The Navigator (The NUMA Files)

Not the best work from Cussler. Seems to be trying but not as well written in the past.
Reality fades quickly, especialy with the jousting.
Lets hope next book is more realistic.
Does Cussler need the second writer?

Not the best work from Cussler. Seems to be trying but not as well written in the past.
Reality fades quickly, especialy with the jousting.
Lets hope next book is more realistic.
Does Cussler need the second writer?

The strongest appeal novels by Clive Cussler is the fact that they are simply fun to read. They entertain me. Each of his books are sort of a mixture between action adventure, science fiction, James Bond and well, nice yarns that you can loose yourself in for two or three evenings. Now these are not great ‘literary’ works, no – far from it, which for me is a blessing, but they are readable, extremely fast moving and if you have a good imagination, all quite logical in a strange sort of way.

Now I will be the first to admit that the premise of some of the stories, such as the one being reviewed here, are a bit over the top and will stretch a reader’s credibility quite a lot. That is okay though; everything needs exercise and I sort of include credibility in that part of our make-up that needs its exercise.

In this one there is a race to find a possible hidden treasure dating back several thousand years. Cussler has thrown in just about everything from secret societies to Thomas Jefferson, to King Solomon and his lost mine(s), to the Lewis and Clark expedition, ancient Native American cultures, to ancient Phoenicians and he, the author, bounces us all over the world.

Of course Cussler has Dirk Pitt and company up against an evil egomaniac rich guy who is trying to more or less destroy the world in a way. We have Dirk acting as the White Knight saving damsels in distress from both death and ‘fates worse than death,” (In the Victorian sense).

The battles are fought at sea, in the air and on land. You have bruit force and high technology thrown together in a wonderful mix that simply keep the novel moving along in a furious clip.

And did I mention secret codes?

This novel, like others in this series, is a good way to kill a few hours and in my opinion is far better entertainment that about 98 percent of the crud you find of T.V. these days.

This was a library find.

THE LOWDOWN: After "Polar Shift" I have significantly lowered my expectations for Kurt Austin stories, and perhaps I benefited from this. So strap in for another fluffy, over-the-top adventure cartoon, this time with a distinctly Da Vinci Code-esque flavor to it.

THE PLOT: When Kurt Austin foils an attempt to hijack a cargo ship carrying a valuable artifact, he and Joe, and archaeologist Carina Mechadi are led into a web of ancient Solomoniac intrigue, the wrath of a Baal-worshiping billionaire, and a map to one of the bible's most famous relics. Meanwhile, Paul & Gamay decode an age-old letter from Meriwether Lewis to Thomas Jefferson, which also reveals clues to the relic's location.

THE PROS: Kurt Austin stories are like big, dumb action movies. Light on plot and character development, and full of unbelievable action scenes that would be fun to see on the big screen. Kurt stops a helicopter assault on a cargo ship, and then prevents said ship from smashing into an oil-rig. He and Joe fight of enemies in a mini-sub that highly resembles a Corvette, and Kurt jousts with villains in a sports car. It was nice that they kept the plot light, instead of making it unnecessarily convoluted to make the plot seem more complex. This book knows what it is, and doesn't pretend to be anything else.

THE CONS: The usual complaints. The characters are two-dimensional. The heroes are unflappable and unbeatable, the villains are eccentric murderous psychopaths, the supporting characters are dutiful public servants and scholars. The dialogue is corny and melodramatic. The authors attempt to add a half-hearted attempt at an evil scheme apart from the treasure hunt, but it is such an afterthought that it seems like more of a distraction. While on the subject of distractions, I felt that Paul and Gamay's chapters dragged and took a long time to gain momentum. I was a fan of the man-child assassin, and was disappointed to see him beaten so easily, without any real face-off with Austin or Zavala.

Ah, yes, another novel from the NUMA files. This is one more of the books penned by Clive Cussler with a co-author which focuses on non-stop action and adventures that have nothing to do with reality, but that make for a very fun read. This time the plot revolves around a mysterious artifact that was buried by ancient Phoenicians in a mysterious location. Spring forward some three thousand years and you come to the present time and now we mix in the looting of artifacts from Iraq's museum, Thomas Jefferson and Merriwether Lewis (of the Lewis and Clark expedition), and King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba to name a few of the luminaries. The modern era features Kurt Austin and his side-kick Joe Zavala, and we cannot fail to mention Paul and Gamay Trout who make an appearance about mid-way through the book. Finally, there must be a beautiful female love interest for Kurt, and an evil side - both are represented, with both a villain and his more than evil henchman.

