This book started out all right, on a three-star level. There was a lot of action which kept me interested. Pitt saved the day, and then... he did it again. And again. And again. It was just too much, and it grew more unly with every time. Furthermore, the story is packed with gorgeous, frightened women who stare up at Pitt in wide-eyed admiration and enjoy cleaning up after him in his a-ma-zing museum of a home. Truly disgusting. And last but not least, every motorized vehicle (and there are many of those!) is described in painful technical detail.

The book is soaked in testosteron, with an outburst of ridiculous sentimentality in the last chapter. I have been rolling my eyes so many times it was hard to read on.history-adventure workrelated22 s Bodosika Bodosika260 50

Title: Valhalla Rising
Author: Clive Cussler
Date Published: 2001
Pages: 537

When the luxury cruise-liner Emerald Dolphin which had on board 1600 passengers in opulence styles and served by 900 crews members, powered by a newly invented propulsion system designed and developed by Dr. Elmore Egan a Nobel Prize-winning mechanical genius went on fire and eventually sanked it was thought to be an accident until certain things began to fall into place.

"Illuminated by the ocean of lights from the ship they saw billowing clouds of thick smoke and tongues of flames gushing through melted and smashed ports and windows on the deck below. The sight was dazzling as well as terrifying. Only then did panic begin to mushroom. It became total when the first of the passengers to reach the boat deck found themselves facing a wall of fire".

This was a wild ride and could be compared to a little John Grisham and a little Robert Ludlum and a host of other fast-paced fiction.
The author's use of suspense and simple English made it more enjoyable.

" Families with children first', Mcferrin shouted through his bullhorn to the crew. The old tradition of women and children first was now commonly ignored by modern seamen in favor of keeping families intact. After the sinking of the Titanic, when most of the men had gone down with the ship, leaving widows with fatherless small children, Practical minds had felt that families should either live as one or die as one".

The way Dirk Pitt walk into the room where Kelly Egan and Josh Thomas were been held and tortured by Omo Okanai and his viper group on page 334 don't seems believable after giving the perception that Omo Okanai and his viper's group are well trained and blood thirsty mercenaries who should have killed Dirk Pitt immediately he was identified because he is of no value to them.Apart from this shortcoming i enjoyed this book.18 s paper0r0ss0648 48

Il solito Cussler con l'aggravante di una trama ripetitiva e spompata. Quello che dovrebbe essere ormai un canone diventa una trita ripetizione di situazioni e luoghi comuni, in pratica un libro incagliato. Persino la narrazione parallela, quella che di solito consente a Cussler di correre a briglia sciolta nello spazio-tempo del verosimile, e' sciapa, banale e per nulla avvincente.thriller15 s Scott260 10

My first Cussler book, and it will be my last. Before anyone sends me a nasty-gram about this review, remember, I'm not taking away your right to enjoy this book, it's just that I didn't. Dirk Pitt is just a little too much, don't you think? I mean, your ancient rare plane isn't showing up for your air show? Call Dirk Pitt! Need to know the exact year that some submarine crashed? He's your guy! I won't give it away, but I was glad that the ending of the book presented Pitt with a situation where he was a little bit unsure how to react. It was way too little and too late. 12 s Matt668

A plot to monopolize North American oil and natural gas production leads to terror attacks on two ocean liners that have newly installed revolutionary engines that will destroy the oil industry as we know it, the only man to stop this plot is of course Dirk Pitt. Valhalla Rising is the sixteenth books of Clive Cussler’s Dirk Pitt series that finds the Pitt and NUMA attempt to foil this diabolical plan while attempting to find the secret lab of a reclusive scientist.

In the early 11th-Century, a fleet of ships from Iceland sail past Vinland to the entrance of the Hudson Bay and find sanctuary in a large underground cove that has a passage almost to the palisades above and is carved out by the explorers. The resulting settlement only last a few years before a conflict with the Native Americans results in its destruction. In the 1880s, a US Naval ship is destroyed by a metallic sea monster that has portholes in which the captain sees man face looking out at him. In 2003, Dirk Pitt spearheads NUMA efforts to rescue passengers on two ocean liners that were targeted by an oil and natural gas cartel’s CEO that wants to discredit the revolutionary magnetohydrodynamic engines installed on both by a reclusive genus scientist—that dies in the first liner’s disaster—to help his efforts control all North American oils resources and supplies then to shut out foreign oil. Along with figuring out where the deceased scientist’s lab was Pitt must deal with a plot to destroy the World Trade Center with a natural gas tanker while Loren Smith must deal with bribed officials to investigate the evil CEO in a Congressional hearing. After evidence from St. Julian Perlmutter found in Jules Verne’s home, Pitt finds the cove found by the Vikings that not only contains their longships but the actual Captain Nemo’s Nautilus with a prototype of the revolutionary engines that the reclusive scientist deciphered and improved. At the end of the book when Pitt attempts for the third time to propose marriage to Smith, he is interrupted by the surprise arrival of his until then unknown children, twins Dirk Jr. and Summer, by Summer Moran.

