The Golden Buddha by Clive Cussler and Craig Dirgo

Series: #1 in the Oregon Files series
Genre: Action/Adventure
Publication Date: 2003
Pages: 420
Challenges: none

I can write this review in two words – Don’t bother.

I’ve read and thoroughly enjoyed Clive Cussler’s Dirk Pitt series. Pure escapist adventure fun with lots of boats, chases, bad guys you can hate, good guys who are too good to be true and fun enjoyable adventures. When he started the Kurt Austin series (The NUMA Files) co-written with Paul Kamprecos, I was hesitant, but found them to be just as much fun. So when this series launched I expected it to be just as good. Well, I don’t know whether it was the different co-author or whether Cussler just took a vacation on this one, but it’s just not good.

The story is confusing due to too many characters with no character development. I finished the book knowing little or nothing about even the major players. It tries to be an adventure series about a group of mercenaries that do good things for huge profits, but sheesh, the writing was so bad I flat out skimmed the second half. I have never read such overuse of the phrases ‘at the exact same instant’, ‘at the same instant’ and other variations in one book. Where was the editor?

I have seen that beginning with the third book, the series has a different co-author. I may skip over the second book with Craig Dirgo and try one of those written with Jack Du Brul before giving up totally on this series. In the meantime though, I am going to stick with Dirk Pitt and Kurt Austin.