RDC-M V 1 1974, 8/76. Disaster in a tower.

Holy Crap, what a bad book. No, I mean REALLY bad. And what's really bad is that it has the makings of a very good story, buried deep inside itself.

(In the early 1970s, two novels appeared about a fire in a large skyscraper. The Glass Inferno was the other one. Warner Brothers and 20th Century Fox each bought the rights to one of the books, then they realized that people wouldn't pay twice to watch a similar movie, so both movies would undercut the other. In a brilliant movie, the studios decided to pool their resources and make The Towering Inferno, a single super spectacular movie about a skyscraper fire, and split the profits.)

And it's a good thing they did, because you couldn't get a TV movie of the week out of this book. All the Towering Inferno plot elements are here -- tallest building in the world; builder's son-in-law uses substandard wiring; governor, ambassadors, senators at the dedication; breeches-bouy rescue -- but the vast majority of the book is spent ... talking. And thinking.

Yes. The architect spends a great deal of time talking and thinking about why we build buildings so big. The governor spends a great deal of time talking and thinking about why we allocate tax breaks to let builders build buildings so big. The senator spends a great deal of time talking and thinking about why he became a senator: was it to watch people put up big buildings?

And the stereotypes! The architect's wife is a chic magazine editor who is into Women's Lib (yes, the book is that old), who stays at her magazine rather than rushing downtown to be of service to her husband (don't worry -- she gets hers in the end). The NYPD cops are either "begorrah, saints presairve us" stereotypes, or highly efficient roboticized African-American stereotypes. The building contractor is a two-fisted he-man who dies of a heart attack. His daughter is a smart, capable woman who nonetheless knows her place (see Women's Lib, above).

All in all, a sad book that was a product of its time.

2.5 stars

The Tower has its moments of genuine tension, but it never quite decides what kind of book it wants to be.

On one hand, it delivers some well-crafted suspense as disaster looms over the titular skyscraper. On the other, it gets bogged down in melodrama, with character conflicts that feel more like soap opera subplots than the high-stakes thriller it sets out to be. The novel introduces a large cast of characters, each with their own personal struggles and ambitions, but instead of enhancing the story, many of these elements feel like distractions from the central crisis. They also all feel the same with little to no distinguishing characteristics. Everyone is either a typical 70’s damsel in distress, a stereotypical man’s man, or the cookie cutter villain with early any real reason for their evil ways. Rather than letting the disaster itself drive the tension, the book frequently detours into interpersonal drama that never quite earns its place in the narrative.

The biggest issue is the pacing—it’s all over the place. The book moves at a snail’s pace for long stretches, weighed down by excessive detail and unnecessary exposition. Entire chapters seem devoted to minutiae that do little to advance the plot or deepen the suspense, making it a chore to push through at times. Just when the tension starts to build, the narrative shifts gears and slows down again, losing its momentum. While the disaster sequences occasionally manage to be gripping, they are too few and far between, buried beneath layers of slow-moving setup and repetitive character interactions.

The novel’s structure ultimately makes it difficult to stay fully engaged, as any excitement is quickly undercut by sluggish storytelling.The stakes should feel urgent, but instead, the novel often meanders just when it should be ramping up. The sense of danger is there in moments, but it never fully takes hold in a way that makes the reader feel the weight of the unfolding catastrophe. Some characters make frustrating decisions, while others feel like they exist only to fill space rather than add anything meaningful to the story.

The book flirts with deeper themes about hubris, human error, and the perils of modern engineering, but it never truly commits to exploring them in a way that resonates. Instead, it remains stuck between being a gripping thriller and an overwrought drama, never excelling at either.

FANTASTIC

Time has sapped the suspense

Curiosity on which charactors the movie kept as well as plot points kept me reading. Certainly not the suspense. Some cringe-worthy dialog, and the female characters are not interesting—probably because of the times in which this book was written (circa 1970). The many male characters are hardly discernible from each other. After a while i filed them away as good guy/bad guy. I skipped some, looking for the good scenes. Just was not that many.

