Artifact [Mass Market Paperback]

Kevin J. Anderson (Author), F. Paul Wilson (Author), Janet Berliner (Author), Matthew J. Costello (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 29, 2005

The Prize: Unlimited Power

Six adrenalin junkies who call themselves the Daredevils Club hold the fate of the world in their hands. In an ancient undersea cavern, one of them, oil man Frik van Alman, discovers a set of stones that are unlike anything else on Earth. Fitted together, the stones form an object that promises limitless free energy for the world.

After a terrified scientist scatters the pieces, the club members race to retrieve them. Each knows that whoever reassembles the unique device will have unlimited power at his or her fingertips. Can anyone be trusted?

In a thrilling adventure that stretches from deep beneath the Caribbean to the penthouses of Las Vegas, friend battles friend for control of the Artifact.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Given the formidable talents of the writers involved, this first adventure of a club of professional thrillseekers is a surprisingly unfulfilling affair. The six male members of the Daredevils Club meet every New Year's Eve to swap stories about the past year's missions impossible. In 1999, oil magnate Frik Van Alman sows the seeds for the following year's bragfest when he asks his fellow Daredevils to help him recover pieces of an unearthly artifact he discovered while drilling in an undersea cavern. Never mind that the devious Frik doesn't tell them the artifact can harness energy magically, or that its parts were deliberately disassembled and dispersed to different people by one of his employees (whose death Frik hastened) to keep it out of his unscrupulous hands. The Daredevils are off and running, and the scavenger hunt that follows is as disjointed as the artifact itself, split over subplots involving an ecoterrorist group's efforts to destroy Frik's oil business and the growing suspicion of Dr. Peta Whyte, lover of a deceased Daredevil, that Frik will stop at nothing to get what he wants. Explosions, death-defying feats and Houdini-like disappearances and reappearances keep things lively. But there are also enough convenient coincidences and key mysteries left unexplained to raise doubts about how closely the authors collaborated on the plotting.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"Artifact is fun, exotic, and fast. The only part of the ending you'll guess is that it's good. And the characters are as exotic and fascinating as its settings, and the story itself."
--New York Times bestselling author Larry Bond

“A fascinating page-turner with enough spellbinding intrigue to last until the authors’ next tale. Full of action with terrific characters and a fast moving plot.”
--New York Times bestselling author Clive Cussler on Artifact

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Forge Books (November 29, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0765340259
• ISBN-13: 978-0765340252
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,952,778 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Thrilling action by four great authors, May 3, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Artifact (Hardcover)

This book is a lot of fun. Great characters involved in exciting adventures, with lots of twists and turns.

The book opens with an introduction to the first adventure that leads to the creation of the Daredevils Club, as two of the three founding members, Fredrick "Frikkie" Van Alman and Ray Arno, and a young woman named Peta Whyte rescue the third member, Peta's mentor Arthur Marryshow, from a prison on Communist-controlled Grenada.

Skipping forward seventeen years, the story picks up as oilman Frikkie's exploratory rig pulls up four strange objects from beneath the sea floor in the Dragon's Mouth, the narrow waterway between Venezuela and Trinidad. Those four stones, along with a fifth piece left underwater, may provide unlimited energy, a prospect that scares Frikkie who makes his millions selling fossil fuels.

What follows is part treasure hunt and part mystery as the characters try to put together the artifact, without getting killed themselves.

I can hardly wait until these four write another Daredevils Club book.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Where is the other half of the book?, June 26, 2003

By 

Gayle Borho "edgarsmum" (St. Charles, Missouri United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Artifact (Hardcover)

Where to begin? As a Kevin J. Anderson reader, I was somewhat intrigued at the premise of the novel. However, I should have sensed danger at the extremely lengthy and confusing front flap. However, I risked it and read the book anyway. The middle of the book is somewhat interesting, but I agree with some of the other reviewers that the plot and timeline were choppy. With two chapters to go, I was moderately doubtful that the book could be tied up neatly. Well, the writers didn't think that was impossible. In fact, as if they were desperately tired of writing, the book simply stops. I cannot express my severe disappointment in the quick and shallow way the end of the book was treated. I half-jokingly suggested to my husband that I take the book back to the store and get half my money back since it was, after all, only half a story. My only comfort I can get from spending time reading this book is that it wasn't too long. Therefore, I didn't waste too much of my life reading it.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A Book By Committee, August 13, 2003

By 

Claude T. Hawkins (Clearwater, FL) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Artifact (Hardcover)

This book reminds me of a ransom note put together by cutting letters out of a magazine and gluing them on a piece of paper. It's a jumble and even the FBI would have difficulty discerning on whom to pin the blame.

All the authors are supposedly pros and like professionals they hit all the correct buttons (plot, characters and action), and this book could have been a good action/thriller, but it missed on nearly all levels. A few years back a few computer programers were claiming that they could program a computer to write a novel, just enter the characters, plot, genre and voila, a novel. I'm sure it would have turned out a lot like this one.

I would have simply chalked up the experience to wasting time on a mediocre, albeit readable, novel but the ending was so utterly inconclusive and limp that I put the book down feeling inexcusably cheated. Thence the single star.