Clive Cussler

Guess who’s back! Back again!

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Why yes, I do have some Eminem stuck in my head. Why do you ask?

So, yet again, it’s been a while since I’ve posted. Life gets in the way. At any rate, I’m making a pre-New Years resolution to start up the ol’ book blog again because while I have lagged on the posting, I have definitely not lagged in the reading. Thank goodness I have an ereader, or I’d be drowning in books.

Instead of reviewing a book this time, I thought I’d chat about some of my favorite authors and maybe toss out a favorite book from their bibliography. We’ll go alphabetically because I don’t have an all time favorite author. These are my favorite, favorites. I have read a lot more than just the below. And keep in mind that some of these people may be problematic right now, but when I first read them, they were not. And I still love what they wrote, even if I don’t like the person they turned out to be. If we couldn’t separate art from artist, then no one could enjoy a Picasso or a Diego Rivera, a Hemingway or any number of musicians’ works.

Old library or bookstore. This is what my house would be without an ereader.

Douglas Adams – The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I mean, it speaks for itself, doesn’t it?

Ilona Andrews – I legit don’t think I could pick between any of her books, I enjoy them all so much but if I had to choose one series…Probably the Innkeeper series. It’s a mix of magic and sci-fi, found family and mystery. It has it all.

Jim Butcher – The Dresden Files. All of them, but in particular, I’d probably choose Changes. And oof did that one just kill me at the end the first time I read it. By the way, his son has started writing too! Check out Dead Man’s Hand by James Butcher.

Gail Carriger – Anything. Legit anything of hers. I have read all her books. I subscribe to her newsletter. I got to meet her in person once! She’s lovely and her writing is amazing. The book that started it all for me is Soulless. It’s steampunk and got me addicted to steampunk. It also makes me realize that I like steampunk (and other stories) that are a little lighter, a little more fun than some other steampunk works (Whitechapel Gods comes to mind).

Agatha Christie – The godmother of mystery. I love Death on the Nile or the Mysterious Affair at Styles.

James S.A. Corey – The Expanse! What an absolutely amazing sci-fi series! I love it so much. It made me thirsty for more sci-fi, but I haven’t quite found anything I love as much as this series.

Blake Crouch – Wayward Pines trilogy. Man, that series definitely kept me guessing, which can be hard to do. Not to toot my own horn, but I’m actually pretty good at figuring out the end game in books, shows and movies (I figured out the Sixth Sense about halfway through), so I love something that can keep me guessing. I would love a fourth or a spin off, Mr. Crouch!

Clive Cussler – The leader in maritime adventure novels! Dirk Pitt, Numa Files, Oregon Files – I like them all. My favs are Raise the Titanic and Inca Gold.

Charlotte English – Weird & Wayward. Victorian Addams family anyone?

Jennifer Estep – The Elemental Assassin series is amazing. Not sure I could pick just one of them. I also like her Mythos Academy books and Galactic Bonds series.

Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett – Good Omens. Nuff said.

Simon R. Green – Deathstalker, Dealthstalker Coda, Nightside, Hawk & Fisher, Secret Histories, Shadow’s Fall. I haven’t gotten into his very latest series, but I plan to. Again, hard to pick just one, so maybe Just Another Judgment Day from the Nightside series?

Charlaine Harris – Sookie Stackhouse series. I think I might have to go with Dead to the World, where vampire sheriff Erik loses his memories and Sookie has to figure it out.

Kim Harrison – The Hollows series. Still on-going, even though I thought it had ended. Not up to date on the last couple of books, but I like that Rachel and Trent have gotten their shit together. That was the longest will they/won’t they ever.

Jordan L Hawk – Widdershins series. This is Victorian and kind of Lovecraftian and also the main characters are homosexual at a time where that was punishable by law (or worse).

Faith Hunter – Jane Yellowrock. Can’t go wrong with the first novel, Skinwalker.

Richard Kadrey – Sandman Slim series. I think my fav might be teh first book Sandman Slim.

Annette Marie – Guild Codex, Demonized, Warped and Unveiled. They’re all interconnected, they’re all fun. I just reread all of Demonized and Warped recently. Soooooo good.