Let me start with addressing the WTC plot first by saying this book was originally published in August 2001, a mere three weeks before terror attacks so Cussler was not attempting to profit off a real-life situation. As for the actual events in the book and of the overall series, there are a lot of retcons throughout this book that void the events in Raise the Titanic! and add to the events of Pacific Vortex, especially the former with the introduction of the Pitt twins that were set up throughout the book by Cussler having Dirk think about how he was getting old. As to the actual narrative of the book, I found this book not up to Cussler at his best. The main antagonist is really the CEO’s terror cell leader who I did not mention above because he is not memorable compared to other characters that he shares traits with throughout the overall series. Honestly, this is more an investigation into the reclusive scientist’s life with stopping an evil plot as a side quest type of deal.

Valhalla Rising is a book that read a mishmash of plots and events that were intended to build to the future of the series, but also discredited events from the previous books. This is the penultimate book that Clive Cussler solely wrote himself before his son Dirk would become his coauthor, which makes one wonder if the quality of this book and the next made his publisher want to give him help. Overall, not this is not the worst book of the series—far from it compared to the very first books—but things throughout the novel felt off.2021-reads adventure7 s Anita2,275 179

The audio version I listened to was a 6-hour abridged version narrated by Ron McLarty who was excellent. It was jam packed and having read other Clive Cussler books I know there was a lot missing, but the short version fit perfectly with the drive time of our vacation. Cussler starts this book with the Vikings settling on the Hudson River and another period scene set in 1898 where a Navy boat is rammed by an underwater ship. I loved these scenes and was looking forward to how it all fit a modern-day story. Great action, thrilling adventure, and the mystery of how it would all play out. The stunner at the end was priceless.

Kelly Egan and her father are on the maiden voyage of a cruise ship which is powered by revolutionary technology invented by her father when the ship suffers catastrophic failures due to sabotage and begins to sink. As luck would have it the NUMA research ship is close enough to aid in the rescue of the passengers, but Kelly's father is killed. She manages to save his briefcase and the baddies are after her.

Marine explorer extraordinaire, Dirk Pitt, is hired to survey the wreck and what he finds is straight out of Jules Verne. The ship was powered by energy not produced by oil. Kelly and Dirk are in the crosshairs of a power-hungry oil tycoon determined to control the energy sources of the entire world and thinks nothing to killing and destroying anything in his way, including Kelly and Dirk.audio kindle-libby kindle-own ...more6 s Razvan Banciu1,264 93

A book for teenagers, half scientific, half adventures. It looks a mixture of Jules Verne and James Bond, with many hard-believable facts, tons of coincidences and a lot of unnecessary casualties. The hero is too clever and and strong for my s, but so goes the pattern. Three stars mainly for the effort...6 s Tim Pendry1,038 392


Another able if totally implausible fantasy thriller from Clive Cussler in the Dirk Pitt series (we previously reviewed 'Atlantis Found' on GoodReads back in 2012).

This immediate successor to 'Atlantis Found' [#15 in the series] is not nearly as loopy but it does manage to weave in Viking settlers to early medieval America and Jules Verne's 'Nautilus' as well as a vintage dogfight over Manhattan into a tale of corporate attempts to overthrow the Constitution.

There is a lot in these stories that is formulaic (not least periodic statistics on particular feats of engineering) but, where it is so, Cussler does it well within an exciting flow of events that comes to a neat resolution with characters you will either or loathe in very black and white terms.

But the real reason to enjoy these books is psychological - they are optimistic, decent and likable. Cussler is perhaps trying to preserve the best of the American dream against the many corrupt threats arising from ideologues or the greedy. If it is nonsense, it is feel-good nonsense.

Cussler (in this book) even does a Stan Lee by appearing at just the right moment in the South Seas on yet another finely engineered craft (a catamaran) to rescue our two heroes (Pitt and Giordino) and help them defeat a dastardly villain and rescue their shipmates.

That is not a spoiler because it is just one incident in a book of rollercoaster thrills, the villain is not the villain and no reader is in any doubt that the two heroes are not going to triumph from the first page of the book. The question is only by what ingenious means they will do so.

If there is a precusor in genre literature, it not the dour or brutal American thriller but the nineteenth century imperial adventure tale where doughty scions of the white race protected the West from a variety of perils in jungle, desert and bush.

There is an aspect of the book interesting in that context - the hero and his sidekick are effectively privileged state bureaucrats with a strong sense of duty. They do, however, have a commendable aversion to taking human life (un their psychopathic mass-murdering opponents).

