Clive Cussler and Graham Brown have hit a home run with this new adventure / thriller from the cases of N.U.M.A. Three different events come in to play. The first is in 1943 when a merchant ship is fleeing a convoy of Allied ships while the Japanese try and capture it. The second is a home invasion in the desert of Yemen in 1967 when a young boy watches his mother and brothers be executed by bandits. The final is a N.U.M.A. vessel that is overcome by a plague of some type that kills the three crew men and leaves a mystery that N.U.M.A. will have to solve.
The dilemma is this, the worlds oceans are changing temperatures and thus weather patterns are changing. Countries that have desert are now getting rain and able to grow crops. Then other countries that are flush with crops, due to good weather, are now facing dry conditions that may turn them into a desert. How has this happened?
Enter Kurt Austin and Joe Zavala and Paul and Gamay Trout. They come together to try and piece together what happened to the NUMA vessel that was overrun. In the midst of this they stumble across a terrorist organization that rivals the worst of all groups / scenarios.
The thrill ride is one that reminds me of the earlier Clive Cussler novels. This book brings back the best of writing that I was use to with Cussler and was starting to miss. Something else that this book brings is a new technology to light that many of us know very little about. That technology is Micro robots and Nanotechnology. How do you build robot's that are microscopic and can change the world for the good (hmmm or for the worse). These little robots are so small that there have to be 100's of thousands of them for you to know they are present. But what they can do is amazing.
Austin, Zavala and the Trouts are going to have to come to terms with how to bring these robot's under control or disarm them so that they can no longer accept the programming codes from their evil owners and bring havoc on the oceans of the world and thus the weather patterns of the world.
If you are a Clive Cussler fan you will love this book. If you are new to Clive Cussler you will also love this book and the bonus is that you will not need to read other books to get to know the players before reading this one. Cussler and Brown do a great job of building the characters, both good guys and bad guys, and giving you enough background to help you understand who is who and their strengths and weaknesses (hmmmm, do Kurt and Joe have any weaknesses?).
The book is about the right length. That had become some of the problems lately, Cussler books had gotten a bit bloated, although I always enjoyed finishing them. But this one is just about the right length.
Oh, and did I mention that there will be some near impossible scenario's that will make you think, no way could someone pull that off! Well, you would be right, except that these men and women of N.U.M.A. are exceptional people and they can do the near impossible. If you stop and pick apart the impossible scenario's the thing that is amazing is that you will find that Cussler has done his research and all these things are possible to do, given the right circumstances and the right people to do them.
I miss Dirk Pitt, but Kurt Austin has become the next generation American Hero that we all will love to follow. Thanks Clive and Graham for a great summer read.
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