John Nance, aviation analyst for ABC News and a familiar face on Good Morning America, is also a veteran Boeing 737 captain, a decorated Air Force pilot veteran, and a Lieutenant Colonel in the USAF Reserve. He is the author of seventeen books, including PANDORA'S CLOCK (Pan) and MEDUSA'S CHILD (Pan), which were both made into major television miniseries.
For Kip Dawson, an unhappily married man with a son who blames him for his first wife's death, winning a trip into orbit is a dream come true. But when a meteorite slices through the ship, killing the pilot and severing all lines of communication, the dream quickly becomes a nightmare. Nance is well-known for his aviation thrillers, and with Orbit he successfully ventures into the near future with this tale of privately funded space flight gone awry. Nance is no newcomer to narration and it shows. He reads with an assured, confident voice and moves the story along with the pacing of an expert raconteur. His vocal modulations to distinguish between characters are subtle but effective. Most of his accents sound true. The use of a walkie-talkie-like voice filter to indicate when characters are speaking over the phone or radio is a nice touch that makes conversations more vivid. Kudos to Nance for crafting such a taut thriller and for infusing his performance with such heart and vigor, proving that he is the only person who should narrate his books. Simultaneous release with the S&S hardcover (Reviews, Mar. 20). (Apr.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
The master of aviation fiction, Nance (Turbulence) takes the action several thousand feet higher in the sky with this first-rate tale of a man trapped alone in a damaged commercial spacecraft. Artist Kip Dawson is thrilled to have won a contest guaranteeing him a seat on the Intrepid, one of the first privately owned rivals to the Space Shuttle. After a freak accident kills his astronaut pilot, Kip is forced to rely on his own skills to keep the craft in orbit, knowing that in a few days he will run out of breathable air and die in a fiery crash. Determined to leave behind some record of his life, including apologizing to his children for neglecting them, Kip begins to type his biography into a laptop he finds on board. He is unaware that the entire world is reading his words and of the phenomenon he is creating down below. Nance reads his own work and presents a pitch-perfect product; his vocal skills, especially in defining male characters, are one of the elements that make this a high-priority item for all public libraries.-Joseph L. Carlson, Allan Hancock Coll., Lompoc, CA Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.
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