Now that we have all of these ingredients, the authors mix them up in a compelling stew and serve up a book whose 530 pages take almost no time to read. The action is non-stop: from the introductory chapters that set up the modern day plot; to the incredible coincidence that has Kurt and Joe in the middle of the sea when a container ship is hijacked and Kurt jumps on-board to save the damsel in distress and an oil rig. One thing follows another, and we quickly discover what the real object of the book is, as well as who the real villain is. From that point until the end when the villain and his henchman are killed, we are on a rollicking adventure that takes us to Turkey; Cyprus; several of the United States and several organizations and research institutes that all combine in more or less plausible ways to help us along in the plot. The one question that is never really resolved in this book is why NUMA is involved, but I suppose one must stretch one's thinking and notice that there are boats and ships galore throughout this book and therefore a connection to the marine world is somehow maintained.

This book is a typical one in the series, and actually one of the better ones that I read. The action is fast-paced and you can suspend your disbelief about the whole thing while reading it. This is a classic adventure story and it is a really good volume to take with you on a long flight or a stay at the beach where you are looking to spend some time in escaping from the reality of the day. In my case, I read most of this book during a cross-country flight and finished it within an hour or two of getting to my destination. I enjoyed it and recommend it to you, which is why I am giving this book a five star rating. Enjoy!

There's nothing like a good Clive Cussler story for adventure, pacing and setting. Even those he has co-authored -- as he has The Navigator with Paul Kemprecos -- are real page-turners. Reading Cussler's Dirk Pitt and Kurt Austin novels is a guilty pleasure of many of my friends who would not want to admit in public that they enjoy him.

Cussler does not, however, excel at characterization. Those who populate his stories are cardboard cut-out figures stood against exotic and sometimes threatening backdrops. They have one-page resumes that are impressive both for their power and for their narrow focus. Never do his characters stop to question their orders, assess their loyalties or doubt their abilities. Never does one of his characters emerge from the considerable danger and violence through which he or she passes with any different character or personality than at the outset of the tale.

For those of us who enjoy reading stories for story's sake, that's a forgivable sin. But it does make the novels less literary, less stimulating and more predictable.

The Navigator is bothered by one other shortcoming that has not always been endemic to Cussler's work. The story line is a straight line with very few, if indeed any, surprise twists along the way. When you've finished reading the first few dozen pages, I'd bet you will already be able to see the ultimate outcome at least in broad outline. The villain appears early as a villain. You know it the instant you encounter him.

Even with those weaknesses -- and several other, more minor ones including a deeply ingrained gender discrimination characteristic of so many such works -- this is a fine read. The story pulls you through a plot that seldom plods and often races almost too fast to absorb in easy blocks of time.

If you're the type of reader who enjoys straight-forward adventure and isn't at least always concerned about deep characterization or clever plots, you're sure to enjoy this one.

The Navigator is a beach read . . . and a pretty entertaining one. Mix in a little history, add a few Biblical references, season with a maniac villain, fold in a little sexual byplay, and tilt the odds in unexpected ways and you've got The Navigator.

The ancient Phoenicians had a valuable secret that they decided to hide away, far from where anyone would find it. Later, Thomas Jefferson caught a whiff of the secret and decided to track it down. Both the Phoenicians and Jefferson left behind coded clues.

Into this labyrinth enter Kurt Austin and Joe Zavala of NUMA when they encounter a high seas hijacking aimed at stealing a statue called the Navigator that had earlier been taken from the Baghdad museum during American invasion in 2003. In the process of foiling the theft (and other, more major, harms), Austin makes the acquaintance of the bewitching Carina Mechadi, an Italian expert in recovering stolen art works.

At the same time, an assistant librarian in the archives for the American Philosophical Society, finds misfiled some papers that seem to have been written by Thomas Jefferson. Before long, others are riveted by this find.

Austin and Mechadi take on the challenge of tracking down the Navigator after it is stolen again. At the same time, they sense the deeper riddle involving the Phoenicians and work on that puzzle as well.

Before the book's end, both will be severely tested and unexpected secrets will be revealed.

The ancient sea-going references make this book unmistakably a Clive Cussler creation. The NUMA technology and experience double that certainty. The presence of Kurt Austin and Joe Zavala convince you this is a Clive Cussler plot. From there, the book has a strong seasoning of tongue-in-cheek as the villain shows his preferences for jousting and ancient religions. I felt at times like this was "The Wild Wild West" meets the 21st century.

Although not as good as the earliest Dirk Pitt books, The Navigator is a book worthy of your time if you are looking for some light action-based reading with an occasional "what if?" thought injected.

As I read the book, I was concerned for some time that it was going to end up with some anti-Christian plot development or message. But the resolution of the story seemed to me to fall within the real of what is possible and still fit in with mainline Christianity. I only mention that point because some fiction these days chooses to plot out stories that are anti-Christian.

Have fun!

I read this in two sittings. There is decent action and suspense that pulls the reader along. Phoenicians in the Americas is a stretch, especially the idea that something lay virtually undetected for thousands of years in such an extremely busy locale as Chesapeake Bay, but it provides the intriguing backdrop for another entry in the popular treasure/historical figures/codes/secret societies genre. Book is technically sound and geographically accurate - important attributes that solidify author credibility - but the story line is at times painful to follow due to the author's habit of breaking off quickly to explain references in conversational byplay. Entire paragraphs could have had parentheses around them as they did nothing but unnecessarily expound on what was just said by one or more of the characters. Also, lest we forget after the first chapter where it's mentioned at least once our protagonist Kurt Austin has a hard, bronzed body, it's repeated ad nauseum throughout the book. At times I wasn't sure if I was reading Clive Cussler or a Harlequin romance. Lastly, a word about editing. Spell-check programs catch obvious misspellings but miss the "there" vs. "their" and other grammar/context errors noted in this copy. Have someone read it from end to end before publishing, bottom line, there's no substitute for a set of human eyes. Remember the city that printed thousands of voter ballots and later had to destroy them all amid a huge uproar because the word "public" didn't have the letter L - forming another properly-spelled but very inappropriate word. Luckily for us there were no characters in this story named Fucyk. Nevertheless, I enjoyed reading this book, the tiresome bits of formula and literary cliche only detracted slightly. Thank You, Mr. Cussler, for an entertaining read.

Seems like a number of my library "recreational reads" came in at once, so I've had some down time from my normal fare of reading material. I finally made it to the top of the hold list for The Navigator by Clive Cussler with Paul Kemprecos. If you're in the mood for a fast-moving action adventure novel, it works pretty well...

The main story revolves around a statue called The Navigator. It was stolen from the Iraqi national museum but was recovered with the aid of a UN official named Carina Mechadi. While on a ship bound for the US with the other recovered items, the statue is once again the center of attention when an armed group invades the ship, attempts to transport the statue off by helicopter, and sets the ship to collide with an oil drilling platform to hide the evidence. But Kurt Austin and Joe Zavala of NUMA are able to pull off a dramatic rescue, saving the ship, the statue, *and* Ms. Mechadi. The mystery of why someone would want the statue deepens as a tie is discovered between the statue, Thomas Jefferson, and the ancient Phoenicians. When the statue is once again stolen and Carina once again kidnapped, Austin's full attention is focused on saving the damsel in distress one more time, as well as putting an end to the person behind it all.

Compared to Cussler's Dirk Pitt series, the Austin novel is much more sedate and comfortable. There's definitely enough action to keep you turning pages, but every chapter doesn't end with someone about to die and/or pull off a miraculous MacGyver-esque escape. The idea of Phoenicians being the first to visit North America isn't new in a Cussler novel (Serpent in 1999), but he does a nice job in putting together a Da Vinci-type mystery where people are willing to die to keep a secret.

If you're ready to kill off a few hours with a mental escape from reality, The Navigator should fit your needs well...

During his presidency, Thomas Jefferson was researching an explosive secret on the location of King Soloman's mines. Hidden in a code for personal correspondence with Meriwether Lewis, the documents ultimately become a key in the early years of the 21st Century to unlocking a door which has explosive ramifications on world history.

With war, murder, theft and the peeling back of layers of dead leads dating back to at least 900 B.C., co-authors Clive Cussler and Paul Kemprecos sail on a journey to solve the mystery surrounding an ancient artifact - the Navigator - and the story it can tell on the mastery of the oceans by the Phoenicians.

