Clive Cussler - Iceberg

After reading The Storm, I really wanted to give another Clive Cussler book a go. Iceberg takes us all the way back to 1976 in terms of publication and based on my experiences with more recent novels the 1970s seemed to be a much richer and exciting time for books.

Iceberg sees us following the trail of enigmatic airman, Dirk Pitt as he goes investigating a strange iceberg with a ship lodged in it. It transpires that the ship in the iceberg is just the start of a conspiracy which threatens to have him killed at every turn. Despite this, he continues his investigations against the wishes of his superiors and nearly gets killed a lot more. It’s fun romp from start to finish as well as being a page turner which I found difficult to put down.

My favourite part of reading this was being able to look back in time at what used to be acceptable language. There is one point in the story where Dirk pretends to be gay in order to throw off the main antagonist. While being ridiculously funny, this part is also very un-PC in that Dirk is referenced as a faggot on more than one occasion. If you try to put that in speech and narrative in this day and age, you’ll be screamed at by everyone.

Also, there appears to be some borderline misogynistic points towards some of the women but there is also a balance between this and the woman in question being strong and able to handle themselves. It’s weirdly ahead of its time in that regard.

It terms of writing errors, they are hard to spot when the writing is enjoyable, but one did stand out quite clearly. On page 308 a character is talking but the narrative says it’s a different character. Once again, I had to read the paragraph several times to work out what was going on which broke flow somewhat.

Dirk as a character is almost overpowered in terms of his abilities. He basically has the conditioning of a rhino and no amount of savage beatings can stop him climbing sheer cliffs and running for miles. Another thing that Dirk Pitt has is a superhuman ability to work stuff out. He’s no Jack Reacher by any means but he still manages to reach correct, and bizarre, conclusions with seemingly very little information. I suppose it’s all part of the allure of America’s answer to James Bond.

Another thing worth pointing out is that Cussler really knows his stuff. He has a clearly advanced knowledge of aircraft, how they work and the art of the possible and has a skill of explaining this to a dumbass like me in a way that makes the writing accessible rather than overloading it with jargon. He also has a knack of not taking shortcuts with his characters in this regard. If a character is very knowledgeable about a subject, there will be a character on hand who isn’t, who then says something like, ‘can you say that again in English please?’ It’s a device that works well throughout the book.

Iceberg is a really enjoyable 394 page read that I managed to smash through in just a couple of hours. I would recommend it to any fans of the action adventure genre.

Iceberg by Clive Cussler was published by Sphere Books in 1976. RRP £6.99 (Paperback)

Clive Cussler and Graham Brown - The Storm

After reading Runemarks anything would have been an improvement in terms of reading pleasure. I had read some Clive Cussler before but this one was written a long time after the first book I read; and with a co-author which wasn’t something I’d seen before.

The Storm follows, for the most part, the story of Kurt Austin as he investigates the mysterious death of some of his NUMA colleagues. His search eventually leads him to face off against Jinn al-Khalif, a crazy but somehow intelligent terrorist on a quest to control Asia’s water supply using tiny robots to dictate the sea temperatures and thus the direction of rain clouds. Seriously.

All in all it’s very enjoyable book if not slightly disconnected from the title. There is one storm that takes place during the prologue and the mysterious connection between the prologue and the main story is not revealed until the very of end of the 424 page book.

One thing I spend time fussing over right from the beginning was exactly how old Jinn is. In 1967 he is old or strong enough to be able to shoot a revolver at a man. Later in the book this age is revealed as 4. But what I still don’t get is the point of having these scenes happen this long ago. There is another character, Sabah, who was friends with Jinn’s father. Even assuming that Sabah is 20 in 1967, that makes him 69 in 2012. For me, this felt a little too old for the region and the type of jobs this guy was doing in order to assist Jinn in carrying out his mental plan.

I didn’t have any major issues with the story other than this. My biggest criticism of the book is the use of perspective. A lot of the time, perspectives will shift back and forth over the course of pages, and sometimes even within the same paragraph. This makes it hard to follow what’s going on in places when the story is coming at you from multiple directions.

There was one instance of using a ‘/’ in a character’s dialogue and I couldn’t get on board with this. I mean, how would you say what you were saying with a slash in the middle? If it were me, I would actually say the word ‘slash’ but I’m not particularly normal. The sentence in question would be better suited with a comma.

There’s one other small bit of story that I raised my eyebrows over. At one point, Kurt sneaks on to a plane and hides in the toilet. No one knows he’s on board but he still puts his feet up on the toilet. It doesn’t really make sense. If no one knows he is there, he has no reason to hide. It’s not like someone is going to look under the door to see if the toilet is occupied. Unless these guards check under toilets doors on a plane looking for people that they don’t know are there? But as I said, it’s minor.

I enjoyed The Storm and it will definitely encourage me to pick up a few more Cussler books in the future.

The Storm by Clive Cussler was published by G. P. Putnam’s Sons in 2012. RRP £7.99 (Paperback)