazy, disgusting society mixed together with incredibly well-researched meteorology. You wouldn't think that would make a good novel, but I couldn't put it down, and re-read it often.I've read quite a few of Barnes' novels, and he clearly is very serious about his research. Mother of Storms has (as far as I as a layperson can tell) an incredible level of detail and accuracy in the science. Every plot point is backed up with huge amounts of science info-dump that somehow manages to

The apocalyptic meteorology was well done, the violence and gore seemed gratuitous in places. Not really climate fiction, more like a horror story with climate thrown in.

This was a pretty interesting read until the author tried to give us a recipe for saving the world now that Armageddon had been avoided (and, whew, just in the nick of time, we'd already lost billions!) I also liked his view of where the world was heading but I could have done with a lot less contemplation of the navel from outer space.

It took 4 years for me to get through this book. Not a fan. I would only recommend this book to someone I don't like.

This was written in 1994: "Buildings as tall as forty stories are going over, but the World Trade Center seems to be holding firm." (p.393) "... and the beautiful Earth is being crapped up by an excess of people--lovely as individuals, towns and cultures, but hideous in such profusion." (p.367) This is a remarkable book, written by someone with a vaster amount of science understanding than I have. I had trouble following the "funnels" of Louie Tynan's ship, but I could get the gist of it. What I...

Out of the 3 other end civilization via weather, (Lucifer's Hammer-Niven/Pournelle, Psychlone-Bear, Heavy Weather-Sterling) this onetakes the cake. Brushing into a handful of peoples lives all who areconnected by jobs, media, or relation they are directly affected byevents surrounding the bombing of the artic by the UN. This bombdropping not only knocks out the Siberian threat of war, it releasesa big methane gas pocket stuck under the ice causing heat in theatmosphere and the worlds biggest hur...

It's a speculative thriller with hard science meteorology about climate disaster... I read this at the beach, which was a good way to enhance the experience. The world-building is ace; there are a lot of shifting characters and it takes a bit to find your footing, but once it gets rolling I had no problems following along and did have problems putting it down. The story lost a few points with the very 1990s-naive optimism rose-colored ending, but I get it, we used to believe technology could

Six pages in, I get to read about the bloody and violent rape and murder of a minor girl. Nine pages in, a lovely gentleman refers to a woman as, "some upper-level bitch." "It's gotta be some woman," that gives this prince his "shit assignments." Because obviously a man would see his worth, right? On pages 10-14 I get to read about some sex-obsessed guy fantasizing about sex with his girlfriend. During this time he muses with respect to her, "There's a lot of easier ass in the world." I'm sorry,...

I've had the paperback version since it was released in 1995, and I've re-read it and passed it back and forth to friends so many times in the intervening years, that my copy is quite tattered. This is an excellent read. Well-written characters that you find yourself really rooting for and a fast paced plot that keeps you up til all hours because you just have to find out what happens next. If you like well thought out near-future disaster books with characters you actually care what happens to,...

Fun read, and I think I would have loved it back in 1994 when it was published, but the whole idea of creating an ultimate AI by altering the human brain makes the saving of the earth seem kind of week- a la Deus ex Machine.

I first read this back in the 90s when it was new and quite speculative, and called it one of my favorites for over a decade. Massive amounts of methane are released from under the ice, causing the global temperature to rise. Sonic hurricanes form over oceans just warm enough that they never dissipate; looping around, over and over, spawning children that grow just as fast.Layered over top a cyberpunk existence of VR living (and dying), self driving cars and snippet journalism, it seemed pretty

A great novel. When I picked up this book, little was I expecting a man-made disaster novel. However, as always, I was stunned silent by the plot of this masterpiece. Most good books I go through in about 2-3 days. It took me almost all of the summer of 2012 to read it, because I didn't want to rush it.

So, you're in the mood for some apocalyptic meteorology! Do I have a book for you. An accidental nuclear strike in the Arctic has released millions of tons of methane into the environment, melting the ice of the North Pole and disrupting ocean currents. This causes 200 mph hurricanes which wipe entire Pacific islands down to bare rock and kill millions of people, while a listless population sits glued to their virtual-reality goggles. It is just... great/awful. Grawful? The content is incredibly...