Valhalla Rising
Clive Cussler

I’ve never read Clive Cussler before, but a relative of mine kept referencing him as writing fun stories (if not entirely realistic or profound), so I thought I’d check it out. It’s always nice to have a common ground of reading material–that’s one topic that skips right over all the awkward small talk. Her evaluation was pretty much spot-on, although I think I was expecting more in the way of obstacles. There’s really no point in the book where you have serious doubts about the outcome; it’s a blatantly vicarious story (more about that in a bit) which means the characters don’t go through any pain or growth. If our hero Dirk Pitt was more of an anti-hero, or at least, you know, human, this could have been much more interesting. As it was, I got stuck near the end and had to force myself to finish it.

It’s a shame, really, because at the heart of the story are some really interesting ideas about Jules Verne and the history of submarines that must have taken a lot of research. Also, I was drawn to this one out of the Cussler books by the promise of Vikings, but despite the longboat image on the cover, they turned out to be utterly peripheral. 

Probably the only thing that really paused me was–spoiler–the appearance of Clive Cussler himself, as a character. That was a meta twist I wasn’t expecting, especially since the character improbably is in the exact spot with the exact equipment they need. It acknowledged both the deus-ex-machina quality of the intervention (’cause, you know, if you’re fetching a god to descend to the stage, who’s more godly than the author himself?) and the blatantly vicarious aspect of the story.