After reading Lost Empire by Clive Cussler last summer I swore never to read anything more by him, ever again. Well, I saw some fairly enthusiastic reviews for The Storm and I’m fairly bad at keeping resolutions, so I gave Clive Cussler another chance.
Title: The Storm
Author: Clive Cussler & Graham Brown
Publisher: Putnam Adult
Edition: Kindle
Pages: 408
Originally published: 2012
Genre: Science fiction / Crime
The dice landed on: 4
Did I finish?: Yes
Do I like the cover?: Not really
In the middle of the Indian Ocean, a NUMA research vessel is taking water samples at sunset, when a crew member spots a sheen of black oil ahead of them. But it is not oil. Like a horde of army ants, a swarm of black particles suddenly attacks the ship, killing everyone aboard, while the ship itself goes up in flames.
A few hours later, Kurt Austin and Joe Zavala are on their way to the Indian Ocean. What they will find there on the smoldering hulk of the ship will eventually lead them to the discovery of the most audacious scheme they have ever known: a plan to permanently alter the weather on a global scale. It will kill millions . . . and it has already begun.
If it’s Cussler himself who has conjured up a better plot in this book, or if Graham Brown is just a much better writer than Grant Blackwood, I really can’t say. The fact is stilled that I was a lot more satisfied with this book than with Lost Empire.
That doesn’t mean it’s great literature. The story is, as in most other books I’ve read by Cussler, wildly improbable. But, it’s very exciting and has that certain internal consistency that makes me go along for the ride.
As usual the starts out with a story from back in time. In this case a ship carrying some sort of secret weapon disappears without a trace during WWII. And, as usual, this old story get some bearing on the story that happens in our day. This is a typical Cussler thing to do, and usually that’s fine and important to the story. But in this case the modern day tie in seemd like the weakest part of the story. To be honest they could have skipped this bit altogether and probably written a better story. Tradition be damned.
So do you want a familiar recipe; a wild mix of crime, thriller, science fiction and fantasy, this might very well be a book for you. Do you want something deep and profound, I’d urge you to look somewhere else.
