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Loading... Blue Gold: A Novel from the NUMA Filesby Clive Cussler
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. These are fun books for me to read. Very James Bond-ish. Except Kurt Austin is less of a devil with the ladies than good ol' Dirk Pitt. At least there's something different about their characters. Regardless, I like Cussler's stories, no matter how outlandish and silly they are. ( )This is not a Dirk Pitt book--it's the 2nd in Cussler's collaborative series with Paul Kemprecos featuring Kurt Austin--but it's not all that different. If you've never read Clive Cussler, think James Bond with boats. The villains are over-the-top bad guys, and Dirk Pitt or Kurt Austin has to face impossible odds to save the world on a regular basis. In Blue Gold, we have a syndicate, headed by an Amazon of a woman, scheming to control "blue gold" (water), and thus, the world. Throw in a scientist who's been lost in the jungle for 10 years after escaping kidnappers (she'd developed a revolutionary desalination technique), the crew at NUMA, and his trusty sidekick Joe Zavala, and you've got a real page-turner. I thoroughly enjoyed the trip into the jungle--the scientist's innovations reminded me of those in Swiss Family Robinson that I was so fascinated by when I was a kid. Kurt and Joe are no Pitt and Giordino, but then again. Pitt and Giordino aren't themselves much anymore either. I didn't really see a difference with the collaboration, but then again, the last 2 Cussler books I read were also collaborations--one with Craig Dirgo, and one with Dirk Cussler. The characters are very similar to those in the Dirk Pitt books, as are the situations, and the style of switching story threads between chapters until they all come together at the end (I'm sure there's a term for that, but I don't know what it is--if you do, please enlighten me--thanks!). At any rate, Blue Gold is exactly what I expected: a solid, 4-star, action-packed adventure. A great book combining adventure and the sensitive nature of the oceans. A Kurt Austin Adventure. The plot is similar to most others. Trouts are in Venezuela and discover a Brazilian women (Fransisca) being held captive. She as a secrect recipie to make drinking water chiply and simply. Another womon a tall scandanavian women is trying produce the same results and to take over the world water supplies. She hoes to control the world. Again, the heros save the world and the day. Fransisca is killed in the end when she sets off a reaction in the Lake Taho purification experiment that kills all the bad guys and saves the process for the world. Adventure/Thriller, Fun to listen to on tape or cd 0.153 seconds to build listing
Amazon.com (ISBN 0743467183, Paperback)Reading a Clive Cussler novel is like watching several movies at once. He's a master of the jump cut, moving the action from one continent to another with an entirely different cast of characters, good guys and bad, in each place. He always manages to pull the various characters, plots, and counterplots together, though, and the heroes always triumph in the end after saving the world from eco-terrorists, megalomaniacs with their ambitions primed for world domination, and a few regular old criminals thrown in for good measure. In this new adventure from the National Underwater & Marine Agency (NUMA) files, Kurt Austin and his partner Joe Zavala nearly die during a powerboat race when a pod of dead, bloated gray whales bobs to the surface and obstructs the race course. Attempting to discover what killed the whales, Kurt and Joe track their migratory route to a mysterious underwater laboratory on the Baja Peninsula. Once again they narrowly miss death when the lab explodes, destroying their minisubmarine and almost poaching them alive. What seemed like a simple scientific investigation turns into something very different: a confrontation with a 7-foot Valkyrie who's bent on taking over the earth's depleted freshwater reserves. In order to thwart her plans, Austin and Zavala venture deep into the jungle of the Venezuelan rain forest to find a supposedly mythical tribal goddess (one with a Ph.D. in science, of course) whose secret formula to desalinate seawater can put the kibosh on the Valkyrie's plans. Helped by a husband-wife NUMA team who've already made the goddess's acquaintance, plus the always fascinating techno-toys so beloved of superheroes, Kurt and Joe save the day. But before they do, there's plenty of heart-stopping action, random acts of murder and mutilation, and even a little romance. Great pacing, plenty of gadgets, a strong narrative, and bigger-than-life heroes and villains. If you've run out of summer action flicks already, make your own popcorn and curl up with Blue Gold instead. --Jane Adams(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:10 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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