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3.72 AVERAGE
3.72 AVERAGE
3 Stars
*A standard treasure-hunting adventure with some pacing issues*
I usually avoid co-authored books because they often lack cohesion. But I’ve been told by so many people that Preston and Child are “THE BEST” coauthor team that I finally decided to give them a try.
Riptide caught my eye because it is set in Maine and is about buried pirate treasure. And really that’s about all it takes to get my attention. I spent plenty of time in my childhood secretly hoping to stumble across Blackbeard’s treasure as I explored the rocky Maine coast.
The story is about the legend of Red Ned Ockham’s treasure supposedly buried in a booby-trapped pit on an island off Maine’s coast. Naturally, the island is also supposedly cursed. Every good buried treasure has a curse, of course.
Malin Hatch is the main character whose family has owned the island for generations but has seen nothing but tragedy from it. Despite never wanting to return, an avid treasure hunter talks Hatch into allowing his team to dig for the treasure. And once he gives in, Hatch naturally has to get in on the action himself. But no one digs up a cursed pirate treasure without consequences, and it won’t be long before the team is questioning if the curse is real.
At times the story was exciting at times, but at others it got bogged down by info dump. Readers will hopefully have a strong interest in drainage pumps and the other less glamorous and mundane aspects of treasure hunting. I would have expected the history and code breaking parts to pull me in again, but those were pretty dry as well. Also, the Maine setting was generic and mostly revolved around having people eat a lot of lobster.
Unfortunately, Preston and Child couldn’t resist putting the stereotypical overly-strict New England preacher character in. And that was when I lost quite a bit of interest in the story. The religious zealotism and proselytizing was annoying. (On a side note, every time I type “Preston and Child,” I feel like I’m talking about a law firm.)
My reaction to the other characters ranged from apathy to dislike, and that was really the biggest let down of this book. Even for an action story, I need to care about the characters in order to really feel the tension. When I don’t particularly care if the character makes it through a situation, it’s almost impossible to be invested in the story. The level of psychotic obsession got old after a while too. And that lost love sideline was lame and so cringe-worthy.
Chapters tended to end on mini cliffhangers designed to keep you flipping the pages, but I have to admit that my attention wandered at times. The writing style stuck to that Action & Adventure [a:Clive Cussler|18411|Clive Cussler|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1225620641p2/18411.jpg] vibe that was popular in the 80’s and 90’s. That made it entertaining but kind of generic. It would have helped if I was more engaged with the characters. And if I’d been less annoyed with the side plots. Overall, the story was entertaining enough, exciting at times, but not particularly memorable. I suppose it did fulfill my expectations of pirate treasure hunt, but it didn’t raise the bar. This is a fine book if you want a little treasure hunting, but it didn’t “Wow” me.
RATING FACTORS:
Ease of Reading: 4 Stars
Writing Style: 3 Stars
Characters and Character Development: 3 Stars
Plot Structure and Development: 3 Stars
Level of Captivation: 3 Stars
Originality: 3 Stars
*A standard treasure-hunting adventure with some pacing issues*
I usually avoid co-authored books because they often lack cohesion. But I’ve been told by so many people that Preston and Child are “THE BEST” coauthor team that I finally decided to give them a try.
Riptide caught my eye because it is set in Maine and is about buried pirate treasure. And really that’s about all it takes to get my attention. I spent plenty of time in my childhood secretly hoping to stumble across Blackbeard’s treasure as I explored the rocky Maine coast.
The story is about the legend of Red Ned Ockham’s treasure supposedly buried in a booby-trapped pit on an island off Maine’s coast. Naturally, the island is also supposedly cursed. Every good buried treasure has a curse, of course.
Malin Hatch is the main character whose family has owned the island for generations but has seen nothing but tragedy from it. Despite never wanting to return, an avid treasure hunter talks Hatch into allowing his team to dig for the treasure. And once he gives in, Hatch naturally has to get in on the action himself. But no one digs up a cursed pirate treasure without consequences, and it won’t be long before the team is questioning if the curse is real.