Seanan McGuire – The October Daye series. Easily my favorite of the bunch is One Salt Sea. Also check out her Indexing series.

Jessie Mihalik – Starlight’s Shadow, Consortium Rebellion and Books & Broadswords series.

Devon Monk – Ordinary Magic series.

Anne Rice – A toss up between The Mummy or Ramses the Damned and Queen of the Damned.

John Scalzi – Easily Kaiju Preservation Society, though redshirts was amazing for this old Star Trek fan.

Rob Thurman – Cal Leandros and Trixa series. I’m sad that she quite writing before finishing them.

Next month, I’m hoping to review Gail Carriger’s next book, The Dratsie Dilemma.

We bring you a break from your regularly scheduled programming…

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Courtesy of wikipediaSo I felt like doing something outside my usual milieu of urban fantasy and talk about one of my all time favorite authors, Clive Cussler. More specifically, his book Inca Gold. I’ve been reading Clive Cussler for about twenty years now (ouch, I’m old! Well, older) and he’s still a great author. This book is one of my favorites of his.

Like all of Clive’s books, we start back in time, to a piece of ‘forgotten history’ involving the Inca, the Chachapoyas and the Spanish. We’ll start with Sir Francis Drake, who is one of my all time favorite historical figures, ever since I did a report on him in the fourth grade. 🙂 Drake has plundered a couple of Spanish vessels during his circumnavigation of the globe and found a magnificent collection of Inca artifacts. He sends one ship back around to the Straits of Magellan while he takes the rest of the plunder with him. The other ship never makes it, having run afoul of a tidal wave that leaves it stranded deep ashore. On board that particular ship is a quipu, a type of proto record that the Inca created using a series of knots in ropes. Obviously a very basic description, but click the link for more details.

Anyway, this quipu is the key to finding a long lost Inca treasure. Its a detailed map of the journey that a secret group of Inca troops made in order to hide this treasure from greedy Spanish conquistadors (and really, those guys were pretty greedy). Fast-forward about 400 years and an archaeologist and her team are excavating a sacrificial pool high in the Andes when they run into trouble under the water. Coming to the rescue are Cussler’s main heroes, Dirk Pitt and Al Giordino, who are working relatively nearby on a NUMA project. They fly in with their scuba equipment and come to the rescue, luckily finding Dr. Shannon Kelsey and her companion alive.

Lucky, that is, until the whole lot are kidnapped and marched through the jungle while Dirk is left to drown in the sacrificial pool. Of course, the bad guys underestimate Dirk’s tenacity. He climbs free with the help of a few items on his dive belt. Once he recovers at the destroyed base camp, he tracks Al and the others through the jungle.

Its a long, hard slog to catch up with and then rescue his friends. Dirk and Al manage to steal a military helicopter to get away from the bad guys. Military because the bad guys are antiquities thieves who have their sticky fingers in all levels of the Peruvian government in order to ease their smuggling, including the clout to order military intervention on two NUMA people and a number of untrained archaeologists and students.

Long story short, they get away but not without injuries and shenanigans. The adventure doesn’t end there. They just scratched the tip of the iceberg on a huge art and antiquities smuggling ring. Its a race to find what the bad guys are after, a literal treasure trove of Incan artifacts that could add to the knowledge of the short lived empire. This race will take Dirk and Al all over the US, Peru and Mexico.

The thing I really like about Cussler is that his adventures are fairly believable. Sure there are things that make you go yeah right but they aren’t really egregious things like supernatural creatures. Its more like I don’t believe that as being possible for the science of the time. At any rate, Inca Gold is one of my all time favorite books and one of the first that got me rereading books. Can you believe I used to be a one-and-done type of girl? What was I thinking?! At any rate, if you’re looking for something different from your usual, give Clive Cussler a shot. And if you like vintage automobiles like I do, definitely give his books a shot. There will be at least one new vintage car in each book! Rating: A+

Incidentally, the National Underwater and Marine Agency from his books is a real agency. Clive Cussler was behind the raising of the C.S.S. Hunley, so if you love old ships and shipwrecks, check them out. And again, if you like vintage autos, check out the Cussler Museum. One day, I will get there!