Golden Buddha (The Oregon Files) [ペーパーバック]

Cussler is one of the few authors who have NEVER disappointed me and I buy his books day of release without fail. I even liked his collaborations with Dirgo as it always seemed to me to be a Cussler book, UNTIL NOW. I totally agree with the reviewer who wrote that the book just died. Reading about the Dali Lama got me hooked as i thought there would be a few plots going on at once and the Dali Lama part could be quite intriguing. Did Cussler even see the book before Dirgo went to publisher?

I kept waiting for something other than the one event to happen. All these uninteresting characters that were not developed and no place for them to go. Who cares about this caper? I am on page 300 now and i couldn't believe that it took 300 pages to get to this point in the story so i came to Amazon to see it if was just me. It's not. I am only finishing this book because the name Cussler is attached. If this had been an unknown author, I would have stopped a long time ago as it is a terrible story, terribly concocted with only the first chapter or two having any interest. This is SO NOT CUSSLER. The writing is repetitive and boring as if he is trying to be Cussler but failing miserably. Ok, done. Wish the book was.

There comes a time when authors "jump the shark." Tom Clancy's was when he began "writing" the Net Force series (which I fondly call Net Farce); John Grisham did it with The King Of Torts; Kathy Reichs latest, Bare Bones, comes close (her rant at the end is out of character for the main character, Tempe Brennan). For Clive Cussler, it's Golden Buddha.

Although his name is prominent on the cover, this latest book is co-written with Craig Dirgo, who's written with Cussler before on The Sea Hunters books. In those, you can obviously tell which parts Cussler wrote and which Dirgo wrote - Dirgo's parts did not flow as well and sometimes contained inaccuracies in the facts. He should take a writing class.

Golden Buddha is a new series called The Oregon Files, featuring a main character named Juan Cabrillo who is tall, blonde and blue-eyed (much like Kurt Austin in the other spinoff series by Cussler and Paul Kemprecos). He and his crew of the ship Oregon take on "jobs" that most mercenaries wouldn't touch. They all showed up in a previous Dirk Pitt novel , Flood Tide, and I guess Cussler thought it would be a good spinoff. It could've been, but it isn't.

First of all, the book is about putting the Dalai Lama back in power in Tibet, which is why a very large golden Buddha must be recovered - there is a secret compartment in it with important information. I wish the Dalai Lama character hadn't been based on a real person - this made the entire story very unrealistic (if it does come true by 2005, the date in the book, I'll eat my hat). A fictional religious leader would have been a better bet. Also, Russian President Putin is named, but the President of the USA is not - he's just called the President. Who says Putin will still be in power in 2005? These inconsistencies drove me nuts.

The book reads like a TV movie waiting to be made. There are way too many characters to keep track of (even with the listing of each character's name and function at the beginning of the book) and the writing could have been much better, if Cussler had written more of it. You can tell which parts he wrote versus Dirgo - Cussler's flows beautifully, while Dirgo's is choppy and often contained odd words (the worst was "containerized ship" - as far as I know, they're more commonly known as container ships).

Characters use cutesy comments way too much - I don't know anyone in real life who talks like these people.

Scenes jumped helter skelter and I began getting confused, so I started skipping parts.

The best part of this book was near the beginning when Cabrillo and his crew have to recover the golden Buddha from a party in Macau. That was well done and exciting.

I love the Dirk Pitt adventures and the Kurt Austin books, but if the next Oregon Files is "cowritten" with Dirgo, I'll pass.

As far as I can tell, I've read every novel that Clive Cussler has written. These include: THE MEDITERRANEAN CAPER,ICEBERG, RAISE THE TITANIC!, VIXEN 03, NIGHT PROBE, PACIFIC VORTEX, DEEP SIX, CYCLOPS, TREASURE, DRAGON, SAHARA, INCA GOLD, SHOCK WAVE, FLOOD TIDE, ATLANTIS FOUND and VALHALLA RISING. I have also read, three novels he wrote with Paul Kemprecos which include: SERPENT, BLUE GOLD, AND FIRE ICE. His most recent novels (particularly the ones he coauthored) fail to meet the richness found in his earlier work. In a long process of excruciating reflection, I have drawn three conclusions regarding GOLDEN BUDDHA (coauthored with Craig Dirgo) that focus on changes in my personal enjoyment of Cussler's recent collaborative writing.

First is intensive character development. Within Cussler's Dirk Pitt series, I gained a great deal of reading enjoyment by viewing the character development. He was able to offer his readers an intensive psychological profile of the main and secondary characters. This process made the characters come alive by having an in depth understanding of their individual and often conflicting motivations. In addition, Cussler was able to move the characters through their aging cycles and thereby produced changes within their psychological profiles. I don't see this intensive character development in GOLDEN BUDDHA or in the other novels Cussler has coauthored. I miss that aspect of this writing.

Throughout the Dirk Pitt series, the impossible seemed possible. Cussler was able to pull together a series of strange and twisted elements within a story. These plot twists and turns emerged from the character's thought processes, dialog, and the reader's knowledge of history and archeology. Within GOLDEN BUDDHA, the characters do very little thinking. They merely heave money at problems. For example, I became annoyed with the sewage system used to transport the Buddha. I don't consider myself particularly creative, but I immediately thought of a more efficient, cheaper, and much less hazardous mode of transit. Dirk Pitt used his head to problem-solve. The characters in GOLDEN BUDDHA merely purchased stuff and staff to achieve goals. I want to read about a character's action, not his use of nearly unlimited financial resources.

In Cussler's earlier work, there was always a surprise element. This is not to suggest that the endings were a surprise but the process to get to the preordained happy ending was nerve-racking. The description of the escape from the Cuban prison in GOLDEN BUDDHA had me sitting on the edge of my chair, but it lacked the intellectual initiative. In addition, it demonstrated that the future challenges within the storyline were going to be solved financially rather than intellectually. Thus, when one reads the description of the Cuban prison escape in GOLDEN BUDDHA, the process for all the other tense moments become anticlimactic. No more edge-sitting.

I suspect that the GOLDEN BUDDHA will be my last Clive Cussler novel.