Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

The Kingdom, the third novel in the Fargo series by Grant Blackwood, under the name of Clive Cussler, is a non-thriller full of coincidences, superficial writing, tedious plotting, grammatical errors, and numerous inconsistencies. It is the latest output from the Cussler factory of quick-and-dirty novels apparently designed to do little more than make money on the Cussler name. Unfortunately, Mr. Cussler has lost his writing edge; he is no longer the craftsman who penned the early Dirk Pitt novels. Now, he rubber stamps his name on a long list of poorly written novels from his stable of so-called adventure novelists. Among the several problems I have with The Kingdom is that I have no idea what the Fargos look like; so, I cannot care about them. Nowhere in the book is there any description of either Remi or Sam Fargo, the hero and heroine. The closest I found was a reference to Sam being a few feet taller than Remi. I have no idea how old they are, their height or weight, their hair color, their body shapes, or any unique physical qualities, except that Sam had some judo training. Save for a few lame, wise-cracking jokes, they are mirror images, with no individuality. Yet, Blackwood/Cussler describe in detail their various meals, their assistant Selma (superficially), their drinks, and some of their past adventures. Sam and Remi irritatingly do a tedious amount of name dropping: their specific meals, their weapons, their iPad, their clothing, and drinks. Such obvious product placement occurs more and more in the works of other writers: For example, in The Apostle, Brad Thor constantly mentions Red Bull. I wonder how much Mr. Cussler is making from such product placements, which detract from the storyline, such as it is. The story is amazingly simplistic and boring, focusing on the search for a Golden Man; precisely what that is, is revealed in the final four pages of the book, and is a considerable letdown, given all the energy expended to obtain it. There is an immediate problem with the opening prologue, a Cussler device; it is set in a non-specific time. Cussler used to date that time frame, but not here. What happens in the prologue...a dirigible ride...is crucial to the conclusion, but there is no sense of urgency in the book; things just move along at a predictable pace until that conclusion. The end comes after some gratuitous jaunts through Nepal, Tibet, Albania, Bulgaria, India and China; it seems that Blackwood/Cussler believe that including exotic locales makes an adventure story. The search for the Golden Man begins, for the Fargos, as they are involved in one of their treasure hunting adventures. A ruthless billionaire, Charles King, hires them to find his missing father. Of course, we know that all that is a smoke screen for something else. The companion--later we learn his wife--is a seeming automaton, coldly ruthless in her actions. She also has spawned, with King, two equally ruthless offspring. Cussler/Blackwood do not explain why Zhilan and her twin children are so thoroughly ruthless, which makes Zhilan suddenly turning on her husband a surprise. Speaking of the ruthless King, the mastermind behind the plot...he disappears about two-thirds of the way through the story; we have no idea what happened to him. The word, sequel, comes to mind. At any rate, the book is also riddled with many unanswered questions. On page 103, mention is made of Sam Fargo's background, but we are given no details. On page 105, Sam sets up a belay over a river, something which could be an exciting read for the reader; instead, we only told that it happened. On page 110, after struggling more than two miles in the mountains of Nepal, Sam and Remi are able to climb a 50-foot stone staircase in under two minutes; they must be nearly super human! This curious treatment of details occurs in various places to which the Fargos travel. On page 133, we have the first genuinely well-written description of any location, about a third of the way though the book. Yet, on page 138, Blackwood/Cussler give us too-specific measurements of the pit where antiquities are being looted by King's men in Nepal; the excavation is exactly fifty feet deep, two hundred yards wide, and nearly a quarter mile long. There are also many impossible plot elements. On page 143, Sam is able to find the right vine which will help him and Remi descend to the site where the antiquities are being stolen. Keep in mind, it is night, and they are hidden in a stand of trees. In terms of how the dense underbrush is described, I