With good and evil on a collision course on land, sea and in the air, it is up to Kurt Austin and the NUMA team to fight for truth and justice. And there are plenty within the shadows who will stop at nothing to acquire the Navigator; leading the way on this sordid list is a billionaire philanthropist - and his coterie of hired guns - whose smile is oftentimes the kiss of death.

A solid action thriller with quality character development, the 532 pages capture the search for forgotten footprints left by explorers, no matter what the odds.

Clive Cussler and Paul Kemprecos follow a previously successful formula twisting around history to create a fast based action adventure tale surrounding the actions of members of the fictitious National Underwater and Maritme Agency(NUMA).

Special Projects director Kurt Austin and his sidekick Joe Zavala find themselves in the midst of a mid oceanic hijacking. The booty is a bronze Phoenician statue known as The Navigator being transported under the guardianship of the alluring Carina Mechadi working for UNESCO. The statue was looted along with other antiquities from the Iraqi National Museum in Baghdad during the U.S. invasion. Mechadi's mission was to recovered the purloined artifacts.

The Navigator happened to be the object of desire of industrialist Viktor Baltazar head of a large private mercenary cartel and mining empire. Baltazar who traced his roots back to the days of King Solomon believed that the statue gave clues to details of a pre-Columbian visit to the New World by the Phoenicians.

Tied in with these historical events were a recently and accidently discovered encrypted letter penned by Thomas Jefferson under the guise of the secretive Artichoke society. Analysis of the Jefferson papers detailed a letter from Meriweather Lewis of the famous Lewis & Clark expedition. The correspondence hinted at the existence of a Phoenician landing in the New World with a mission to hide a precious and sensitive item whose existence could change the fabric of society as postulated by King Solomon.

Baltazar desired the information that The Navigator contained to advance his own nefarious plans. Meanwhile Austin, Zavala and their minions along his Austin love interest Mechadi team up to deter Baltazar in a rollicking adventure that strains the boundaries of credulity. The plot was standard fare for Cussler and his ghost writers but the ending was a bit of a cop out. For stress free reading requiring very little mentation, "The Navigator" is right up your alley.

What happened between chapters 46 and 47? In the paperback version of the book, this is around pages 470. Was it a deadline or simply a page count issue?

This book is interesting steady to read up to that point, but all of the sudden a chunk of story seems to simply be dropped in favor of getting to the end of the book. After reading 470 pages, this was very, very disappointing - to the point of writing this review and questioning whether to read another Clive Cussler book.

Really, the story builds. It is a bit slow. It takes some goofy turns -- like jousting. But, in the end there is an entertaining story up to about page 470. At that point it seems that the author's focus is simply on wrapping things up to get to an end and not really about taking the story to the end. The result was that I felt ripped off by the author and the publisher.

I threw the book away rather than donating it as I didn't want to waste anyone else's time. I don't like to throw books away. (Actually it will be recycled)

While this book is an entertaining yarn in the typical, enjoyable Cussler style, some of the plot is just too predictable. Specifically, the frequent unbelievable luck of the good guys detracts from any attempted suspense.

I also found it spoilt in some sections by sloppy writing. There were blatant narration errors and sentences that didn't even make sense. For a few pages, the authors and proof readers were obviously asleep, the error rate was so high. The regular characters also seemed even more one dimensional than usual and the book is more like an action comic than is usually the case for this series.

If you are looking forward to a few hours of light entertainment where realism is much less important than adventure escapism, then by all means read this book, otherwise chose another in the NUMA series.

The Navigator is a very will written historical novel in the series. The characters are interesting and will developed. I would recommend this series to anyone who enjoys will written thrillers. Enjoy reading

The Navigator continues the NUMA Files series featuring Kurt Austin and Joe Zavala in the Dirk Pitt/Al Giordino roles. Austin and Zavala are drawn into the search for The Navigator, a stolen Phonecian sculpture, which could point the way to King Solomon's mines and an ancient artifact, the revelation of which could start a disastrous Middle Eastern uprising with global consequences. The story ties in Thomas Jefferson, Meriwether Lewis and an interesting twist on the legend of Solomon's mines.

As has become Cussler's pattern, the story begins with a double prologue which is actually more entertaining than most of the ensuing story. The plot is predictable. The bad guy considers himself a descendant of Solomon, but for some reason his hobby is medieval jousting. (Gee, wonder how Austin will be forced to fight him in the end?) Paul and Gamay Trout make a requisite appearance, and the obligatory beautiful leading lady turns out to have a DaVinci Code-style connection to the back-story.

