I just started reading some his stories in chronological order of timeline (not the order in which they were written).
I just finished Iceberg, and have to say: WTF?!?!?!?! :eek::rolleyes:
Wow; what a crazy story. Here’s the Wki synopsis.
Here are the bullet points that make it crazy.
[ul]
[li]A yacht is found embedded in an iceberg because it got so hot from a fire that it melted its way into the iceberg. [/li][li]Dirk Pitt has to take out a flying jet by ramming into it with his helicopter. [/li][li]Kirsti Fyrie, long-lost sister of now dead billionaire Kristjan is actually one in the same. He just had sex reassignment surgery. Oh, and by the way she’s evidently really really hot. [/li][li]Pitt uncovers a shadowy organization whose goal is to obtain control over Central and South America by controlling the economy. [/li][li]This will be done by kidnapping important people from various countries and fake an air disaster in an uninhabited area of Iceland. [/li][li]The important people and Dirk Pitt are dropped off in the remote area of Iceland (but not killed; rather a doctor medically broke several of their bones to make it LOOK like they were in an air crash). Also the pre-crashed plane was PLACED in this specific location because it would be hard to find.[/li][li]While there is an international furor in the press over the disappearance of and eventual discovery of the bodies of the missing people Hermit Limited will quietly assassinate the leaders of the two countries and assume control. [/li][li]The leaders to be assassinated are sightseeing at Disneyland; and the assassination is to take place on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride.[/li][/ul]
So… I can handle a little unbelievability as much as the next guy; but come on!
For those of you that have read Clive Cussler… do they get any better?
I read them when I was a kid, and liked them. Not sure I’d like them as much now.
But in any case, the zany plots and uber-macho Mary Sue Dirk Pitt are pretty much the appeal. If that’s not your bag, probably best to steer clear of the series.
They’re basically James Bond books, if James Bond owned a boat.
I was a pretty devoted (if not particularly admiring) fan of the early books, for all their Mickey Spillane quality issues. Cussler strikes me as the intersection of Clancy, Spillane and MacDonald, but he seems to have taken the worser qualities from each rather than the best.
Part of the problem is that he took the Pitt stories off the edge early on, and each one had to get more and more ridiculous and grandiose. Dirk has saved the planet more times than Superman, and with less believability.
Cussler also developed some annoying habits - putting the classic cars in each story was at first intriguing, and then became a wait-for-it. Ditto for his bizarre little author cameo in each of the later stories. His worst sin, though, is the extreme misogyny of the early stories - e.g. wherein Pitt forcibly rapes a woman to cure her of her frigidity. (The other side of that coin is a barely-concealed homophobia; in an early book the gorgeous woman in charge of the evil empire turns out to be a sex change, and there’s all but a comic-book splash WHEW! that Dirk never kissed her.)
That, and he’s retconned his main characters until, for example, the hippy-dippy longhair who masterminds the computers turns out to have been a Young Republican in disguise all along.
The bottom line is that Cussler’s not a very good writer; he has some spectacular imagination, experience and tech think to draw on (Clancy) and then bashes it out in the lumpiest pulp style (Spillane). The one thing I will credit him with unreservedly is the intriguing structure of creating a historical mystery as the prologue, then slowly unraveling it for the rest of the book. Too bad he didn’t have mo’ bettah ideas and an adequate writing style to keep it up for more than the first few books.
I read Raise the Titanic when it first came out and loved it. I’ve read a few more Dirk Pitt adventures since then, but never with as much enjoyment as RtT.
RTT is probably his best; the intersection of complete character and setting development and brilliant story concept.
(Aside: It’s fun to go through pre-Ballard books on Titanic and see how many believe absolutely that the ship went down in one piece; it wasn’t until the broken wreck was discovered that anyone seems to have noticed just as many reliable, authoritative accounts of the ship breaking in half. I think sheer wishfulness and romanticizing pushed aside the break stories for the idea that the undamaged ship was still down there…)
Hmm, I think you guys have saved me some time. I was looking for something to replace my enjoyment of Michael Connelly.
NitroPress, good call on the misogyny. I attributed it to being written in the 70s. Then he acts all swishy to be assumed as a gay man in Iceberg. Not a good book.
If Iceberg isn’t just a one-off thing; but more of a road map for the rest of the series; I don’t think I can deal with this. Then again, Raising The Titanic is the next in the series…
Iceberg may be the worst of the early ones. Keep going until the rising tide of silly awkwardness gets to you. A warning: It may come in the middle of a book. No matter how much it’s contrary to your nature, when you hit that point, stop reading. Your hunch that the rest of it isn’t going to get better is correct.
Cussler has been a bit… full of cussler since the earliest days. About three years into his career he published the first attempt at a Pitt novel (wretched) with a note that it might be a sort of historical artifact.
I do mildly admire his real wreck hunting efforts, though.
His formulaic formulization of formulas finally became too much for me when he introduced his kids, and since his son is also named Dirk Pitt, you never could tell who was speaking.
I’ve read a bunch of his later ones by virtue of spending a buck apiece on them at a book sale, then went back to read them in order by checking them out of the library, and was amused and shocked to find that, in the first book or two, Dirk Pitt is a colossal asshole–raping the woman to cure her of frigidity, belting a kid just because he doesn’t snap to and take orders like he should, being intentionally rude to waitstaff for no reason… and on the one hand, I thought it’s kind of interesting that the character actually changed from that asshole to, as described above, “James Bond with a boat”, but then I had to wonder… what if he hadn’t? What if he had kept this guy as a misogynistic, abusive, socially-challenged asshole and just kept cranking out story after story, and widows and other old ladies at Walmart kept buying them? That’d be kind of epic.
I thought I was sleep posting until I looked at your name. I’m not sure which book it was but I stopped reading in the middle of it and never looked back. I suppose if I was in prison and got tired of being raped every day I might take up the series again. I think the book with President Lincoln’s remains had a lot to do with it.
The plots are similar. Bizarre make believe history reference, even more bizarre evil super villain who intends great devastation that is stopped within milliseconds by the hero of the story who gets laid 007 style.
At some point I think the reader is suppose to get the joke and give the books to an unsuspecting rube.
:rolleyes:
Then again, Raising The Titanic is the next in the series…