No laughing allowed during Polar Shift, by Clive Cussler (with Paul Kemprecos), read by Scott Brick and reviewed by Star Lawrence.
Maybe you didn’t get up this morning and say, “You know, these elites are starting to bug me, and I think I will reverse the earth’s magnetic field and destroy the planet,” but apparently Clive Cussler and Co do think like that and thus this novel.
It is childishly simple to mock a Cussler novel with its square-jawed, blonde heroes (two this time, including a franchise Cussler character Kurt Austin) and “attractive” heroines (attractive, attractive why always that description?). So why should I resist? I am pretty childish. Let the mocking begin.
Polar Shift is like two or three book concepts smashed together. It leaps the shark more than a football player doing broken field drills. There are huge rogue waves, tiny woolly mammoths, an underground city complete with alleys, the obligatory Nazis, and enough pseudo-scientific jargon to choke everyone in Los Alamos (also in there).
So…be prepared. But on the positive side, this is a darn intense “listen,” with some memorable scenes that make the movie Titanic look as boring as Last Year at Marienbad (don’t remember that one? There’s a reason.)
Scott Brick, one of my favorite readers, has a sort of chewy, earnest voice and doesn’t overdo the accents or shoot the women into falsetto.
Should you check out Polar Shift? Ask yourself—How much do I hate electromagnetic fields?
Star Lawrence owns the health humor site Health’s Ass (http://healthsass.blogspot.com/). She can be reached at jkellaw@aol.com.
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