It’s officially summer, so it’s time for us in Hawaii to swap our light, airy shirts for our other light, airy shirts. My book-loving family is eager to switch up our reading habits. Just in time, there’s a novel that will be inescapable for us on Hawaii island and nearly everywhere else.

A year ago, I wrote about five books that I suggested people read in lieu of James Michener’s “Hawaii.” I had planned to continue with more reading suggestions for this column, but instead I’ll focus on the book that is going to dominate the bestseller lists. 

“Eruption” is going to be the most-read book on flights arriving in Hawaii for the rest of the year. There will hardly be an airport bookstore this summer without a prominent stack of “Eruption” ready to read.

The manuscript was started by Michael Crichton of “Jurassic Park,” “Westworld” and “E.R.” fame. Crichton died in 2008 and this will be his fourth posthumously published novel.

Crichton’s widow, Sherri, asked James Patterson to help complete “Eruption.”

Crichton is said to have sold 200 million books. Patterson supposedly has sold twice as many. These guys write books that sell and “Eruption” should be no different. 

“Eruption” spends most of its short chapters following the preparations for a mega-eruption of Mauna Loa predicted by scientists at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory. However, it’s not just Hilo that’s threatened, but the entire planet thanks to a radioactive herbicide, Agent Black, that the U.S. Army has precariously stored in a cave called the “Icetube” inside Mauna Kea. If the lava flow from Mauna Loa nears the Agent Black facility, the scientists in the book fear the radioactive herbicide will explode into the stratosphere and all life on Earth will perish within four months. 

Oh, and Merrie Monarch is going on in Hilo.

Those are pretty compelling and high stakes to start with, and Crichton and Patterson bring in scientists, soldiers, demolition experts, civil defense officials and billionaires to compete to stave off the world-ending calamity. 

After I read an advance copy of “Eruption,” I realized that the person who will likely experience the greatest real-life impact of the novel is Ken Hon, the scientist-in-charge of the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, which is part of the U.S. Geological Survey. The book’s protagonist is John “Mac” MacGregor, the head of the HVO, who quickly goes from surfing at Honolii to rappelling into a caldera to rescue passengers from a downed helicopter.

Hon and I laughed a lot as I rattled off some of the extreme scenarios his fictional doppleganger finds himself in. 

“There’s no way that we’re allowed to rappel out of a helicopter,” said Hon, who has read reviews of the book and is a fan of Crichton’s novels. “According to U.S. government regulations, we’re not trained to do it.”

I eventually spoiled the ending for Hon, which involves Mac flying in an F-15 that has its engines damaged by volcanic debris to bomb a lava flow. 

“I have no problem with these things that stretch your imagination, but no one needs to put me in an F-15,” Hon said. I told Hon I couldn’t wait for an HVO book club to convene after reading “Eruption,” there’s no way people that know Hon won’t teasingly call him “Mac.”

If Hon were to be cast in the upcoming film version of “Eruption,” he said Jack Black should play him (this answer was a pleasant surprise since I thought he would opt for Tom Cruise or George Clooney).

Mac’s devotion to his job has put his marriage on the rocks, while Hon is married to volcanologist Cheryl Gansecki who cheerily questioned many of the plot twists in the novel and made me think of the excellent 2022 documentary “Fire of Love.”

Mac repeatedly finds himself in moments requiring heroic effort. Hon said HVO has been modernizing to avoid hero syndromes in big emergencies. 

“We try to eliminate as many single points of failure as possible,” said Hon, who has a doomsday scenario for Mauna Loa. “We need people that know what they’re doing that are competent and transferring information as fast as possible to the people that need to use it.”

And as for bombing lava vents?

“It’s just plain stupid,” Hon said. “It may be possible to do that, but it’s certainly frowned upon culturally to do that. And we certainly wouldn’t undertake anything like that without huge community approval. It’d have to be something that was so big that the Native Hawaiian community got behind it.”

It’s hard to see the Native Hawaiian community getting behind this book.

“The authors’ cultural investment feels as deep as buying a plastic lei at the Honolulu airport,” wrote Ron Charles in his review in The Washington Post.

There are scant mentions of true local culture in this novel. If you’re interested in reading a recent book that does local culture well, I recommend reading Megan Kakimoto’s “Every Drop Is a Man’s Nightmare.”

“Eruption” is a Crichton novel: Exposition laden, thin characters and half-hearted romantic frisson. It’s a page-turning quick read — indeed, my speed-reading teenager read it on a ride from Waimea to the rim of Kilauea. There are a number of small errors that will distract readers from Hawaii, but look past those and the occasionally clunky dialog for an old-fashioned summer read.

Plus, no one reads Crichton for sensational wordcraft (“Rachel thought of herbicide as a necessary evil — like first dates.”). We read Crichton for the ideas and subject matter he pulled forward into the wider discourse (including extinction restoration, biotech and climate change). 

The issue of trust in institutions is woven through the book, most especially during an event that threatens a Hawaiian community. It turns out that the military is not telling the truth about deteriorating storage facilities. For those of us in Hawaii, this is one of the more believable plot lines, given what we all know about Red Hill and the contamination of the water supply of almost a half-million people. 

So even amid the audacious story lines of helicopters flying into calderas, plans to bomb lava and, perhaps most outrageously, a Four Seasons resort in Hilo, readers of “Eruption” will find some truth.