CT-Rich
Contributor
Just finished this book on tape and have to admit that it was difficult to get through. I know these books are mostly boy adventure fluff, but it really didn't even live up to the genre expectations. If I hadn't been trapped in the car with nothing else going on, I would have given up on it as soon as the Handsome Kurt Austin had shown his steely blue eyes or moved his uber-manly square Jaw.
I have read other Cussler books that I did rather enjoy. Raise the Titanic was a memorable read from my youth, highly improbable, but loads of fun. This book had paper thin characters that rang hollow and boringly predictable. The only feature of the book that I really enjoyed was the historic fiction that preceded the book proper. If the book had centered around this premise and these characters, the reader would have been much better served. I have noticed that about other Cussler books.
The preamble focuses on the adventures of a 1848 whaling ship and the unusual voyage and crew, including a crewmate that survived being swallowed by a sperm whale only to discovered alive in its gut. they also survive a super-plague that is thwarted by semi-hostile natives... all in all a potentially interesting story line.
What we get for the balance of the book are evil Asian out to control the world and girls falling all over themselves hook up with our intrepid heroes..... I think Kurt Austen think an awful lot of himself....
The diving part of the book was also annoying, there was a coral atoll with just a wisp of an Island (the original island, apparently was wiped out by an Earth quake, that is so large that it can hide an undersea research lab at a depth of 300fsw and has enough room to maneuver a 600ft nuclear sub. Not a particularly well thought out contrivance. Several dives are made to the undersea habitat, and they point out it must be done with using trimix and wetsuits, but don't accept that you need to decompress to enter the habitat and that a wetsuit on such a dive would be compressed to uselessly thin proportions at those depths.
I remember there was a book written about (by?) Cussler and his real-life adventures researching shipwrecks, including his involvement in the CSS Hunley discovery and several other stories that were quite interesting and much more worthy of reading than this particular book. Anyone recall the name of the book I am talking about? I was looking for it on Amazon, but didn't see it.
I have read other Cussler books that I did rather enjoy. Raise the Titanic was a memorable read from my youth, highly improbable, but loads of fun. This book had paper thin characters that rang hollow and boringly predictable. The only feature of the book that I really enjoyed was the historic fiction that preceded the book proper. If the book had centered around this premise and these characters, the reader would have been much better served. I have noticed that about other Cussler books.
The preamble focuses on the adventures of a 1848 whaling ship and the unusual voyage and crew, including a crewmate that survived being swallowed by a sperm whale only to discovered alive in its gut. they also survive a super-plague that is thwarted by semi-hostile natives... all in all a potentially interesting story line.
What we get for the balance of the book are evil Asian out to control the world and girls falling all over themselves hook up with our intrepid heroes..... I think Kurt Austen think an awful lot of himself....
The diving part of the book was also annoying, there was a coral atoll with just a wisp of an Island (the original island, apparently was wiped out by an Earth quake, that is so large that it can hide an undersea research lab at a depth of 300fsw and has enough room to maneuver a 600ft nuclear sub. Not a particularly well thought out contrivance. Several dives are made to the undersea habitat, and they point out it must be done with using trimix and wetsuits, but don't accept that you need to decompress to enter the habitat and that a wetsuit on such a dive would be compressed to uselessly thin proportions at those depths.
I remember there was a book written about (by?) Cussler and his real-life adventures researching shipwrecks, including his involvement in the CSS Hunley discovery and several other stories that were quite interesting and much more worthy of reading than this particular book. Anyone recall the name of the book I am talking about? I was looking for it on Amazon, but didn't see it.