Polar Shift

Polar Shift by Clive Cussler and Paul Kemprecos

I confess that sometimes I’ll read what other reviewers have to say about a particular book before I write my own.  When I looked at some of the reviews on Amazon.com for this one, I came across one that hits the nail pretty well when describing Clive Cussler.  The reviewer stated (and I’m paraphrasing here) that Cussler’s books are a bit like eating at a Burger King restaurant.  No matter where you go in the country, if you stop at a Burger King to eat, you know exactly what’s on the menu, what you want to eat, and how it’s going to taste.  It’s never phenomenal, never different and always predictable.  You know exactly what you’re going to get.  This, of course, is why if you like Burger King, so you keep going to the restaurant whenever you get the urge.

This is one of the “NUMA Files” books, which essentially means our hero is Kurt Austin instead of the familiar Dirk Pitt.  Not that this matters one iota to the average reader.  To most, both of these guys are exactly the same except in hair color.  Kurt and his band of familiar regulars are trying to find out why and how mysterious whirlpools have been appearing across the oceans.  These things are pretty huge and pretty serious.  How serious?  Well, one manages to swallow up an entire freighter, killing the entire crew.  Is this a natural phenomenon?  Or is it man made?  Regardless, can these things be stopped?

Ironically, Kurt and his cronies seem to always be in the right place at the right time (i.e. wrong place at the wrong time) when these disasters appear, which seem to be odd coincidences, but do make for some good thrilling rescue scenes.  If you’ve read a Cussler, the rest of the plot isn’t really necessary to describe here.

I confess that when I’m really hungry, I enjoy Burger King a lot.  I can say the same thing about most of Cussler’s work.  Although I have a hard time differentiating these books – especially over time, this one seemed to be par for the course if not a little better than most.  Yes, things did get a bit hoaky near the end.  We really didn’t need that scene where our old friend Dirk puts in an obligatory appearance (filled with a lot of classic cars – go figure), and there’s one scene where a complex code is “broken” rather easily.

Still, I knew what I was getting into, so I therefore really enjoyed the ride.  These books aren’t for everyone, and maybe you enjoy them but suffer a bit from Cussler overkill (he writes a lot of books with many different co-authors).  If you’re a casual fan and pick this one up, I think you’ll enjoy it overall.  

Regardless of whether you prefer onion rings or French fries.