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America is on the brink of crisis. Unless we can curb our dangerous appetite for foreign oil, petroleum-rich countries and speculators will bring our economy to its knees…long before CO2 emissions will devastate our ecosystem. The President has answered the call with the Dakota District Initiative, a top secret research team hidden deep in the Badlands of North Dakota. The Initiative is developing a way to produce clean energy from coal.
But powerful enemies will stop at nothing to sabotage this revolutionary technology. A cadre of oil hedge fund managers hires a crew of mercenary fanatics to attack the Initiative's experimental power station. Despite the bloody assault, the research continues as war-hero sheriff Nate Osborne and brash journalist Ashley Borden search for the attackers.
The stakes couldn't be higher: Unless the Initiative succeeds we could be faced with gasoline at twenty dollars per gallon or more, putting an impossible strain on an already fragile economy. If the project fails, we will continue to poison the very air we breathe. Either way, the Badlands will run red with blood.
432 pages, Hardcover
First published March 27, 2012
24 people are currently reading
134 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
July 10, 2025
Too much unnecessary killing.
November 16, 2021
This wasn’t as good as Stacey Abrams “While Justice Sleeps”, but it would be a close second to political thrillers.
April 28, 2013
This was more like a cliché of what a liberal activist trying to write an action thriller would look like. There are so many obvious flaws in this book, I don't even know where to begin. The premise of this book is that CO2 produced by fossil fuels is killing us -- and not gradually -- but quickly such that the Earth is going to be turned into Venus unless immediate action is taken.
Then the next questionable assumption is the only way this can be addressed is with a massively costly big Government program ---- in which in this case, is a sort of Manhattan Project, costing hundreds of billions of dollars to figure out a way to turn coal into natural gas --- which, last I checked does produced a lot of CO2 and is even more of a green house gas than CO2.
Ok, well and good. I can ignore those, and could accept these for as true for purposes of continuing with a good action story. However, given events over the last 10-15 years, who does the authors pick as their villains intent of destroying America's energy structure in general and this Manhattan energy project? Hmm, Islamic terrorists, a foreign government like North Korea or Iran, you say?
Nope, you'd be dead wrong. In the author's view, the most likely candidates they select as their villains to do terrorist attacks in the United States are the ones that any card-carrying liberal wishes were the ones doing all these terror attacks in the real world: white, Christian right-wingers. And to cap it off, almost all of them are military veterans from the Iraq War. Repeatedly, the authors assert that these mercenaries paid to do these terror attacks also do it because they enjoyed killing men, women, and children in Iraq --- again another liberal strawman that ill befits the average military veteran in real life, yet clearly showing their either fear or animosity against us military veterans.
Oh, and who is paying these white, Christian right-wing nut jobs to do these attacks? If you guessed an immoral greedy hedge fund manager who hates the environment, then you get a gold star --- yet another liberal cliché.
So what can we conclude from this train wreck of a novel that just wasted my time? That liberal politicians trying to write novels maybe best stick to politics --- oh, but wait, I guess that means spending -- oh, about several trillion dollars that we don't have and raising our taxes. On second thought, hold that thought --- if it is cathartic for you and gives you something else besides destroy America with debt and taxes, please, please, please keep writing pulp novels like this one!
Then the next questionable assumption is the only way this can be addressed is with a massively costly big Government program ---- in which in this case, is a sort of Manhattan Project, costing hundreds of billions of dollars to figure out a way to turn coal into natural gas --- which, last I checked does produced a lot of CO2 and is even more of a green house gas than CO2.
Ok, well and good. I can ignore those, and could accept these for as true for purposes of continuing with a good action story. However, given events over the last 10-15 years, who does the authors pick as their villains intent of destroying America's energy structure in general and this Manhattan energy project? Hmm, Islamic terrorists, a foreign government like North Korea or Iran, you say?
Nope, you'd be dead wrong. In the author's view, the most likely candidates they select as their villains to do terrorist attacks in the United States are the ones that any card-carrying liberal wishes were the ones doing all these terror attacks in the real world: white, Christian right-wingers. And to cap it off, almost all of them are military veterans from the Iraq War. Repeatedly, the authors assert that these mercenaries paid to do these terror attacks also do it because they enjoyed killing men, women, and children in Iraq --- again another liberal strawman that ill befits the average military veteran in real life, yet clearly showing their either fear or animosity against us military veterans.
Oh, and who is paying these white, Christian right-wing nut jobs to do these attacks? If you guessed an immoral greedy hedge fund manager who hates the environment, then you get a gold star --- yet another liberal cliché.
So what can we conclude from this train wreck of a novel that just wasted my time? That liberal politicians trying to write novels maybe best stick to politics --- oh, but wait, I guess that means spending -- oh, about several trillion dollars that we don't have and raising our taxes. On second thought, hold that thought --- if it is cathartic for you and gives you something else besides destroy America with debt and taxes, please, please, please keep writing pulp novels like this one!
April 12, 2012
This book by David Hagberg and former Senator Byron Dorgan is disappointing. It has many elements for a successful thriller, including the input of a genuine Washington insider, but simply fails to come together.
*Spoiler alert* For starters, there is never a "blowout." While the specter of an accident in an experiment involving billions of coal-eating microbes producing methane is invoked early, a terrorist attack apparently designed to achieve that fails and that's the last you hear of it.
Instead, you have an incompetent psychopath mercenary who not only fails the first time, but fails in a second attempt to sabotage a top-secret "initiative" in Dorgan's home state of North Dakota to solve America's dependence on foreign oil by developing the ultimate clean coal -- one that doesn't have to be mined or burned but simply converted to methane, which can then be burned cleanly to fuel turbines generating electricity.
Not going to happen, but it's not a bad premise for an energy thriller. Hagberg is apparently an accomplished thriller writer and the book is easy to read. Not surprisingly, given Dorgan's involvement, it is politically correct to the nth degree and the hero is an Afghan amputee veteran who has returned home to the quiet life as sheriff in the county where this top-secret experiment is masquerading as a generating station.
There is blood and gore and a lot of time spent in the mind of the psychopath, whose motives and objectives are a jumble. The sheriff is brave, dependable, divorced by a wife who didn't sign on for life in North Dakota. His love interest is a spunky journalist, who happens to be the daughter of the general heading up the initiative, and who is amenable to quashing journalistic scoops and spending her life in said North Dakota with the sheriff.
Venezuela plays the heavy, suborning the attacks on the initiative, decapitating a special U.S. envoy, and ultimately bearing the full military wrath of the United States of America.
Even the authenticity that would be the chief benefit of Dorgan's participation comes into question when in the space of a single paragraph the authors make two geopolitical mistakes that would have embarrassed Sarah Palin. As a President Thompson is ruminating on his full plate, he thinks of a China that refuses to "devalue" its currency -- when in fact, of course, the problem is that China won't allow its currency to increase in value -- and of a "European Economic Union" on the verge of imploding -- when in fact, of course, the current European Union replaced the European Economic Community without ever being called the European Economic Union.
Small details, but telling, and it does not mean that Dorgan does not or did not know better when he was in the Senate. I'm just saying.
So give this book a pass and find a better way to spend your time.
*Spoiler alert* For starters, there is never a "blowout." While the specter of an accident in an experiment involving billions of coal-eating microbes producing methane is invoked early, a terrorist attack apparently designed to achieve that fails and that's the last you hear of it.
Instead, you have an incompetent psychopath mercenary who not only fails the first time, but fails in a second attempt to sabotage a top-secret "initiative" in Dorgan's home state of North Dakota to solve America's dependence on foreign oil by developing the ultimate clean coal -- one that doesn't have to be mined or burned but simply converted to methane, which can then be burned cleanly to fuel turbines generating electricity.
Not going to happen, but it's not a bad premise for an energy thriller. Hagberg is apparently an accomplished thriller writer and the book is easy to read. Not surprisingly, given Dorgan's involvement, it is politically correct to the nth degree and the hero is an Afghan amputee veteran who has returned home to the quiet life as sheriff in the county where this top-secret experiment is masquerading as a generating station.
There is blood and gore and a lot of time spent in the mind of the psychopath, whose motives and objectives are a jumble. The sheriff is brave, dependable, divorced by a wife who didn't sign on for life in North Dakota. His love interest is a spunky journalist, who happens to be the daughter of the general heading up the initiative, and who is amenable to quashing journalistic scoops and spending her life in said North Dakota with the sheriff.
Venezuela plays the heavy, suborning the attacks on the initiative, decapitating a special U.S. envoy, and ultimately bearing the full military wrath of the United States of America.