doubt that the Fargos would have found a vine in daylight. On page 174, Sam and Remi are in a single-engine Piper Cub; on page175, the engines (plural) begin winding down. The Fargos had been to Nepal on two previous trips; yet they appear to be ignorant of much of the small kingdom. On page 226, Jack Karna is fascinated by Remi's iPad; yet he has a satellite dish connection and uses an Apple MacBook Pro. Surely, he would know about the iPad. On page 281, Karna has perfectly calibrated GPS units; he knows his technology. His technological divide seems to shrink and widen when convenient to the story. Remi and Sam also show an inconsistent lack of knowledge. Remi is an experienced archaeologist and Sam supposedly has an amazing storehouse of useless information; yet, neither one knows what the diagonal bar on the bottom of an Eastern Orthodox cross is...and Blackwood/Cussler don't tell us. There is also the problem that neither one knows what a Synode and a Methodius are, despite their supposed wealth of knowledge. The diagonal bar on the cross, incidentally, represents the support for Christ's feet when he was crucified. Such a glaring dearth of information is also shown in the lack of descriptions of Zvernec Island in Albania; the Fargos appear to be on a cursory stroll of the island, seeking the remains of an Orthodox Bishop who plays a role in the plot, rather than in a dangerous pursuit of information. The blatant conveniences are also absurd. On page 311, Sam manages to shoot down a Chinese helicopter which crashes near them and not on the mountain floor thousands of feet below. Later, in the same location, Sam needs "something piton-like," to aid their escape; as luck would have it, Remi immediately finds a piece of a rotor. On page 327, Remi recognizes the 4 characters on a piece of bamboo that she and Sam find in the wreckage of a gondola. Sam, doesn't recognize the symbols, even though he had seen them several times before; the symbols are critical guide posts to finding the Golden Man. On page 385, Remi conveniently finds the box that contains the Golden Man, just in time to use it as a weapon to knock out Marjorie, the evil daughter of Zhilan. In that same action scene, Sam, Remi, Jack and their guide, Ajay, are attacked by Zhilan and her son and daughter; Jack is shot in the neck (apparently killed), but he is only wounded and manages to recover. There are also numerous grammatical errors, with the book crying out for a strong and sharp-eyed editor. On page 184, we have: "While none of the chorten were taller...". It should read: "While none of the chorten was taller..." On page 240, we find: "While neither Sam nor Remi were surprised..." This should read: "While neither Sam nor Remi was surprised..." There are more. The ending is the most preposterous, ludicrous, unbelievable, and puerile I have read in a long time. First, after somehow making their own escape dirigible from parts of one that had crashed several hundred years ago, Sam and Remi manage to sail out of the mountains of northern Nepal. Unfortunately, the craft doesn't hold up and they plummet into a stand of pines, which breaks their fall. Sam suffers minor injuries; Remi has more serious ones to her back. Miracle of miracles, they manage to land less than a mile from a local village. Sam goes off for help. We do not see the actual rescue, only read about it after the fact. After a few days in a Nepali hospital, Sam and Remi are off to their home in California to plan the endgame. We learn about writing on a piece of bamboo that Remi managed to save from the older dirigible that she and Sam had found in the mountains of Nepal; that writing tells the history of the crashed dirigible that Sam and Remi had found. We also learn the probable locations of Shangri-La and the Golden Man. In a matter of days after the crash landing of their homemade dirigible, Remi and Sam are back in Nepal. There is an improbable shootout in Shangri-La; a few more pages later, the Golden Man and its significance (a real letdown) are revealed...and all is well. The Kingdom reads like a first draft of a novel written by a student in a high school creative writing class, a work not worthy of Cussler's name. Incidentally, based upon the two previous Fargo adventures, the sad, continuing decline in the quality of writing becomes more obvious. I wonder how far Mr. Cussler is willing to go before he either stops putting his name on such works or hires a better writer. Until then, reader beware; this is not a Clive Cussler novel...at least not the Cussler we once read, enjoyed, and loved.