Ok, so I’ve never read any of his books until recently myself. A friend of mine has been after me to read them for a while, so I broke down and got Valhalla Rising on unabridged audio from the local library for my frequent long ass trips. I have been unimpressed thus far…even beyond unimpressed.
There are so many plot holes I can’t even manage to suspend my believe even marginally. His Dirk character is really over the top. The way women (even the stupid computer AI Max seems to want to leap his bones and falls for his green eyes, blah blah blah). And his quasi-Socialist/Marxist patter is REALLY annoying. He seems to forget things happening in the story from earlier:
There is one scene where our hero Dirk is trying to save his ship from pirates…he has a gun when he recaptures the ship, but then later he doesn’t have it when trying to stop a pirate with a rocket launcher from destroying the ship. Oh…and the whole concept of ‘back blast’ is appearently forgotten in his universe
Things like that abound. So, my question is…are some of the books better than this? Is this just a bad one or are they all pretty much the same? Does anyone actually like this tripe?
I enjoyed his books for more than twenty years. I started with the paperback of Raise the Titanic!–which I read three times in four months–and I read every book after that. I even suffered through one of the least believable plot points I’ve ever read in a non-fantasy novel (hint: it’s in Sahara, but the filmmakers wisely omitted it from the movie).
And then I finished a recent one (Trojan Odyssey?) that had what may be the most ridiculous, contrived, and badly handled twist ending in literary history: Dirk Pitt suddenly meets, with absolutely no foreshadowing or preliminaries, two grown children he never knew he had–complete with the graduate degrees needed to follow in their father’s footsteps!
That’s when I gave up.
But I thought *Sahara * was a good popcorn movie.
Maybe I should try some of the earlier ones then. I DO like treasure hunting book. Does he usually write himself into the books? He’s actually a character in this one.
Well, the book abounds with evil corporations…all of them are out the screw over the little guy. They are all either evil or stupid…or both. There are all kinds of references to selfless scientists wanting to give away their great works for the good of the public with no thought of profit…in fact references to profit being a bad thing. Stuff like that. To me its layed on pretty think. Maybe its only in this book?
Does he actually RAISE the Titanic? Its pretty far gone (I assume he wrote this before it was actually found, yes?) after all. I think they tried to raise a single deck plate and even failed at that if memory serves. They have brought up a lot of artifacts though.
I’ll give a go though to some of those…like I said, my friend thinks his books are great and has been after me for years to read them. I just never got around to any before as my book queue is usually pretty long. Audio books though, if they are unabridged, are nearly as good, though normally I don’t like to listen to anything I haven’t read. This book is a good example of why thats so.
I read Raise the Titanic! as an impressionably junior high school moppet. I remember digging all the undersea-exploration stuff, and the part with the clay models in the big tank. But I couldn’t stop laughing at the end when someone attacked a dried up corpse and pulled off its head.
Also, “Dirk Pitt” is a really stupid name. I guess Clive really felt strongly that a hero must have a two-syllable name.
The book was published more than ten years before Ballard acctually found the Titianic, so Cussler assumed it to be in one piece. NUMA raised it with a method that’s still science fiction today.
True…but they work for a nearly magical GOVERNMENT agency. Perhaps I’m just reading (or listening) more into it than there is. But after the 3rd scientist extolled the virtues of giving up all rights to a wonderful new propulsion system (and magical new energy source, along with super oil) for the ‘good of society’, blah blah blah my eyes were rolling nearly out of my head. And the evil corporations are just SO over the top.
Might be the shock of going from listening to Atlas Shrugged last week to this of course.
Like many authors, his earlier works are better than the later ones. That said, I still find them to be decent airplane books. I think I own everything he’s ever written. :smack:
I certainly hope not as that would indicate that even his early books have gapping plot holes…like the fact that the crush depth of a ping pong ball is probably something like 100-200 feet at a guess. Taking a ping pong ball to the Titanic’s depth and…well, you get the idea.
I don’t go out of my way to pick up Cussler’s books, but I’ve enjoyed the few I’ve read for their unmitigated cheese factor. If you’re going to write a series of comically implausible techno-thrillers, then what better name for your ultra-manly main character than “Dirk Pitt?” It’s perfect in its comic-book goofiness, the sort of name that demands to be printed in boldface capitals: “SuddenlyDIRK PITTentered the room.” A much more aggressively masculine name than, say, “Clive.” The mere fact that you’re reading a book about the exploits of a guy named DIRK PITT helps to ground the story and keeps you from taking it too seriously, as can happen with some of your more humorless writers like Crichton.
I especially like the weird alternate universe Cussler sets up, where no matter what threat to civilization arises, it will somehow involve scuba diving and/or oceanography. Fortunately we can rely on the forces of NUMA, the marine research organization that routinely consults with the President of the United States. If Cussler’s America is ever confronted by a crisis that isn’t at least tangentially related to the oceans, we’re all screwed.
I read the early ones in paperback as a kid, after having Raise the Titanic in the household library and loving it. The earlier ones were better than the later ones, IMHO. Not that any of them are fantastic, but a good book to read at the pool. I haven’t read any of the ones he hasn’t written. I’m sure they suck.
Secret confession: I’ve always wanted a hangar with a live-in loft at the airport like Dirk Pitt. Was that in the Sahara movie?
