Tom Havyn is a man in a crisis.  After his grandfather dies,Tom inherits his Idaho ranch and decides to move there, where he spent so many wonderful times as a child.  So he leaves behind his research job as a biological psychologist and moves to Idaho with the ultimate goal of killing himself.  See, his grandfather had a mental breakdown and suffered from hallucinations and behavioral problems, including paranoia.  Tom has been suffering from hallucinations himself, and these hallucinations may have led to his young son’s near fatal drowning.  His son survived, but suffered brain damage as a result.  This put a strain on Tom’s marriage which ended in divorce.  Full of guilt, and fearing a complete breakdown with reality just like his grandfather, Tom’s thinks blowing his head off is the answer to the pain he already suffers, and the pain yet to come.

But the best laid plans of mice and men often go astray, and Tom’s suicide attempt is thwarted by a giant of a man named Connie. Connie is on the run because there was a freak accident which killed one of his coworkers, and it really looks like Connie did it.  How do you explain a swarm of…something…flying out of nowhere and boring holes into somebody?  Connie is a recreational drug user, and even he is having a hard time getting a handle on the situation.

And then there are the earthquakes.  And Tom suddenly has the talent of predicting the future, especially when a news camera is pointed at him.  Don’t forget the secret underground labs, highly advanced nanotechnology used by militia groups  that could cure Tom’s son, and something in the water turning average citizens into psychotic, merciless, killers.

This is a full slate of a story.  The title, Armageddon Yellowstone: Hell Unleashed, is a mouthful, and there’s a lot of plot to go along with that lengthy name.  It is a feat in and of itself that the author, Terry Rich Hartley, pulls all the strands together; major kudos to him given that this is a rather short novel.  Which is the problem:  there’s just too much.  It almost feels like, at times, that Hartley combined the plots of two or three books and put them into just this one.

That’s not to say that Armageddon isn’t worth a read.  It’s a fast moving story, and it keeps you hooked; I had no idea where this book was going, and by the middle of it I was just wanting to see how everything met and fit together. With some better editing, this could have been a killer high tech thriller.  It falters and stumbles here and there, and though it may not ultimately succeed, if you’re looking for something different it may be worth a look.

2.5 out of 5
John Jason