Even the authenticity that would be the chief benefit of Dorgan's participation comes into question when in the space of a single paragraph the authors make two geopolitical mistakes that would have embarrassed Sarah Palin. As a President Thompson is ruminating on his full plate, he thinks of a China that refuses to "devalue" its currency -- when in fact, of course, the problem is that China won't allow its currency to increase in value -- and of a "European Economic Union" on the verge of imploding -- when in fact, of course, the current European Union replaced the European Economic Community without ever being called the European Economic Union.
Small details, but telling, and it does not mean that Dorgan does not or did not know better when he was in the Senate. I'm just saying.
So give this book a pass and find a better way to spend your time.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 27, 2014
OK, sure. I'd read a second in the series. Oh, there is a second? Grand. Does it include some scary facts about what financial managers are really capable of (terrorism, etc.)? Because that was just great.
October 20, 2017
The beginning will likely leave you worried that this will be an eco-doom, Al Gore whining, blame humans for everything kind of tale. There is some of that and of course blaming the evil, greedy oil people throughout the story. Once you get past that, it is actually a pretty good story. There are the usual twists and turns, some of them fairly predictable, but this is a good story, worth reading. It's a good distraction, but only if you are wanting to stay in a current events style distraction.
October 2, 2025
blowout
Never heard of these authors before but if they can keep writing books like this they are in for a bright future. I will look for anything else they have written or write in the future.
Never heard of these authors before but if they can keep writing books like this they are in for a bright future. I will look for anything else they have written or write in the future.
May 29, 2017
gruesome
March 11, 2020
An above average potboiler. But the end was too abrupt.
December 30, 2011
Even if Amazon Vine hadn't sent Byron Dorgan and David Hagberg's Blowout (Forge 2011) to me to review, I would have read it because of Hagberg's name. His stories are always good reads with fast-paced plots, well-defined characters and enough surprises to keep me turning pages. With titles like Kill Zone, Assassin, and Twister, readers know their about to loose a couple of days of their lives to reading.
But I almost quit on him this time. To get to the good stuff, I had to endure lectures on global warming I've already read in too many newspapers and detailed science coming from the mouths of characters I wasn't sure I trusted. Global warming is politically-charged enough that just discussing it will make you love or hate the character. And Hagberg-Dorgan made that Shakesperean mistake (remember: Me thinks he doth protest too much) of trying to convince me for page after page (after page) that the country's energy policies were as screwed up as an earthworm in the wrong hole. If I agreed with him, he's preaching to the choir. If I disagreed, he's making me angry.
Finally--after eighty pages--Hagberg-Dorgan settled into the story line and I met the main character.
Eighty pages into the book? That's pretty late for a thriller. Hagberg has an entire column of publications to his name. He knows better.
But I digress. Finally, after eighty pages, the wild ride I'd been waiting for started. The plot revolves around America's insatiable appetite for energy. When American scientists get close to solving the problem with clean energy that doesn't rely on foreign oil, unexpected forces try to stop them. This is where small town lawman Nate Osborn (who is also a medically-retired Medal of Honor winner) and new journalist Ashley Borden become the unlikely pair who must stop the enemy. The characters are well-constructed and endeering, clearly created by the man who gave us super-hero Kirk McGarvey. The politics is disgusting (a good choice since something like 80% of Americans distrust politicians) and the stakes couldn't be higher. The problem is credibility. To believe the series of events postulated in this story could happen, I have to buy into the belief that a whole lot of people in power are more than self-serving, but downright evil, that we've reached a tipping point where the good people in power can no longer stand against the bad.
And that's why I gave this great writer only three stars. The politics is something I try to escape in thrillers so that lost one star. Then the bigger-than-life Medal of Honor hero was not enough to offset the incredulity of so many evil-minded people running our nation. That lost the second star. If I was grading solely on the power of the writing, Blowout would get a five.
But I almost quit on him this time. To get to the good stuff, I had to endure lectures on global warming I've already read in too many newspapers and detailed science coming from the mouths of characters I wasn't sure I trusted. Global warming is politically-charged enough that just discussing it will make you love or hate the character. And Hagberg-Dorgan made that Shakesperean mistake (remember: Me thinks he doth protest too much) of trying to convince me for page after page (after page) that the country's energy policies were as screwed up as an earthworm in the wrong hole. If I agreed with him, he's preaching to the choir. If I disagreed, he's making me angry.
Finally--after eighty pages--Hagberg-Dorgan settled into the story line and I met the main character.