The weak point of the NUMA Files novels is the characters, who are thin even by action-adventure standards. Kurt Austin is boring. He collects dueling pistols, likes a good drink, and somehow always gets the girl despite the fact that Zavala is the good-looking charmer. Zavala has even less depth than Austin. It's not that they are characters to be disliked so much as they are almost non-entities: two-dimensional characters moving through a cookie-cutter plot. I find myself wondering if these co-authored NUMA novels are written via a mad-libs style Cussler template. "Insert bad guy with weird hobby here. Insert humorous quip here. Insert smart, good-looking woman in peril here..."

The Navigator is for the truly devoted Cussler fan or the truly bored. Not his worst, but far from his best.

"The Navigator" is another story in the Kurt Austin series from Clive Cussler and Paul Kemprecos. Their combined writing style leaves nothing to the imagination. The story is so vivid in details, I thought I was living through it as I read it - I could not put the book down. This is clearly the best in the Kurt Austin series. As with all of Cussler's stories, the chapters are short and there is always a good place to put it down for a really short time. Believe me; you will not want to put it down for long.

Much like the "National Treasure" movie, this story is loosely wound around a bit of history involving Thomas Jefferson. This story has it all: history, action, murder, exotic locals, hero's, heroin's and lots of suspense.

Highly recommended, if you are a Clive Cussler fan, then you definitely want to read this one.

Clive Kussler and Paul Kemprecos hit it out of the park with this intallment of Kurt Austin's NUMA adventures. If you've nevr read Cussler, you probably will be jarred by the absence of a coherent plot, the vastly bigger than life characters and the complete disregard for continuity. All those things are part of a Cussler novel and, frankly, become part of the fun.

Clive Cussler is like when you were five and crazy, funny Uncle Clive came over to tell you stories. You knew the stories weren't entirely true and even at five you grasped that there were gaping holes in the narrative, but you didn't care because Uncle Clive told tremendously good stories.

Cussler is a storyteller of the first rank.

This time around the tale becomes in 900 BC when half-brothers captaining Phoenician ships go at it in murderous combat. A bit shy of 3,000 years later, a UN investigator tracking down antiquities theft is faced with the looted museum in Baghdad. In between, we learn a little of Thomas Jefferson, Meriweather Lewis, secret codes and some interesting quests on Jefferson's part.

Kurt Austin, the head of the Special Projects team for NUMA, is minding his own business lassooing icebergs when he is called upon to rescue an oil rig in the path of a runaway container ship which just happens to be carrying the beautiful Italian UN investigator, recovered stolen antiquities and a bunch of bad guys.

So it begins. Within a few pages, we have the outsized villain Baltazar and his evil henchmen, including Adriano who loves to kill. There's Saxon, the intrepid adventurer and writer who is seeking Queen Sheba, the Ten Commandments, lost gold mines and ancient voyages.

It's all huge fun. Mild mannered Kurt Austin performs heroic deeds and the bad guys perform evil deeds. We learn lots about the Phoenicians and Thomas Jefferson, early American institutions and are introduced to an array of eccentric characters.

The holes in the plot are enormous, but Cussler and Kemprecos just blow right by them. If you're accustomed to Cussler novels, the characters don't appear to be nearly as transparent and shallow as they actually are.

This is something you read for fun. Cussler has the nautical fantasy adventure novel down pat: no one comes close to him. "The Navigator" is one of his better efforts and thoroughly enjoyable.

Jerry

Considering myself a bit of a Cussler-Fanatic, I have read each and every Cussler story in print (as of July '07) and while some are hit & miss, all contain large doses of adrenaline-filled action...some of it easier to digest than others, but all-told I'd have to say almost every single one is loaded with great fun. As I finished 'The Navigator' I discovered a couple of things: First is that Paul Kemprecos has virtually mastered the 'formula' which Clive patented over the course of decades worth of Action/Adventure writing...and Second, this is sadly my least favorite of the NUMA Files novels.

