Supercell

Buzz Bernard knows weather, but better still Buzz Bernard knows how to wrap a twister of a story inside a real-live twister of a tornado. Protagonist Chuck's life is broken, and he's accepted his beer-for-breakfast as the highlight of his day when out of nowhere comes a million-dollar offer that just might repair a lot of that brokenness. There are conditions, of course, and the odds are against Chuck finding what this Hollywood hotshot wants him to find in an impossible time frame. But throwing caution and his steady job as a janitor to the, ahem, wind, Chuck decides to chase the pot of gold at the end of the tornado-to-end-all-tornadoes. There's a chance this might help him fix the sadness of a seemingly impossible-to-resolve conflict with his son. And, of course, along the way, a potential love interest jumps into the fray, a female agent chasing bad guys who chase storms. Add in the point man from Hollywood who holds the key to the golden money just happens to be in line for Jerk of the Year, and you have a cast of characters that Bernard, ahem, spins into conflicts, messes, disappointments and, ultimately not what the reader expects at the end. Bernard is a master of suspense (read "Plague" if you haven't already), and he uses knowledge gained in the weather industry to take us a lot more up-close-and-personal with Mother Nature than most authors can do. The result is that "Supercell" is a page turner, Grade EF-5. What's EF-5, you say? It's covered in "Supercell."

What a breathless romp through a storm-chasing adventure! I read some less-than-flattering reviews of this book from people who didn't appreciate what they called "language." Swearing, in other words. Well, folks, last I checked, we were all living in Grownup World, where people actually do talk like this. And anyone who's spent any time around real storm chasers would find the dialogue authentic and believable. Anything else would have been distracting in its lack thereof. I loved the fully drawn characters, the plot and most of all, the realistic severe weather descriptions. I have little time to read but plowed through this in two evenings, and immediately ordered Buzz Bernard's other weather-related novels. The only things that kept me from giving this book five stars were the weak motivation of the main female character to fall in love with the protagonist, whose apparent lack of redeeming qualities when she meets him beg the question, "What does she see in this guy?" And the number of spelling errors, typos and sometimes just wrong word indicating a lack of thorough editing and proofreading. But none of those was enough to keep me from thoroughly enjoying this book. Highly recommended to anyone who loves severe weather and edge-of-your-seat thrillers.

I enjoyed the basic storyline, but I frequently got aggravated by the cliches... bitter child, who also happens to be a gay Green Beret (why does every book, movie, and TV show now have to have a gay character forced into the story somehow, even if the trait really has nothing to do with the plot?,) hot female lead who just has to turn into a love interest (again this development felt forced and unnecessary to me, and it wasn't really the part of the story that interested me, I was here for the storm chasing!,) gross movie mogul who he has to tolerate for the money (why belittle or even include such a repugnant character?, I found no comic relief here.)Having said all that, the main story, descriptions of weather, action scenes with the storm chasing, were great. Even the parts of the story about the boring "sit and wait" for the weather to develop, picking the wrong cells to chase, the backstory of the deaths from a previous chase, the camaraderie in the chasing community, all of those were well done.Combining the two very different sets of feelings on the book leads me to a middle ground rating, three stars.

to see if I could go to sleep after reading "just a few chapters" of this third new book by H.W. Buzz Bernard. I lost.I stayed up all night AGAIN (which is becoming so A-typical when reading Buzz's books), the Kindle is now recharging and I think I MUST recharge myself as well to pick it right back up when I awaken. IT IS FABULOUS, SLICK, THE 'BANTERING' IS SO SMART AND FUNNY, AND THE SIDE ELEMENTS just add to this masterpiece of awesome writing! Now, then, I have a quandary: I'm going to foam a little at the mouth while waiting for the next one...but it won't be too long. The 'word' is that "Blizzard" has been started.If you haven't read Buzz's books, you are seriously losing out.I think SUPERCELL is his best yet---which is saying a lot considering I didn't know how he was going to top Eyewall and Plague---but he's done it!

Buzz Bernard delivers a fast pace, thrill ride with his novel, Supercell. I was hooked from the first chapter and I couldn’t put the book down. I especially liked the fact that most of his characters were flawed and rough around the edges. The book had a realistic feel and I learned so much about tornadoes. Thanks to this author, I will never live in Oklahoma!

Enjoyed this book, good storyline and characters. Living in Oklahoma, the meteorology was well researched and is believable. Storyline wasnt hokey like a lot of disaster books and was easy to follow. Good book.

This book was extremely hard to put down. It was a great book from beginning to the end. The characters are well thought out and well portrayed! The story line was very interesting, but just a little hard for me to follow at times in the scientific description. In general, though, this was not an issue at all as it was kept to a minimal amount and generally done so the lay-person could read and understand the science involved. In general, this was such a wonderful book that I surely would recommend it to anyone wanting a fast reading book that is hard to put down. All in all, a great read!

Not a great book but still entertaining.

Loved this book. So many characters in this story. Like Sam and Monty. Metcalfe's brought out the urge to throttle him, he was so obnoxious.

Just finished it. He's a great writer.