I realise my title might be seen a criminal to fans of the erstwhile Dirk Pitt, but I can't favor him over Kurt Austin, or vice versa. Cussler is a formulaic as ever but it works! From the opening taster with Austin's counterpart love of high speed boats to Dirk's of antique cars, Kurt sets off with his own Giordino (Zavala) to find out why whales are dying in super-heated water. They run up against Brynhild, Gogstad's Scandinavian corporate meglomaniac with a penchant for controlling the world's freshwater, a Viking fixation (the references to Valhalla throughout are a nice echo of the latest Dirk Pitt installment) and dubious taste in hirlings (the Kradzik brothers). Throw in the husband and wife NUMA team of Gamay and Paul with a sizable side trip of their adventures in Venezula rescuing the local white goddess, Professor Francesca Cabral, a trip into Mexico and all culminating in a battle at Lake Tahoe and you have a rip-roaring Cussler yarn.
Sure, some will still favor Pitt over Austin but Paul Kemprecos' addition to Cussler's skills have created no poor imitation at all. Hopefully Kurt and Joe's adventures will be as long as Pitt's. Valhalla told us Dirk Pitt was getting older. Kurt Austin is his younger counterpart. |
| An entire pod of whales surface, dead, in the middle of a boat race; they died because they swam in too warm waters ... In the Amazonian jungle, a pair of NUMA scientists (the Trouts) find a dead Indian in a canoe; in his bag lay an array of tools and gadgets far more sophisticated than you would expect ... Thus starts the story that pits Kurk Austin and Joe Zavala against Brynhild Sigurd, a beautiful Scandinavian amazon who, as head of a large multinational corporation, wants control of the world's fresh water supply. After the fiasco of Serpent, I was very reluctant to get into the NUMA Files again. However, in Blue Gold, Cussler and Kemprecos give Kurt and Joe a life of their own, instead of writing them as being Dirk and Al look-alike. The characters have similarities, but not so much as to distract a Dirk Pitt fan from the story. Plot and subplots link perfectly as in all Cussler novels I have read, and the pace is typical of the previous novels. The difference in personality between Austin and Pitt makes this story standout against the typical formula of a Pitt adventure with refreshing twists and turns. It is not a Dirk Pitt adventure, but I would definitely recommend it to a Dirk Pitt fan (and I am one of them). |
| I was very critical of the first joint effort by Mr. Cussler and Mr. Kemprecos ("Serpent") because it was subpar by Cussler standards. I also thought he had let himself fall into the "franchise trap", where he stamps his name on books authored by someone else and watches his credibility and reader base suffer. However, I wound up giving Mr. Cussler the benefit of the doubt and read "Blue Gold". "Blue Gold" is the second novel featuring the NUMA team of Kurt Austin and Joe Zavala. As with the first book, however, one cannot help but continually visualize Dirk Pitt and Al Giordino - the descriptions of the characters are that similar. Oh, there are some minor differences, but they only serve to make you feel that you are reading the adventures of "Pitt Lite" and "Giordino Lite". The Trouts, minor characters spotlighted both here and in "Serpent", are wholly unappealing because they don't bring much to the overall story, other than an excuse to print an extra chapter or two revolving around a chase or escape. This book is much improved over "Serpent" mostly due to its, shall we say, more judicious use of detail. Whereas "Serpent" was bogged down by mind-numbing, superficial detail, "Blue Gold" is free of most of these anchors. The end result is a story that reads slightly closer to the Cussler adventures we fans are accustomed to, and moves along at a much quicker pace. The plot is average, though the closing sequence is exciting and unique, with an interesting turn of events not typically found in the Dirk Pitt tales. All in all, the "sophomore" Kurt Austin adventure is an average effort. It is much improved over the first outing in this series, but continues to be vexed by too many similarities in characters and plot. It seems to me that for this series to fly, Mr. Cussler needs to ditch Mr. Kemprecos and just write the stories himself. Also, if he does indeed have this wealth of material for stories, he should have not bothered creating Kurt Austin and stuck with the tried-and-true Dirk Pitt. After all, Cussler claims Pitt to be his "alter ego", and that familiarity has lent itself to great storytelling. Creating a "mirror" alter ego in the persona of Austin has not had the same effect, in my opinion. I will continue to anticipate and read the Dirk Pitt novels. However, this series has proven to be a general disappointment, and makes me less inclined to shell out a few extra dollars in between Pitt adventures. I hope that Mr. Cussler will realize that he can't keep running with a knockoff version of the character that made him a top-notch author. His reputation will suffer otherwise, and he will quickly find that even lending his name to generate sales won't work the same magic. |
