Product Description

September 1858: An Antarctic whaler stumbles upon an aged wreck, its grisly frozen crew guarding crates of odd antiquities - including a beautifully carved obsidian skull. March 2001: A team of anthropologists gaze in awe at a well of strange inscriptions, moments before a blast seals them deep within the Colorado rock. April 2001: A research ship in the Antarctic is set upon and nearly sunk by an impossibility - a Nazi submarine thought to have been destroyed 56 years before. Dirk Pitt knows that somehow these incidents are connected, and his investigations soon land him in the midst of an ancient mystery with very modern consequences, racing to save not only his own life - but the future of the world itself.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #21944 in Books
• Published on: 2006-03-30
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 768 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Dirk Pitt, indestructible hero of 14 previous Clive Cussler novels and special projects director of the National Underwater and Marine Agency (which is something like the CIA of the ocean depths), makes James Bond look like a tuxedoed, martini-swilling poser. Pitt has raised the Titanic, escaped massive volcanic eruptions, ducked nuclear explosions, foiled criminal plans for world domination, saved everyone on Earth from germ warfare and mastered the ins and outs of various electronic gizmos and futuristic vehicles while evading every imaginable form of almost certain death. (Of course, he's also wildly successful with brilliant, beautiful women, but in an admirably circumspect, sensitive-guy way.) It stands to reason Pitt's the right man to handle a crisis of millennial proportions.

When mysterious black obsidian skulls and other artefacts of an exceedingly ancient culture begin to turn up in odd places, Pitt jumps in with both feet. It soon becomes dangerously apparent that a powerful, amoral group of fanatics calling itself the Fourth Empire wants the strange discoveries to remain underground. Pitt teams up with a beautiful red-haired expert in ancient languages to decipher the meaning of the artefacts. They were made 10 millennia ago in a then-temperate Antarctica by a seafaring civilization advanced enough to predict its own destruction by a comet impact. Now the Fourth Empire (whose literal and figurative progenitor comes as no surprise) is predicting a similar disaster in only a matter of months and preparing to take control of the Earth.

Cussler's known for hands-on research--his hobbies are the backbone of Pitt's adventures: Flying, climbing, diving, racing. His scientific and historical riffs that fill in the background of Atlantis Found are the weakest parts of the book--they're Pitt-less, and give every discovery in the book away early. But what the heck--Cussler's not the king of suspense, he's the emperor of non-stop action. Atlantis Found bounces along on a good-humoured techno-joyride and for Cussler's legion of fans, that will be more than enough. --Barrie Trinkle

About the Author
Clive Cussler is the author or co-author of twenty two previous books, most recently the Dirk Pitt adventures Trojan Odyssey and Black Wind, the Kurt Austin novels White Death and Lost City and the non-fiction The Sea Hunters II. He divides his time between Arizona and Colorado.

Customer Reviews

Politically incorrect, historically questionable, but fun!
I hadn't read any Cussler, let alone any Dirk Pitt novels before. This one caught my attention because the Atlantis theme coincides with my interest in humankind's prehistory.
Fairly early on though I decided I would need to set my disbelief to one side and just go with the flow if I wanted to derive any enjoyment from this book. Anthropologists will surely hurl this pot boiler across the room and issue indignant snorts at the notion that almost the entire human race was wiped out in 7,000 B.C. Furthermore, during the denouement, the tactics employed to thwart the villains are somewhat farcical when a simpler solution is staring us in the face!

But Cussler never intended to give us an accurate history lesson, and let's get onto the plot! This is a rollicking adventure where our rugged and handsome hero knocks the preverbial out of sinister foreigners with funny accents and discovers the lost continent of Atlantis, almost without breaking sweat. Dirk Pitt is definitely up there with Indiana Jones and James Bond and probably hasn't got far to go to give Superman a run for his money. He's the kind of mega-tough guy who, if his lungs start to hurt when the going gets tough, he spits them out and gets on with saving civilisation as we know it. He always has a witty line in repartee on his tongue too, and don't the ladies just lap it up! In real life he would probably come over as Leisure Suit Larry's more dangerous brother and would be regarded as rather corny by any streetwise modern woman. The womem in Dirk Pitt's world however are invariably beautiful and frequently in need of rescue by our invincible square-jawed hero, which, of course, he invariably accomplishes in the nick of time.

But enough irony and nitpicking! The action (and boy, is there plenty of that!) is very competently described and I defy anyone not to devour this hefty tome (500+ pages) in a flurry of undemanding but enjoyable page turning. I swear you will shiver as Cussler depicts the numbing effects of wind-chill on our hero!

So, classic literature this ain't, but I enjoyed it all the same and have no regrets about buying my first ticket into the rather simplistic but pretty damn entertaining world of Dirk Pitt.

Another brilliant adventure
I have never been a big fan of action thrillers. The only author I read regularly in this genre is Lee Child and his `Jack Reacher` character, and I enjoy him a lot, so I decided to give Clive Cussler a try. I am happy to say I was not disappointed! Even though "Pacific Vortex" was the first published book in the Dirk Pitt adventures series, it was the first Cussler wrote, so logically, this is the novel I picked to start my journey. I found an interesting character that lives at the edge and is passionate about his work. Also in some aspects he is similar to James Bond, women mainly, and the mix is sufficient to keep the reader thoroughly entertained. If you enjoy serial characters then this is a must series for you, also try Michael Connelly`s `Harry Bosh` series, or much more violent is the `Soft Target` thrillers by Conrad Jones. In the Dirk pitt stories Cussler has created a very entertaining series, with a character that has an arrogant and pedantic side, but whom also shows his pure emotions and is true to his friends and ideals. This makes the Special Project Director of the National Underwater and Marine Agency a very likable character. This is a book that a reader can breeze through in a few hours making it an enjoyable way to spend a weekend's afternoon. I will surely read the next book in this series hoping for a similar experience.

The result of Mixing Indiana Jones, James Bond, and others
Mr. Cussler's books are great escapist fiction. His newest, "Atlantis Found", I believe is one of the better tales he has told. The other enjoyment that comes with a Cussler novel is watching the professional critics try to trash his work. They don't get it, but as these novels routinely make the best-seller lists, we, the readers, do. The critics do get it, but they prefer books that get the literary equivalent of an Academy Award, while Mr. Cussler takes home The People's Choice Award.

"Atlantis Found" is way over the top, fantastic in what is spread on its' 534 pages, and most importantly, it is pure fun, and a great read. Dirk Pitt and Al Giordino are a combination of, Indiana Jones, James Bond, The Saint, the members of the old and new Mission Impossible teams, and a dash of The Duke, John Wayne, leading the cavalry. Sure the book has its cliché's, but does not every Bond film as well? Mr. Cussler gives his readers what they enjoy, and what may be one person's cliché, is another's cue that he or she is about to embark on an adventure with old friends. If you read Mr. Cussler you have probably read well into this latest work, and if you are not yet amongst his readers, "Atlantis Found", is a good place to start.