Polar Shift

Austin's sixth adventure has us following the flight of the brilliant electro-magnetic scientist, Lazlo Kovacs, as he flees a crumbling Third Reich under the guiding hand of Karl Schneider. Spending the next fifty years becoming rich in the US and having Karl godfather his granddaughter, Karla, we move to present day with the sinking of the Southern Belle in waves greater than 90ft. This, of course, immediately demolishes all current tidal theories and launches Kurt (after escaping being inexplicably attacked by an Orca pod) into a mystery that involves the late Kovacs work on electromagnetism, a couple of brilliant young software geniuses whose wayward youthful desire to be anti-establishment leads them down the dark path of the show more elitist and corporate overlord, Gant, and the obvious beautiful young lady in the guise of Karla who happens to be a leading authority on woolly mammoths.

"Polar Shit" expands the essential formula in that it has two bad guys with separate agendas, a third almost-bad guy who helps the good guys, and another good guy outsider. It sounds complicated, but it's not. show less

St. Barts 2017 #2 - This continues the tradition of my friend and i both reading the same Cussler adventure on this vacation...this time it is #6 in the NUMA files series......ginormous mystery waves sinking ships, giant ocean whirlpools, and what is causing them and why brings together our team of ocean-going swashbucklers. WWII Nazi resistance movement, wartime refugee ship sinking, studies of the extinction of the wooly mammoth in Siberia and killer whales playing with kayakers all play into this one.....somehow. Certainly a healthy dose of unbelievability is present as usual, but the scenarios created and the visuals of foreign lands and historic memorabilia always make this fun. Oh, and surprise, surprise...part of this takes place show more on an island off of Maine.....unexpected islands always seem to creep into my island vacation reading pile. And can I also mention an exciting excape from evil in a 1906 replica Stanley Steamer??? Oh, yes....this has it all!! Thank you Kurt Austin and your colleagues at NUMA.....we'll see you here next year if not before.... show less

Polar Shift was written in 2005 and, for me at least, works much better than Cussler’s newer works. Instead of the rock ‘em, sock ‘em, constant edge of your seat, made for TV tales he and his co-authors are now churning out, this turned out to be a well-paced, well written, comfortable read.

In essence, a madman attempts to cause major global mayhem to consolidate his power of world communications by instigating a polar shift. He does this by attempting to manipulate the earth’s molten core using theorems created by a scientist who was forced into this by the Nazis in their search for a super weapon.

The story revolves around a NUMA troubleshooter, Kurt Austin, who is a cookie cutter version of both Dirk Pitts and my favorite, show more Isaac Bell, protagonists in other Cussler novels. Add to that a pretty girl being hunted for the knowledge she doesn’t know she has by the evil perp’s henchmen. The perp, of course, is supported by the evil doer’s scientific brainiac who knows what’s going on, but isn’t comfortable with the loss of life as they race against Kurt and NUMA as they derail his evil plans.

I honestly can’t say I found a single typo, but, as is common, the novel is larded with add-on words. Thankfully the text isn’t fattened up with endless technical descriptions, as is common in Cussler’s newer novels.

This was a pleasant, entertaining read and, I think, one of his best. show less

I thought the book was really weak. The story itself was okay, but every single character was one dimensional and didn't really have any qualities. Every single hair colour is mentioned and in what great shape every single one of them is, but the characters never come to life. And a main character is a great scientist, a great sportsman, and has a big library of philosophy books he peruses in his spare time. yeah right. Nobody of the good guys have any bad qualities, and none of the bad guys have any redeeming qualities. they just want to get even richer/ more powerful / do evil things.

The basis or substance of the story was a worthy 4 or 4.5 star, but I really felt this story was let down by the lack of explanation or reasoning as to why such an incredibly devastating potential threat was only handled (fairly much) by a department (NUMA). So that dragged my rating for this to a 3.

I like Cussler's books because the plots are so out-of-this-world over-the-top. And he makes them believeable! Kurt Austin is pretty much Dirk Pitt with another name, but that doesn't bother me so much. It just kind of cracks me up, because Cussler doesn't even really try to hide it. I mean, Pitt lives in a converted airplane hanger, and Austin lives in a converted boat house. Same guy, different day. Also, Cussler didn't make his usual cameo appearance in this one.

Entertaining read. Typical Kurt Austin Adventure - save the world without losing sense of humor while getting the pretty girl. The general concept was interesting and a recent topic on the science channel.

In the how I'd improve the book - maps, a little more effort on the history and science of the main theme and less on the gimmick near the end and more proof editing (page 477 "He stared" not "Her".)