At times the story was exciting at times, but at others it got bogged down by info dump. Readers will hopefully have a strong interest in drainage pumps and the other less glamorous and mundane aspects of treasure hunting. I would have expected the history and code breaking parts to pull me in again, but those were pretty dry as well. Also, the Maine setting was generic and mostly revolved around having people eat a lot of lobster.
Unfortunately, Preston and Child couldn’t resist putting the stereotypical overly-strict New England preacher character in. And that was when I lost quite a bit of interest in the story. The religious zealotism and proselytizing was annoying. (On a side note, every time I type “Preston and Child,” I feel like I’m talking about a law firm.)
My reaction to the other characters ranged from apathy to dislike, and that was really the biggest let down of this book. Even for an action story, I need to care about the characters in order to really feel the tension. When I don’t particularly care if the character makes it through a situation, it’s almost impossible to be invested in the story. The level of psychotic obsession got old after a while too. And that lost love sideline was lame and so cringe-worthy.
Chapters tended to end on mini cliffhangers designed to keep you flipping the pages, but I have to admit that my attention wandered at times. The writing style stuck to that Action & Adventure [a:Clive Cussler|18411|Clive Cussler|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1225620641p2/18411.jpg] vibe that was popular in the 80’s and 90’s. That made it entertaining but kind of generic. It would have helped if I was more engaged with the characters. And if I’d been less annoyed with the side plots. Overall, the story was entertaining enough, exciting at times, but not particularly memorable. I suppose it did fulfill my expectations of pirate treasure hunt, but it didn’t raise the bar. This is a fine book if you want a little treasure hunting, but it didn’t “Wow” me.
RATING FACTORS:
Ease of Reading: 4 Stars
Writing Style: 3 Stars
Characters and Character Development: 3 Stars
Plot Structure and Development: 3 Stars
Level of Captivation: 3 Stars
Originality: 3 Stars
2.5 stars. I'd read this book before, approximately a million years ago, and literally all I remembered of it was that it somehow involves pirates, and that a dude's legs get chopped off with an axe and it's incredibly detailed about what the axe is cutting through and URGH.
That moment was just as gory and nauseating as I remembered it being, but I DIDN'T remember that it happens like 50 pages into this 460-odd page book. Look, the story itself is okay. I remember reading about the Money Pit of Oak Island when I lived in Canada as a kid, so I kind of love that the authors based this off a thing that actually exists. Where things fell well and truly short for me were the characters. None of them were particularly likeable or relatable, and I basically didn't give a crap what happened to any of them. The main character, Malin (really??) is a doctor who's apparently also a genius painter and a forensic anthropologist, given that he can easily diagnose cause of death from the skeletons that are recovered on the island.
Speaking of said skeletons, I'm not entirely sure how it works elsewhere in the world, but in Australia? Pretty much the LAST thing you want to find on an archaeological dig is human remains. Because the minute you do, you have to phone the police so they can check that you haven't accidentally found a murder victim. And if the skeletons turn out to be the remains of Aboriginal people, things become even more complicated and basically? Finding human remains means your dig will get shut down for at least two weeks. So for them to be all "Hey, guess what? We found eighty skeletons in a pit and we were instantly able to identify specific individuals and work out causes of death for all of them in the space of, like, two days!" drove me absolutely nuts. Because NO. If they were buried in a pit, you'd have a massive jumble of bones and it would take you a millionty years to work out the minimum number of individuals present before you even started worrying about their causes of death.
ANYWAY.
The characters were generally a bit cardboard cut out-y. They didn't have a whole lot of personality, and even when things started to get really serious (), I was all "Yeah, yeah, whatever. Get on with it." The vaguely romantic elements of the story seemed to exist solely so that there were a couple of female characters around, and the whole thing felt at least a hundred pages longer than was necessary.