Eighty pages into the book? That's pretty late for a thriller. Hagberg has an entire column of publications to his name. He knows better.
But I digress. Finally, after eighty pages, the wild ride I'd been waiting for started. The plot revolves around America's insatiable appetite for energy. When American scientists get close to solving the problem with clean energy that doesn't rely on foreign oil, unexpected forces try to stop them. This is where small town lawman Nate Osborn (who is also a medically-retired Medal of Honor winner) and new journalist Ashley Borden become the unlikely pair who must stop the enemy. The characters are well-constructed and endeering, clearly created by the man who gave us super-hero Kirk McGarvey. The politics is disgusting (a good choice since something like 80% of Americans distrust politicians) and the stakes couldn't be higher. The problem is credibility. To believe the series of events postulated in this story could happen, I have to buy into the belief that a whole lot of people in power are more than self-serving, but downright evil, that we've reached a tipping point where the good people in power can no longer stand against the bad.
And that's why I gave this great writer only three stars. The politics is something I try to escape in thrillers so that lost one star. Then the bigger-than-life Medal of Honor hero was not enough to offset the incredulity of so many evil-minded people running our nation. That lost the second star. If I was grading solely on the power of the writing, Blowout would get a five.
October 28, 2012
The authors, both of whom bring considerable real-life expertise to this promising geopolitical thriller, did a good job of setting up the premise of this book: The attempts by the U.S. domestic terrorist group Posse Comitatus and their veiled-in-shadow backers to shut down an equally veiled-in-shadow Clean Coal initiative. The back cover summarizes the book's promise well: This is definitely "a high-concept thriller about America's dangerous addiction to foreign oil—a dependency that could cripple our economy and our ecosystem."
As I started out reading the book, it seemed to lean a little too heavily on cataloguing types of weapons (which will surely appeal to the "out of my cold dead hands" crowd), but the first half of the book moved briskly and convincingly enough to catch me up in the action. Often I found myself wondering if, and wishing that, such an initiative really exists today. BLOWOUT presents to readers some juicy complexity to chew on (thanks to Dorgan, I expect), and Haberg's extensive experience with writing action-packed books definitely shows. Had the characterizations been as strong as the action, I would have rated this book more highly than I did.
I should have known what was coming, though, when, halfway through the book, love interests began rather implausibly to pop up between the most important characters; when the women were sometimes called by their first names, the men by their last names, within the same sentence; when the few very carefully drawn characters began to say and do things completely out of character; when the loose ends had been battered and bent as often as Sheriff Osborne's lost-leg prosthesis. The "love" bits were not believable. Nor, toward the end, was the crazy bad guy's moment of generosity toward an insignificant hostage he was just itching to blow away.
But it was the Epilogue that made me roll my eyes in disgust, that accounts almost single-handedly for this book getting two stars from me. I would have been more generous with three stars and a caveat that men would probably rate BLOWOUT more highly than I did had the book not ended like a bjob movie where everything else seems a contrivance to get to that point. That last scene ruined any and all satisfaction the book might have had for me if it had ended more focused on its premise and not on that really cheap trick.
In the right hands, this book will make for a good movie, one I would probably enjoy seeing. That's the best I can say.
As I started out reading the book, it seemed to lean a little too heavily on cataloguing types of weapons (which will surely appeal to the "out of my cold dead hands" crowd), but the first half of the book moved briskly and convincingly enough to catch me up in the action. Often I found myself wondering if, and wishing that, such an initiative really exists today. BLOWOUT presents to readers some juicy complexity to chew on (thanks to Dorgan, I expect), and Haberg's extensive experience with writing action-packed books definitely shows. Had the characterizations been as strong as the action, I would have rated this book more highly than I did.
I should have known what was coming, though, when, halfway through the book, love interests began rather implausibly to pop up between the most important characters; when the women were sometimes called by their first names, the men by their last names, within the same sentence; when the few very carefully drawn characters began to say and do things completely out of character; when the loose ends had been battered and bent as often as Sheriff Osborne's lost-leg prosthesis. The "love" bits were not believable. Nor, toward the end, was the crazy bad guy's moment of generosity toward an insignificant hostage he was just itching to blow away.
But it was the Epilogue that made me roll my eyes in disgust, that accounts almost single-handedly for this book getting two stars from me. I would have been more generous with three stars and a caveat that men would probably rate BLOWOUT more highly than I did had the book not ended like a bjob movie where everything else seems a contrivance to get to that point. That last scene ruined any and all satisfaction the book might have had for me if it had ended more focused on its premise and not on that really cheap trick.