That ISN'T to say it wasn't fun--quite the opposite, actually. I found 'The Navigator' to contain all the twists and turns that I have come to expect from Kurt & Joe. I wish I could be more specific, but something just literally left me a bit flat here -- and it is driving me nuts that I cannot put my finger on it. To be totally honest, I have enjoyed the last 4 NUMA Files novels more than the last 3 or 4 Dirk Pitt tales. (If you only knew how difficult that was for me to admit) While Dirk Cussler definitely has writing talent and will soon be in the same league as his famous father, he isn't there--at least not yet. The first two Oregon Files novels were near disasters, but thankfully Clive was brilliant enough to recognize Jack Du Brul and his awesome talent and signed him on to continue the series (the last two have been fantastic). For the most part, Paul Kemprecos has been nothing short of incredible at taking the previously mentioned 'Formula' and using it for all it was worth--and in this case, it was worth a LOT. While the characters of Kurt & Joe are nothing more than almost literal carbon-copies of Dirk & Al, that did not stop me from recognizing the fun within all the same.

But for some reason, the plot of 'The Navigator' just did not do it for me as much as I honestly thought it would. It was still fun...the action was still on High and the entertainment factor was still in gear, but not to the same degree that it had been in the earlier NUMA Files books. Wish I could single it out for you, but I just cannot. All I CAN say with any degree of certainty is that if you are a past fan of these novels you really ought to enjoy this one just as much. I only wish I had. Thankfully Clive has enough series going these days so that I won't have to wait too long for the next book. I still consider buying a Cussler book to be as close to a Sure Bet as you can get in the publishing world.

Years ago, I came to the conclusion that Clive Cussler had a totally tin ear, wrote the worst love scenes in the world, and wasn't so great at "page turning suspense" either but...I read The Navigator after I realized he had obtained a ghost writer.

The ghost can't write even worse than Cussler can't write. This particular plot, revolving around Phoenecians in Harrisburg, PA (yes, you read that right) failed to suspend disbelief. Forget the characters. They were so muscular, gorgeous, and wooden that they made the plot seem believable in comparison. See, it goes like this: the Queen of Sheba's descendant beds down with the NUMA operative in between her various kidnappings (the lady gets hit over the head more often than Wiley Coyote) by another of King Solomon's spawn and---

There was one odd thing about this amazingly bad book: Cussler, having managed to have Phoenecians hand-carry golden plates on which are supposedly written the supposed ten commandments all the way into the Endless Mountains of northeastern Pennsylvania, totally misses a trick. At this point, our ancient mariners aren't far from Hill Cumora. Since Cussler was already accounting for the first landing in the New World, solving the puzzles of Phoenecian navigation, addressing the importance of the Queen of Sheba, locating King Solomon's Mines, and solving the mystery of the disappearance of the Ark of the Covenant, why didn't his Phoenicians cross into upstate New York and bury the plates near the home of Joseph Smith?

Maybe that's the next NUMA adventure.

This book was truly terrible.

Cussler can do (and has done) much better.

I approached The Navigator with the very low standards I normally impose on paperbacks I buy at an airport, but they were still far too high for this silly book.

The Navigator's characters are one dimensional at their best, and the plot's utter predictability is relieved only its occasional resort to absurd and implausible devices such as the jousting scene at the end.

There are many better ways to waste your time than reading The Navigator.

I have been an avid Cussler fan for several years now. I can not finish this book. The plot is non-existent. The grammar is horrid. I even found several misspelled words. There are several places that even Word grammar check would have found problems. For instance; "is is" and "and the and the" is found several times. Don't waste your time reading this book. Cussler has lost one fan if this is what we should expect from future writings.

As my favorite film reviewer Roger Ebert might say (paraphrasing) "This book does not transcend its action-adventure genre, but at least honors it".

Not to be confused with literature, but if you are looking for a light, escapist read, this will suffice. Very derivative plot borrowed from the movie "National Treasure", and parts of the book "The DaVinci Code". Nothing very original here.

This one compares much more to the Dirk Pitt Series in concept and plot than the previous Numa Files books. This, to me, is a good thing. Kurt Austin is the complete center of this story. Joe, Paul, and Gamay still have their roles, but they are minor compared to previous novels. You do get a mention of Vice President Sandecker and Director Pitt, but that is it. If you read Jack Du Brul, and you catch it, there is even a reference to one of his novels in there.

This is a great story, with a cohesive plot that all comes together. There is plenty of action and a little romance. There is some interesting new characters, some of which we might even get to read about again. Highly recommended.

The Clive Cussler franchise, begun in the 1970's, is like the Energizer Bunny. It just keeps going and going. After a string of blockbuster Dirk Pitt novels, Cussler was running out of steam (and, presumably, wanting more time to spend some of the vast fortune he's earned). A few books ago, we met the aging Dirk Pitt's heretofore unknown twin children, Dirk and Summer. James Sandecker became vice-president of the US and Dirk took his job as head of NUMA. So far, so good. Meanwhile, Cussler was inventing new characters, like Juan Cabrillo of the Oregon Files and Steve Austin and Joe Zavala, Pitt/Giordino clones, of the NUMA Files. He engaged "co-writers" (read "ghostwriters") like Paul Kemprecos to churn these out. These "new" books are enjoyable only if the reader doesn't expect them to sound like Cussler. In Kemprecos' case, that's a good thing. His fluid writing style contrasts favorably with Cussler's stiffness, especially where dialogue is concerned.

The other thing Cussler evidently has to do to keep his franchise going is to let Kemprecos descend into all the silliness he wants. There's plenty of it in The Navigator. The premise is ridiculous on the face of it: Ancient Phoenicians, contemporaries with Israel's King Solomon, sailed to North America routinely. They did so because King Hiram of Tyre (a major Phoenician city) provided a favor to Solomon: He transported workers to North America to mine gold for Solomon in modern-day Pennsylvania, and his "Ships of Tarshish" brought the refined mineral home. Thus, Kemprecos wants us to believe, King Solomon's mines were never in the region of Palestine near the modern-day Gulf of Aqaba, as traditional Biblical scholars have held for generations. Absolute nonsense. Add to this the notion than no less august a personage than Thomas Jefferson knew of these ancient voyages and kept it a secret from his countrymen, and you're over the top. Throw in a baddie whose ancient family worshiped the Canaanite fertility god ba'al (never mind that they had no connection with Palestine), and you're even further over the top. And the female heroine, and love interest, just HAPPENS to be descended from Solomon's supposed lover, the Queen of Sheba. What a convenient coincidence.

Good grief. Where to start? To begin with, there's not a shred of evidence to suggest that the Phoenicians ever sailed across the Atlantic, or that they would have wanted to. Secondly, the stories of King Solomon's riches in the Hebrew Bible are inconsistent with the archaeological record in the extreme. Thirdly, the Queen of Sheba is likely a mythological figure, the story of whose adulation is designed to boost the esteem in which Solomon (and, by extension, the king who commissioned the story) is held. Fourthly, convenient plot devices are necessary to move the story. The diver who found the wreck of an ancient Phoenician ship in Chesapeake bay just HAPPENED to drown before he told anybody or brought up a significant number of artifacts.

There is a growing interest in, and research about, the world of the ancient near- and middle-east, perhaps fueled by the rise of militant Islam and the ongoing tension between Israelis and Palestinians in the land of Solomon. Many of the results are exciting, and some are changing the ways we view ancient history, especially between about 1,000 BCE and the time of Jesus. Writers like Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman (look them up on the store), John Dominic Crossan, and Marcus Borg are working hard to integrate the revelations of modern archaeology and the claims of ancient texts. Unfortunately, anything can be commercialized, even research. The Navigator is an example of one of the worst efforts out there. But for my money (and I kept it) The DaVinci Code is the gold standard.

Having just finished the Navigator, I must say that I was somewhat disappointed. I have been an avid fan of Cussler for many years, as I own a full collection of his Dirk Pitt, Oregon Files, and NUMA Files books. Cussler fans will have to agree that this was not his best work. The beginning (always interesting) was excellent and provided an attractive hook, but as I continued, my interest waned. The story became too predictable- Cussler always follows the damsel in distress and the hero vs. billionare villain plotline. The use of historical details and humourous inserts about Harry Potter and the Lord of the Rings enhance the story and allow for some laughts, but overall I thought the plot was dry. I expected a more dramatic ending, a prolonged fight leading to the inevitable demise of the villain, but the hero was able to conquer the antagonist in a short and uneventful time.

Do not rate Cussler's writing by this book. He is a very skilled writer, whose descriptive powers are truly unparalleled. I suggest some of the older Dirk Pitt novels, which are the best reads, as well the books in the Oregon Files, which deviates from his normal plotline. In the NUMA Files line, Blue Gold is an excellent read and probably the best of the series.