My advice: hunt down a print copy of “The Glass Inferno.” It seems the kindle version of the Frank Robinson/Thomas Scorlita novel (also used as source material in “The Towering inferno!” Is an uncorrected OCR scanned book, poorly formatted. Ironic that indie authors are held to a high bar in editing excellence. That is what makes a good writer. Yet older notable books with slip-shod scanning, slip in with zero editing. Kindle gatekeepers ought to take action to minimize this.

Empieza lento pero para mí sorpresa no lo pude soltar hasta terminarlo. Me gustó como se describe la acción. Rascacielos y nueva york en el año 73, y aún se siente moderno, sobre todo como los personajes se van desenvolviendo en cuanto a la acción. No me gustó mucho como estaban escritos los personajes femeninos porque es bastante obvio que se ocupan como un extra a las acciones de los personajes principales. El final me dejó medio "oh, ok" se esperaba, pero como Nat Wilson no quería perder la esperanza. Lo recomiendo a quienes le gustan las novelas medio policíacas y de acción.

The reason I read this was because The Towering Inferno is based off it, one of the my favorite movies. So I was curious to see which elements they used from it for the movie. There was a second book they used as well, but currently cannot find a copy of it.

This book was better than expected. The writing was clear and the story moved along at a great pace. Richard Stern does a great job of building layers upon the story line.

You feel for the characters and understand what they are thinking. Also, he does a good job of using them to bring up points on society without beating you over the head with it.

Because the character's names are not the same in the movie, you are not sure who will live or die by the end. This keeps the tension up. Even though it was written in the 70's, it does not feel dated.

With how he describes the way the fire is fought the things going on with the tower, he brings great depth to it as well. I would recomend this book to anyone to read.

This book inspired part of a great movie. Well I guess that depends on your definition of great but I consider anything that puts Paul Newman and Steve McQueen on the same screen to be a work of art so yeah, there's that...

So the book, oh geeze where do I start on this thing? For one thing it just isn't that damn good. If the story in this book were any more transparent it would be hard to read it because you'd be able to look right through the page, nothing is a surprise. It tries hard to build tension but it's pretty hard to reach a climax when you know where everything is headed. The story just sort of grinds along towards the end point you can already see in the distance; the only question is how, exactly, it will get there.

It is also a mashed up shit-show of ideas, concepts and crap the author wants to say about just about everything. He comments on sexuality, fidelity, politics, publishing, womens lib and just about anything else he had an opinion on. Had he cut some of the commentary and replaced it with actual plot points this might have been a better book.

The Tower has more to do with the political agenda's of its protagonists and rife with moral ethics,("should man build something as a crowning honor to self...?")than I would have expected from a book of this genre. But, overall I liked the story. I was somewhat creeped out by the references to the World Trade Tower and couldn't help compare the real life event with this fictional account from 1973. Since I like the movie The Towering Inferno I could not resist this book. I'm going to read The Glass Inferno next as a way of comparing the two. The movie version was based on a combination of these two books. I will hold judgement until then. If you are a fan of disaster movies/books then this one will not disappoint you.

A masterpiece, people.
WOOW...
Just an amazing story to read.
5 stars ♥

This book begins in a rather boring way, with uninteresting dialogue by equally uninteresting characters. But little by little, much the way a fire starts slowly, it builds to an exciting and exploding crescendo. Nat, architect, is upset to discover that some of the features of his super tall skyscraper had been cheapened, something that could likely become a safety issue, and that someone had signed his name to the changes. But even while he is tracking down the guilty party, another person has begun his own plan of sabotage against the building. It takes a few chapters before this novel gets gripping, but once it does, it becomes a page turner. The author could have used a bit more imagination in naming his characters. There are too many with closely similar first names, and two even share the same first name. He also tends to sometimes refer to them by their names, sometimes by their nicknames, and sometimes by their job description. A more consistent treatment would have made keeping track of the many characters much easier. But he does a good job of developing the characters and their personalities, both with the heroic good guys and the bad scoundrels. I wish he had taken more time with the ending; it is rather abrupt. But still, the last chapter before the epilogue is chilling in its content.

Chillingly prophetic