Lost City

By Clive Cussler with Paul Kemprecos, 2004

If you like preposterous high-adrenaline adventure stories and you've got a long flight followed by a holiday somewhere with no-much-to-do... then this is the book for you.

It's a five-star mystery suspense complete with mutant monsters, evil conspiricies, mysterious aristocratic families in sinister castles, underwater hi-jinks, disappearing scientists and the obligatory fool-hardy heros. Rather like a Tintin comic book actually.

Apparently Clive Cussler has written 25 previous books, many about underwater adventures with the NUMA underwater government agency, so I guess he is getting quite good at making this nonsense up by now.

This isn't a book which stretches the reader's intelligence, although it does have some fascinating stuff about underwater science. If it was food then it would be vindaloo with ketchup. The hardest thing sometimes is trying to remember who are the many characters involved, as the complex plot moves back and forth, over and under-water, in and out of glacial mountains.

To be honest, I couldn't put it down, but then I am a book junkie and I do like a good adventure. Whether I'd pick up another by the same author is another matter. Although this is the only one I've read, I'm going out on a limb to say it reads very much like a formula, and for Mr Cussler, evidently a pretty successful one.


© Arjuna Krishna-Das 2007. This page last modified 17 February, 2007	Top