Cheap Raise The Titanic! (Book) (Clive Cussler) Price

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Customer Reviews of Raise The Titanic!

You have to admit, this is a fun idea to take and run with
When Robert Ballard discovered the two halves of the H.M.S. Titanic on the floor of the Northern Atlantic any fanciful ideas of raising the ship were dashed. But Clive Cussler's novel and the movie based on it were responsible to some degree for the renewed interest in the Titanic and the underwater expeditions that eventually located the wreck. In term, Ballard's footage of the Titanic 13,000 feet below the surface of the ocean in turn inspired James Cameron's movie. So we had a real event, that inspired a novel that became a film, that led to discovering the actual wreck, which inspired the biggest money making movie of all time. <
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>This matters because it is the relationship between fact and fantasy that makes Cussler's idea of raising the Titanic so fascinating. "Raise the Titanic!" begins the night in April 1912 when the ship sank, as one of the ship's officers, John Bigalow, has a confrontation with a desperate man who ends up locking himself in the ship's vault as it sinks beneath the waves. The secret of the Titanic's vault becomes of national importance when some clues from a frozen corpse and the record of a century-old mining accident in Colorado lead to the conclusions that a rare mineral, necessary to fuel the ultimate weapon, is what is to be found inside. In the name of national security the Titanic has to be raised from its watery grave. If that was not enough of a challenge, there are Soviet spies intent on sabotaging the mission and a big hurricane that can also resink the ship. <
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>The problem with "Raise the Titanic!" is that both the plan and its execution are over simplified. Maybe it is because I am a fan of Tom Clancy's techno-thrillers and the level of detail he provide. True, those are invariably beyond me, but I appreciate the attempt to explain what is going on and Cussler keeps things really simple here. I do not require Clancy's sense of detail in this regard, but a bit more of the nuts and bolts of the process would have nice. All the months of preparation are glossed and in the end the best laid plans go by the wayside, leaving it to Pitt to do things by the seat of his pants, which is just how he likes to do it. But if the sense of technological accomplishment is kept to a minimum Cussler does go overboard with piling on the action and keeping up the pace so that this novel is a fun read that pretty much delivers the bigger than life adventure it promises. <
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>This is the fourth of Cussler's Dirk Pitt adventures and the second that I have read, but it is really not until the last part of the book that Pitt becomes a major actor in the drama. Granted, the nature of the adventure puts him in a minor role until the time comes to actually raise the Titanic, but it does seem strange there is so little of the hero in the first half of the book. Besides, I am waiting to read one of these adventures where the rest of the gang at NUMA have as much to do in a novel as they did in the movie "Sahara," which is what inspired me to start reading these stories in the first place.