Yet, despite the world or America (which can sometimes seem the same thing to Americans) being brought to the brink of apocalypse or melt-down, there is not an ounce of fashionable pessimism in these books - though sometimes grief and sadness at the loss of a character.

The ultimate vision of the world is thoroughly optimistic despite the evil forces of chaos threatening it. This optimism arises from a combination of a belief in engineering, the values of honest state service, manliness and courage, and the essential decency of the good guys.

To the reader, the book is saying that you would be right to be afeard of the sort of immolation that Roland Emmerich dines on in his apocalypse movies but that you have no real need to worry because selfless death-defying heroes in the honest part of government are there to save you.

It is liberalism albeit one pickled some time long before identity politics and political correctness. The genders are clearly demarcated but within a framework of respect and equality. Women are as successful and brave as the men but also thoroughly feminine as the men are masculine.

Cussler has his cake and eats it on sexuality. There are no sex scenes but the men are effectively polyamorous while the women are always stunning, fashionable and educated - Dirk Pitt's 'primary' girlfriend is an undoubtedly courageous US Congresswoman.

If this is a fantasy, it is one for good people who want a better world that looks a little a world that has already been lost. A nostalgia for old ships, cars and aircraft is recurrent. Great literature it is not. Great tale-telling it generally is.north-american popular-culture thriller5 s Randal1,016 14

Oh dear, where to start?
Perhaps the fact that the highlight of the stupendous, mega-cruise ship was the stupendous, fantastic, indoor shopping mall, whose loss Cussler keeps bemoaning? Would that be petty?
There's clearly a market for this stupidity, as this was Dirk Pitt TM No. 16 and I see in the workroom that the library has just gotten the latest.
I rarely give up on a book, but after a certain number of "miraculous" events, it is clear that Clive Cussler just doesn't care if the book is coherent; he just rolls from action sequence to action sequence (with stunning beauties swooning over the devil-may-care protagonist in their wake).
I enjoy puzzling out plots, but if after writing the hero into an almost impossibly tight spot, the author can't be bothered to come up with something plausible to get him out, what's the point?
Something more plausible than, say, the author (yes, the author) showing up in a fantastic (literally) yacht to pluck brave Dirk and the rest of the abandoned crew of his submersible out of the water and whisk them hundreds of miles away, to the bad guys' lair, where the rotters have taken the hijacked good guys' ship in order to sink it [pause here ... the baddies want to sink the heroes' ship, but instead of doing so immediately after they hijack it in the middle of the Pacific, they sail it to their top secret island hideaway where they carefully hide it for a week or so before preparing to sink it with all hands on board because ... because ... NO! Bad reader! Thinking bad! Action GOOD!]
Oh look! A plane full of disabled kids on a sightseeing trip around NYC in an antique plane! Let's have a guy in red Fokker triplane try to shoot them down, only to have them saved miraculously by our dashing hero and then have the villain escape (wait for it) miraculously!
That's when I finally gave up and moved on, so you'll have to read it yourself to discover the next "exciting" adventure of dashing Dirk Pitt TM ...This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.Show full review5 s Rebecca249 43

I enjoyed this book a lot for being a thriller and an action adventure but its use of Vikings in the plot proved to be a bit of 'all talk and no substance'.
The very first chapter is about Vikings settling and discovering North America but not an event that has a happy ending.
The rest of the story focuses on new technologies regarding water propulsion on huge luxury cruisers, some scientists new ultimate engine oil and the corruption and power behind many of America's top homeland oil companies.
You don't encounter anything to do with the first piece on vikings until the characters realise that the murdered scientist had an obsession with american rune stones. Even when they do make the viking discovery of the century it is kind of overshadowed with a blast from a Jules Verne story.
Look at the story critically the vikings are only used to provide a convenient historic secret hiding place for the Verne aspect to the mystery and drama and all this still accumilates in the last few chapters at the end of the book after the main storyline regarding oil rich and power mad CEO's trying to be even more clever and lethal for more power and money. It would have still been a good book without the Viking influence as the Verne aspect adds a touch of bizarre interest to it.
For once I am sad to say for any viking fans don't let the longship on the cover fool you into a rip roaring viking adventure - as you won't come across the image until the very end when it doesn't bare much impact or power on the entire story.5 s Allison11 1 follower

I really don't understand how everyone drools over Cussler so much. Dirk Pitt is an asshole, and the entire thing just seems one big Cussler Love fest. He's far too into himself for my tastes... I mean... Writing yourself into your own novels? Come on.
Try a James Rollins book. Much better action, more research into the technical and historical aspects, and more interesting characters. 5 s Jessy936 64

Me súper encantó, y no me esperaba ese final para nada
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