Crescent Dawn

Crescent Dawn – by Clive Cussler and Dirk Cussler

Crescent Dawn is Clive Cussler’s 21^st Dirk Pitt novel.  It’s also the 21^st that I’ve read.  After reading so many of these books, I can’t help but wonder if my dissatisfaction in this one is because I’m getting tired of reading them, or if it’s because the quality has significantly dropped over time.  I’m guessing it’s probably a little bit of both.

I’ve mentioned (as have others) in many of my Clive Cussler reviews that it seems somewhat fishy that this author manages to write several different books every year, each with a different co-author.  You can’t help but wonder if the co-author is doing all of the actual writing, and Clive is just adding his name along with a colorful book jacket to help propel sales.  Lately, the Dirk Pitt books are “co-authored” with Clive’s son, (aptly named) Dirk.  This could be the reason why my enjoyment level has waned.  You never really appreciated how great some authors are until you read some books by some not-so-great authors.

There’s also the issue that Dirk Pitt has now “evolved” so to speak.  He’s no longer the young, handsome, dreamy bachelor that all women love, and all men want to befriend.  No, he’s married now to a U.S. Congresswoman, has some gray running through his black hair, and he also has two grown twins from a fling many years ago.  So, now, in addition to Dirk Pitt running around, we also get significant side snippets where we see Dirk Jr. pursuing baddies on his own, as well as twin sister Summer fighting some sort of injustice.  It really is a bit much.  Some of the supporting characters that we’ve grown to love in this series have now been pushed back further into the cast of supporting characters.  Oh, sure, they’re all here (Al, Rudi, St. Jules, and Admiral Sandecker), but they don’t get as much page time as before.  Maybe we now read about his son so much because Mr. Cussler feels we need a handsome, young carbon-copy running throughout the pages that rescues damsels in distress right before asking them to dine with him at an exotic restaurant just like dear old dad used to?

Side note:  In case you get lost between the two Dirk Pitts while reading, the original is referred to as “Pitt” and Junior is referred to as “Dirk”.  

Regardless of all of this, I simply didn’t find the story that interesting.  The formula is still here.  We start with a “prologue” of some catastrophic event that happened millennia ago, and we then fast-forward to present day where Pitt and company discover some sort of shipwreck that will eventually tie back to the introduction with a lot of incredible, historic revelations.  Throw in some bad guys that want Pitt and his cronies dead for whatever reason, and you have yourself a story that seems all too familiar.

What really seems to be missing is the sense of keen adventure and discovery.  This was always present in the earlier Cussler books, but we never seem to get this anymore.  I’ll spend about ten pages reading a chapter before I realized that Cussler could have replaced the entire chapter with one sentence that reads something like “Pitt  and Al rescue a woman  from a submersible”.  Or, “Pitt and Al rescue a scientist from a warehouse”.  I just really lost interest and stopped caring.

I’m not even sure I could do a good job summing up the plot here.  Something about Moslems and Christians trying to uncover some secrets while ensuring others stay buried.  That’s probably not entirely right, but does it really matter?

In conclusion, I must point out that I’ve read a couple of Cussler’s  Isaac Bell adventures (I forget that co-author.  There’s simply too many) and I really enjoyed those, so if you’re reading this review and you come away the same conclusion as myself, don’t give up just yet on anything with the name “Cussler” on it.  I also enjoyed some of the latter NUMA Files books (or “Kurt Austin” books, if you will).  

This one, however,  definitely made me yearn for the old days.