In the right hands, this book will make for a good movie, one I would probably enjoy seeing. That's the best I can say.
November 19, 2014
Blowout, really? Obviously Messrs. D. and H. have never worked in a kennel where, I assure you, the titular word has an entirely different meaning than it does in this sprawling, likeable blockbuster about clean energy. The Dakota District Initiative (reminiscent of Illinois’s Hole in the Ground) is a top-secret Badlands facility where scientists, ahem, inject a coal-eating bacteria into pulverized coal in a sealed environment, producing methane that could be burned instead of coal, and with a significant drop in CO2. And a fat, greedy, oil-billionaire villain doesn’t like it one bit! Hagberg, author of about a thousand books, and Dorgan, a former North Dakota politician, have created a meet-and-greet of didacticism and pedagogy; some sentences approach the 100-word mark (talk about a blowout!). Characters are stock, down to names that sound as if they were auto-generated. What’s the difference between Whitney Lipton and Ashley Borden? I can’t recall, except that one of them is a brassy woman with more balls than just about every civilian out there. When the authors aren’t clumsily expounding on dirty petroleum vs. clean energy, they’re clogging the plot with Venezuelans killing envoys, bumpkin militias getting ten kinds of pissed off, and an exposé reporter uncovering military secrets. It’s not John Updike, but if dudes stick with this, they do get explosions, eco-terrorists, whack jobs, action, gunfire, government secrets, and big-money stakes, and they’ll also enjoy quantum-effect encrypted burst transmissions.
Find reviews of books for men at Books for Dudes, Books for Dudes, the online reader's advisory column for men from Library Journal. Copyright Library Journal.
Find reviews of books for men at Books for Dudes, Books for Dudes, the online reader's advisory column for men from Library Journal. Copyright Library Journal.
May 30, 2012
Years ago I thought how dangerous it might be for anyone to develop a reliable alternative to oil. I even believed it might make for a good thriller. Little did I think the idea would show up years later as it did in this novel. I enjoyed the read, but felt the ending could have been better. For one thing I'm not sure if I missed it, but was the inside traitor ever really identified or just suggested. And if the snitch was identified what happened to him/her? This person was not the central bad guy, but the authors did direct the readers attention to him enough that I thought it merited more closure. But like I said maybe I missed it.
December 30, 2012
I could easily envision these events actually happening in real life. This book is a very riveting page turner that's hard to put down. It's a very well written story that will definitely fit well with a "Tom Clancey" book collection. If the people in charge at Homeland Security were to read this book it will probably keep them up at night. They've definitely came up with a plot that anyone could see happen in real life.
December 18, 2013
Intense and fun page-turner...once you get past the alarmist politics a pretty decent story...Yes, there's climate change, but the idea that anthropomorphic causes are at the root, just slay me...we're just pimples on the ass of nature, barely registering on the mighty forces of nature...decent thriller
June 11, 2012
I was very disappointed with the book.. I saw the book being discussed on Morning Joe, and wanted to read it.. I am glad I checked it out from the library as oppose to purchasing it.. I did not think it was a well written book.. The author's kept jumping from one scene to another, or from one group of characters to another.. It was very confusing.. The idea was interesting.
July 8, 2012
I really wanted to give this a 3.5. It was too bloody, but the premise of who's behind sabotage or a new 'clean coal' experiment is interesting. I doubt this pair will be writing more, but I think between them they have an interesting insight.
January 11, 2012
Good story line. Good not guessing the snitch. I didn't think they had a good ending. The bad guy was not clear and not enough wrap up. I would recommend it; however, because it was a good story.
September 19, 2012
A pretty good read, but jumpy and plodding at times. Loved the good guy characters, but the bad guys seem ripped out of a TV movie
December 21, 2012
Pretty good book. Some parts were exciting and kept you reading. The edition I read had lots of spelling and "wrong word" errors.
April 30, 2013
Good book. Very current issues with a goodly amount of action. David Hagberg is one of my favorite authors. Enjoyed the book and recommend any and all of David Hagberg's books.
May 18, 2013
This book was just ok....seems to predictable to me.
Read
March 15, 2016Fantastic read. It would be great if we could get rid of our depends on foreign oil. To much blood and guts in this book.
May 16, 2016
Excellent.
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews