Chadzilla ROARS!!! (The Official Blog of Chadwick H. Saxelid, Writer)

The Sea Hunters: True Adventures With Famous Shipwrecks - by Clive Cussler & Craig Dirgo

In some alternate world, Clive Cussler and James Cameron have teamed up.  In that world there is not only a long running series of best-selling Dirk Pitt adventure novels, there is also a successful Dirk Pitt action-adventure film franchise.  One that rivals the James Bond franchise in both popularity and box office longevity.  Even the characters in the Dirk Pitt series spin-offs, Kurt Austin (The NUMA Files) and Juan Cabrillo (The Oregon Files), respectively, have become popular enough to star in their own long running action-adventure television series.  Then there are all the Dirk Pitt comic books and video games, and all the NUMA toys.

But the best thing in this alternate world are the numerous documentaries that Cussler and Cameron have made.  These documentaries (some made-for-television, some filmed in IMAX 3D) not only detail Cussler and Cameron's obsessive search for shipwrecks, but they also serve as maritime history lessons.

Yes, that's a fun dream.  But it is only a dream.  The reality is that neither man's creative ego lends itself to working well with others.  Both want to make and play in a sandbox of their very own and, while they are both okay with sharing, they still want to exclusively OWN the sandbox and all of the toys in it.  Cameron more so than Cussler, I think.  Which is most unfortunate, because I think these guys were made for each other.

That was the thought that most frequently came to my mind while I read Clive Cussler and Craig Dirgo's book, The Sea Hunters.  I doubt such a bizarre flight of fancy was ever Cussler and Dirgo's intention, though.  But there was precious little else for me to think about as the uneven and unfocused book moved from shipwreck search to shipwreck search.

What made the book feel so uneven and unfocused were the mismatches in storytelling style.  The book is broken into sections that detail a particular search for a particular ship, or cluster of ships.  Each of these sections begins with a dramatization of the sought after ship's history and its sinking (though, in one instance, there is a search for a missing train wreck*) that is then followed by Cussler's memoir of the search.  

Some dramatizations are much better than others, as is the case with any anthology of yarns.  The two that have lodged the deepest in my memory are the reenactments of the sinking of the steamboat Lexington and the troop transport Leopoldville.  (Both reminded me of what it was like to read Walter Lord's seminal dramatization of the sinking of the Titanic, A Night to Remember.)

As with the dramatizations, some of Cussler's memoirs are more entertaining and interesting than others.  The best of them detail the various hardships, oddballs, and insults Cussler and his NUMA team (Cussler makes an emphatic point that the naming of his hobby organization after the fictional government agency in his Dirk Pitt novels was not his idea) suffered while trying to find a particular shipwreck.  While I admire Cussler's passion and determination to find, survey, and document famous, or infamous, or simply forgotten locations of maritime history, I had trouble juggling occasional moments of self-aggrandizing with his protestations that it was all about finding and documenting history, and not about him.  

Perhaps it is because, despite all of his protestations to the contrary, Cussler doesn't really treat his hobby as anything but a hobby.  He also doesn't share his research habits, or what made him decide to search for a particular shipwreck.  Nor does he give much thought, or share any feelings, about his discoveries.  Also not helping is Cussler's contemptuous dismissal of the scientific method and peer testable results.  That, coupled with the lack of background detail of his own research methods, casts a somewhat discomforting shadow over all of his searches and antics.  Then again, I should point out that I purchased and read this book to read about Clive Cussler and his search for shipwrecks, rather than to learn about the details of the various shipwrecks themselves.  So why I end of complaining that there was a bit too much of the former and not enough of the latter is a mystery to me.

*The very same train wreck that inspired Cussler's fifth Dirk Pitt novel, Night Probe!.

Blue Gold - by Clive Cussler & Paul Kemprecos

An investigation of how a pod of grey whales came to be boiled alive in the Pacific Ocean uncovers an industrialist's nefarious plans to control the entire world's supply of fresh water.

Which also has something to do with the Great White Goddess that is rumored to be lurking in an unexplored (and quite deadly) region of the Amazon rain forest.

And yes, the book is every bit as silly as the above description makes it sound.  Perhaps it is even sillier.  There were plenty of moments while I was reading the book where I found myself thinking, "Man, this thing sure is silly."  But, in the end, it is that very silliness that makes Blue Gold so much fun to read.

