Arbus Boustabout Reviews a Book

Atlantis Found

A Dirk Pitt novel of 533 pages published in 1999 with an introduction to why do we read crappy books.

This is Arden Blingem and I am out traveling. Arbus will handle this post.

Arbus Boustabout here reviewing an old book, but also giving my general opinion of crappy adventure novels. (Blingem is out traveling.) I have a very big question for you people.

WHY DO WE LIKE SCHLOCKY UNBELIEVABLE CRAP IN OUR NOVELS?

I’ll tell you why.

We like an ordered and polished world. A world where the good guy wins and bad guys are clearly bad. We can easily hate truly bad guys. Murderers. People who beat puppies.

We want men (and women), heroes, who are smart and hardworking and have fun while they are doing it. We want them to win. And we want them to win against all odds. Because that is the way it is supposed to be.

The world is messy. We have everything from natural disasters to parking tickets and everything in between. Most calamities are made worse by men. Men who mean well or some who don’t. We are always unclear about who is bad and who is good depending on the news.

So the fantasy world of novels, even crappy ones is very important to us. The novel (or any good story) orders the world and cleans it up. A friend of mine said that when you read or see a story, you control it. I don’t know if it is perfectly accurate that we control it. I think it is more of we are in it. The best stories place you in it and you get to think and believe what you want in that newly ordered world of the story. And in that way, you control the story by being surprised and fulfilled by that story.

Reading a novel is a form of escape that gets your brain to truly work on something else, to give that gray mass a respite. To go to a world that is almost like swimming underwater. Kids and bills and #@*& whatever, go out the window and you just look at this world through the water and freaking enjoy it.

The story is for you and for you alone.

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NOW FOR THE REVIEW OF CLIVE CUSSLER’S –ATLANTIS FOUND

DIRK PITT!

Who doesn’t like to read a book and go, “What the #@*&xx is he talking about!?”

(This is the crux of reading, everybody is different. Some like that kind of book or this kind of book, others don’t. That’s the beauty of it all.)

Who doesn’t like to say, “History? History? Is that true? A x#@*&x WHAT!? Come on!”

I need to google that. And then find out it’s at least kinda true. (Maybe)

Let’s get to this particular book. (But they are all kind of the same.}

Steps to a Clive Cussler novel

• History….and then some more history.
• Discovery
• Bad Guys
• Good Guys
• Gadgets
• Triumph good over evil

BOOM! DONE.

ANOTHER DIRK PITT!!!

The book starts out with a comet hitting the earth and how it ruined a big time advanced civilization.

Then it fasts forwards to the 19th century and a ship was frozen near or in Antarctica containing a ship’s log about advanced humans. (Gets a little murky.)

Fast forward to present day and Dirk Pitt is helping people in an underground Colorado mine. They have found a mysterious room with etchings or some such shit. There is an explosion and then bad guys posing as good guys and water and drowning. It’s all so hopeless, but there is a secret passage to a basement winery and they bust through the wall and the snotty patrons must look at frogmen coming up through the floor.

Bad dialogue ensues. (And is oddly gratifying…)

Later on in the story, there is a prophecy about a returning comet that will end the world. There are more bad guys showing up to kill them as they race around the world trying to figure this out. More secret “Atlantis” type caves underwater or on the side of mysterious islands in the Indian Ocean.

There are planes and helicopters, beautiful doctors and a congressman. All of this shows how fabulous Dirt Pitt is.

Then, … a moment. Argentina. The name is Wolf. Gorgeous rich people. Multi-billion dollar corporations. They are behind it all. They speak German….

Oh…my God….They are NAZIS???? Whaaaattt? You couldn’t think of any other kind of bad guy? What kind of a lazy #@*& are you? Nazi’s for #@*&. Get a life! I won’t read any more of this book… (Throws book across the room.)

(one-day goes by……me staring at the book on the floor…oh, #@*& it!….grab it… Starts reading.)

Okay, #@*& what did the Nazis do this time?

And off I go…. There are nanobots chewing off some kind of polar shelf in Antarctica that will create a giant wave that will end the world if the comet do#@*&esn’t come back, however… The Nazis have built giant ships to keep them alive. To live on as the world ends. They will build a super race! Oh… Why are people not aware of Nazis building giant secret crap?

But but ….There is Dirk and his trusty sidekick tough bearded guy. They have a flying car and they go to the fjords where the giant ships are and kick a few hundred Nazis asses.

And they save a redhead doctor damsel in distress with her daughter and and

They get away and and…find them in Antarctica. And they have to beat the Nazis before the nanobots eat the ice..and and…

There is a huge battle and the Nazis are gonna win but Dirk Pitt has a giant snow truck from the 1940s and and

They kill everybody but the main Nazi. The main Nazi must do a walk of shame onto the frozen tundra where he will die an agonizing death.

And then…

Go back to Washington and the cool hangar with Dirk’s antique cars. Have some tequila make some bad jokes.

And the world is right.