In summary, it's a fast paced story, and there were elements of it that I really enjoyed. But the characters were bland, and there was a lot of talk about (now horribly outdated) computer systems and engineering problems and medical problems that incredibly minor characters are having. Throw in a fire and brimstone preacher who's married to Malin's childhood sweetheart and I was rolling my eyes. The story itself was mostly okay (as long as they weren't talking about archaeology). But the characters were all meh-tastic, and it felt way longer than was necessary.
That moment was just as gory and nauseating as I remembered it being, but I DIDN'T remember that it happens like 50 pages into this 460-odd page book. Look, the story itself is okay. I remember reading about the Money Pit of Oak Island when I lived in Canada as a kid, so I kind of love that the authors based this off a thing that actually exists. Where things fell well and truly short for me were the characters. None of them were particularly likeable or relatable, and I basically didn't give a crap what happened to any of them. The main character, Malin (really??) is a doctor who's apparently also a genius painter and a forensic anthropologist, given that he can easily diagnose cause of death from the skeletons that are recovered on the island.
Speaking of said skeletons, I'm not entirely sure how it works elsewhere in the world, but in Australia? Pretty much the LAST thing you want to find on an archaeological dig is human remains. Because the minute you do, you have to phone the police so they can check that you haven't accidentally found a murder victim. And if the skeletons turn out to be the remains of Aboriginal people, things become even more complicated and basically? Finding human remains means your dig will get shut down for at least two weeks. So for them to be all "Hey, guess what? We found eighty skeletons in a pit and we were instantly able to identify specific individuals and work out causes of death for all of them in the space of, like, two days!" drove me absolutely nuts. Because NO. If they were buried in a pit, you'd have a massive jumble of bones and it would take you a millionty years to work out the minimum number of individuals present before you even started worrying about their causes of death.
ANYWAY.
The characters were generally a bit cardboard cut out-y. They didn't have a whole lot of personality, and even when things started to get really serious (
Spoiler
like when Malin works out that the Sword of Michael is massively radioactive and that one second's exposure to it means certain deathIn summary, it's a fast paced story, and there were elements of it that I really enjoyed. But the characters were bland, and there was a lot of talk about (now horribly outdated) computer systems and engineering problems and medical problems that incredibly minor characters are having. Throw in a fire and brimstone preacher who's married to Malin's childhood sweetheart and I was rolling my eyes. The story itself was mostly okay (as long as they weren't talking about archaeology). But the characters were all meh-tastic, and it felt way longer than was necessary.
This is my new favorite non-Pendergast book yet! The whole last 1/4 of the book was super action packed.
Not as good as some of their other books. The climax was not nearly as exciting as some others, like The Ice Limit or Relic or especially Thunderhead, and it was kind of predictable. Overall, I enjoyed it, especially all of the various mysteries that presented themselves throughout the course of the book, but it wasn't my favorite of theirs.
Still would recommend!
Still would recommend!
adventurous
mysterious
tense
A silly fun book, although I thought the explanation of the plot fell apart a bit towards the end. Fun drama, but the science was forced.
La historia en general es entretenida, y las complicaciones para alcanzar el tesoro son buenas, aunque rayan un poco en lo improbable. Aún así, la trama en general redondea bien y cumple su cometido de entretener.
Pirate treasure.
A man lets a treasure company search the island that took his older brother's life, back when they were kids.
They are searching for the largest treasure ever known.
But the island is cursed and people die.
At the end will the treasure be found, will everyone be happy and rich.
Of course not, what pirate treasure book since Treasure Island ever ended with the searchers finding and keeping the treasure.
Even the goonies.
A man lets a treasure company search the island that took his older brother's life, back when they were kids.
They are searching for the largest treasure ever known.
But the island is cursed and people die.
At the end will the treasure be found, will everyone be happy and rich.
Of course not, what pirate treasure book since Treasure Island ever ended with the searchers finding and keeping the treasure.
Even the goonies.
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced