Thursday, August 19, 2004

Valhalla Rising

Clive Cussler is a piss-poor novelist the way Liberace was a piss-poor pianist.  I'm sure my assessment will send him crying all the way to the bank.  What he does do well (character and point of view not being among those qualities deemed well-done), is spin a pretty good yarn.  And in Valhalla Rising, he imagines a terrorist plot to destroy the World Trade Center, as well as most of the southern tip of Manhattan, using a vehicle of transporation, in this instance a ship, rather than airplanes.

Most of this novel is one adventure after another, a kind of novelized adventure serial of the old school, from one hot pickle to another.  It's rousing in an old fashioned way.  Definitely plot driven guy stuff, as opposed to character driven chick lit, and the body count is very, very high.

No comments: