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A review by bdhoffmeister
Sahara by Clive Cussler
2.0
Confession: I enjoy reading trash from time to time. Who doesn't?
However, after this, my second foray into Clive Cussler's Dirk Pitt series, I can fairly confidently say I will not be returning. I'm a little saddened by this, because I've yet to find a really good and well-written adventure novel to get into. Unfortunately, these aren't them.
It's not that the wham-bang Hollywood action movie style isn't kind of enjoyable -- it is, kind of. Little flourishes like the classic cars and exotic locales are fun. But the dialogue is stilted, the prose suffers from a serious case of telling instead of showing, and the cardboard heroes commit atrocities in the novel's climax that had me questioning whether they were any better than the villains.
Oh, by the way, did I mention the author writes himself into a cameo and there's this thing about a Confederate ironclad disappearing in the Sahara Desert and a conspiracy involving the faking of the Lincoln assassination that bookends the story and has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the plot? Because those are things, too.
However, after this, my second foray into Clive Cussler's Dirk Pitt series, I can fairly confidently say I will not be returning. I'm a little saddened by this, because I've yet to find a really good and well-written adventure novel to get into. Unfortunately, these aren't them.
It's not that the wham-bang Hollywood action movie style isn't kind of enjoyable -- it is, kind of. Little flourishes like the classic cars and exotic locales are fun. But the dialogue is stilted, the prose suffers from a serious case of telling instead of showing, and the cardboard heroes commit atrocities in the novel's climax that had me questioning whether they were any better than the villains.
Oh, by the way, did I mention the author writes himself into a cameo and there's this thing about a Confederate ironclad disappearing in the Sahara Desert and a conspiracy involving the faking of the Lincoln assassination that bookends the story and has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the plot? Because those are things, too.