I thought that Serpent, the first book in the Clive Cussler/Paul Kemprecos penned Kurt Austin/Numa Files adventure series, while an entertaining read, wasn't all that good.  I remember getting a tad confused by the mystery, losing track of what was going on, and not really understanding the hows and whys the various plot threads came together at the end.

I had no problems following Blue Gold, though.  The connection between the mystery of the dead whales and the mystery of the Great White Goddess, the former investigated by Kurt Austin and his wisecracking buddy Joe Zavala, the latter by a Nick and Nora style husband and wife team of science-adventurers, is quite strong, and both plot threads come together quiet nicely during the action packed finale. 

The fact that, despite my now having read two books in the Numa Files series, I cannot even remember the actual names of the Nick and Nora style husband and wife team of science-adventurers could be considered, by some, to be embarrassing.  But I think it just serves as a wonderful example of how disposable these potboilers truly are.  

I read and enjoyed Blue Gold while I was reading it.  But, less than a week after having finished it, the book has already fading from my cluttered memory.  All I remember from the book are its plentiful action scenes.  The dead whales causing havoc at a charity boat race, the exploding tortilla plant, Nick, Nora, and the Great White Goddess trying to escape a blood-thristy Amazon tribe, the identical twin hitmen tooling around on motorcycles mounted with spears, and the fist fight Kurt and Joe have with the Big Bad, an almost seven foot tall Nordic Ice Queen, inside of her Viking ship decorated lair.  

But all that stuff is what's supposed to be memorable, because those things are the sole reason for the book to exist.  Whenever I pick up a Clive Cussler novel, I am not expecting literature.  I am expecting a fun ride.  Blue Gold was a very fun ride, while it lasted.

Classic Moment of Cinema: Sahara (2005)

As a young adult and a teen-ager I was a voracious reader of Clive Cussler's Dirk Pitt novels, so it was only a matter of time before I watched Matthew McConaughey's maligned attempt to turn the best-selling novel series into a hit movie series.  Didn't happen.

What did happen was a great opening credits sequence that introduces Dirk Pitt, his best bud Al Giordino, and the globe trotting adventures of NUMA with toe tapping perfection:

Serpent - by Clive Cussler & Paul Kemprecos

In my younger days (writing those words makes me sound far more aged than I really am) I was a somewhat avid reader of Clive Cussler’s Dirk Pitt adventure novels. I burned through about four or five of them before I stopped reading them, for whatever reason. Although I remembered the Cussler books that I had read (Iceberg, Raise the Titanic!, Night Probe!, Vixen 03, Pacific Vortex!, and Deep Six) rather fondly, my reading interests had moved on to other pastures. Now my interests have wandered back.

So it goes.

Rather than return to the Dirk Pitt series where I had left off (which would be at Cyclops) I decided to sample one of the numerous Dirk Pitt series spin-offs that Cussler has "co-written" with other writers. I use quotations because Cussler - who is, at this moment, pushing 80 - has pretty much retired and a collection of thinly veiled ghost writers have been writing his books for I don’t know how long now.

Serpent launched an all new NUMA based series of adventure novels that feature a Dirk Pitt style hero named Kurt Austin, who reads like a mucho macho mixture of Doc Savage and Travis McGee. The plot uses the same speculative adventure formula that Cussler has used since Raise the Titanic!: a famous maritime disaster (this time the sinking of the Andrea Doria) has a world changing (or challenging) secret (or treasure) buried inside it. The good guys (Austin and crew) spend most of the book in a race against (or from) the bad guys (this time around it’s a secret society trying to destroy any and all evidence of pre-Christopher Colombus contact on the American continent) to recover the secret and save the world (or simply the United States) from some kind of doom or destruction.

Silly and exciting stuff that, by the end, did not make one lick of sense to me. But I cannot say that I either cared or was all that surprised. Nor can I say that I was all that bored. The book held my interest and kept me entertained and, truth be told, that was all I had been hoping for. We all know that this stuff ain’t literature, it’s just entertainment.

Back when Cussler’s first attempt at a Dirk Pitt novel, Pacific Vortex!, was pulled from his trunk and finally published, he wrote an introduction explaining that he had created the character in the hope of making a James Bond for the USA. I think that it is safe (and quite obvious) to say that Cussler pretty much succeeded in doing so. The only thing that one needs to remember is that Cussler’s "James Bond for the USA" and its spin-offs are all based on the Roger Moore style Bond of The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker, not the suave super spy Sean Connery played in From Russia With Love or Goldfinger. Remember that and you should be good to go.