Clive Cussler, creator of the bestselling NUMA and Dirk Pitt series, presents his latest and most intriguing high seas action hero: the enigmatic captain of the Oregon, Juan Cabrillo.
In his first feature-length adventure, it's up to Cabrillo and his crew of expert intelligence and Naval men to put Tibet back in the hands of the Dalai Lama by striking a deal with the Russians and the Chinese. His gambling chip is a golden Buddha containing records of vast oil reserves in the disputed land.
But first, he'll have to locate--and steal--the all-important artifact. And there are certain people who would do anything in their power to see him fail...
Review:
So after reading all the books as of yet available in Cussler's Fargo Adventures I decided to branch out and give his other series (plural) a try. The Oregon Files is the first of these other series that I decided to try, with Golden Buddha being the first in that series.
The concept of this series is essentially The A Team (as in, the original TV show, not the stupid movie they made of it) on the high seas and on steroids - a group of mercenaries who take on projects they see as representing good causes and who always seem to have a perfect plan all laid out. The Corporation (the group that runs the Oregon) even has a cigar smoking leader (a la Hannibal Smith)! Fortunately, the similarities stop before one can deduct points for originality. Unfortunately though, the book still has some key problems.
First and foremost - plot/plotting. The biggest issue here is that, in this book, or at least when it comes to The Corporation, Murphy's Law does not seem to exist! This is because nothing major in there plans goes wrong in the entirety of the book! This is just not realistic! And besides, things going WRONG is what makes thrillers fun! Without these complications and twists to the plot, its impossible to truly get major intensity going, and as a result the book has a bit of a "meh" taste to it. The characters don't face any true adversity so they can't really be developed well, and so things just aren't as good as they could have been. Part of the reason for this is that The Corporation is just too good to be true. They seem to have people literally everywhere, as opposed to just being a team aboard the Oregon - which would have been more fun. Also, there is no true antagonist. There are a few people that The Corporation runs circles around to complete their mission, but no one that is anything close to a match for them. That brings me to the second major problem...
Characters - Despite the list of characters given at the start of the book for one's reference, so many are introduced so quickly that it becomes very difficult to figure out who's who. Also, despite the protagonist having a Hispanic name like "Juan Cabrillo", his looks are not Hispanic in the least (blond hair, blue eyes, etc.) - but that's more of a pet peeve thing than anything else.
Beyond all that, the pacing is reasonable, but the intensity suffers due to what I mentioned above. I still kinda liked the book, but it's hardly Cussler at his best.
All in all, as I just said, Golden Buddha is not incredibly good, but I'd still recommend it to fans of the The A Team or heist movies/stories (a la Ocean's Eleven). This series has A LOT of potential, it just doesn't live up to that potential here.
3/5 stars
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