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thebrownbookloft's review against another edition
2.0
Too many plot lines that skipped about too rapidly for my taste. I got to the point where I just didn't care what happened and quit reading about 100 pages from the end.
I do like adventure/suspense novels and I am a fan of the early Clive Cussler books. This one just didn't quite do it for me.
I do like adventure/suspense novels and I am a fan of the early Clive Cussler books. This one just didn't quite do it for me.
pussreboots's review against another edition
4.0
One star off for the usual problems: too long of a prolog and too much time spent from the antagonists' POV.
amdame1's review against another edition
3.0
3.5 stars
A typical Clive Cussler novel - full of handsome men, beautiful women, evil villains, underwater discoveries, fast cars, and lots of explosives!
A typical Clive Cussler novel - full of handsome men, beautiful women, evil villains, underwater discoveries, fast cars, and lots of explosives!
donnaslair's review against another edition
2.0
I don't know why I do this to myself. I guess I get stuck in ruts and start to crave rut-busters. Every once in a while, I'll pick up a thriller just for something different, and I should know by now that I'm not a fan of Clive Cussler.
I've enjoyed Dan Brown's books, and the Jason Bourne series, but these are just a little too corny for my taste. The hero (or in this case heroes, as the book has several subplots on various continents) quips in the face of almost certain doom, and never seems to have a change of mood. The mood thing bothers me, as I feel like if thriller-y things happened to me, I would probably have moods: frightened, angry, relieved, and so on. But not the Pitt family! Wry amusement is their one-size-fits-all mood.
Yes, the Pitt family. The author apparently thought it would be a good idea to have two heroes named Dirk Pitt in the same book - father and son. And for equal opportunity, daughter Summer Pitt also has a role. This to me is one of the many things poking holes in the plausibility of the story. I mean, what are the odds that 3 members of the same family simultaneously and on different continents get embroiled in the same evil plot?
You really have to put your critical reasoning skills on the shelf in order to get through this without too many eye rolls, and some of it is flat our insulting. During one chase scene, the characters run (for no apparent reason) into an improbably located antique car show on a small rural island off the Turkish coast. Where they steal a car from a guy named Clive Cussler (for God's sake)! In case you haven't looked at the back of one of Mr Cussler's books, he is very keen for us to know that he likes antique cars. I'm sure authors write themselves, friends, family, into books all the time. But it takes a special kind of arrogance to do it so clumsily.
Oh, and I'll keep this vague in order to avoid spoilers, but even though I'm no archaeologist, I would venture to say that the potency of weapons left in the elements for 2000 years might be somewhat diminished. Just sayin'.
I've enjoyed Dan Brown's books, and the Jason Bourne series, but these are just a little too corny for my taste. The hero (or in this case heroes, as the book has several subplots on various continents) quips in the face of almost certain doom, and never seems to have a change of mood. The mood thing bothers me, as I feel like if thriller-y things happened to me, I would probably have moods: frightened, angry, relieved, and so on. But not the Pitt family! Wry amusement is their one-size-fits-all mood.
Yes, the Pitt family. The author apparently thought it would be a good idea to have two heroes named Dirk Pitt in the same book - father and son. And for equal opportunity, daughter Summer Pitt also has a role. This to me is one of the many things poking holes in the plausibility of the story. I mean, what are the odds that 3 members of the same family simultaneously and on different continents get embroiled in the same evil plot?
You really have to put your critical reasoning skills on the shelf in order to get through this without too many eye rolls, and some of it is flat our insulting. During one chase scene, the characters run (for no apparent reason) into an improbably located antique car show on a small rural island off the Turkish coast. Where they steal a car from a guy named Clive Cussler (for God's sake)! In case you haven't looked at the back of one of Mr Cussler's books, he is very keen for us to know that he likes antique cars. I'm sure authors write themselves, friends, family, into books all the time. But it takes a special kind of arrogance to do it so clumsily.
Oh, and I'll keep this vague in order to avoid spoilers, but even though I'm no archaeologist, I would venture to say that the potency of weapons left in the elements for 2000 years might be somewhat diminished. Just sayin'.
johnmarlowe's review against another edition
2.0
This was actually a 2.5 rating. Oh no, another Clive Cussler. I keep saying that this is the last. These books are not nearly as interesting as when they were Clive only, and were from his beginning as a writer of adventure/treasure stories. In this one, I suspect Clive is continuing to pass the torch to his son Dirk, who I bet wrote it. So, a Roman galley was carrying something incredibly historically significant, and was being chased by pirates in 400AD or so. Cut to the present where the Pitt family is doing various archeological things that eventually relate to the beginning of the book. Ho hum. How many escape from deaths can there be in a book? The Cusslers also make their main characters a little too superman-ish, able to leap tall buildings with a single bound. Don't get me wrong. I cut my reading teeth on the original Clive Cussler books and could not wait for the next one to come out. It's just that I've probably read too many of them now, and when you get down to it, they're all the same (ducking from Clive Cussler fans throwing pillows).