Customer Reviews

Artifact

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

Being a fan of 3 of the 4 authors I had hoped for something more. Very choppy flow and an overall simplistic plot lead to a very week read. The ending is one of the worst I've come across in some time and leaves you completely unfulfilled.

Don't let the names on the cover fool you, I imagine had they not been involved this manuscript never would have seen publication.

Save your $$$ or spend it on better books.

The Artifact , by Kevin J Anderson (and others) just affirmed why he is one of my favorite authors. Every book of his that I have read has been action-packed and fast-paced. It feels like you're watching a movie. The Artifact was no exception. A group of men, calling themselves the Daredevils Club meet every year to brag about their adventures. When one of the men discover several mysterious artifacts, seemingly not of this world, he enlists the aid of the Daredevils Club to help find the missing pieces.

The cast of characters was a group of people, so none of them were explored too deeply. But this was a short book, with only a back-story at the beginning, explaining how the Daredevils got together.

With plenty of twists and a surprise ending, The Artifact will keep you on the edge of your seat. I read through it in two days, because it was so hard to put down.

I'm no pro, but I can say this, this book was a fun read from beginning to end! I don't often read "adventure" type novels, and had a hard time putting this one down. Who am I to argue with Clive Cussler.

Unlike many other reviewers, I knew none of the writer's and came to the book with no preconceived notions, other than a good recommendation from a friend.

I am looking forward to the next adventure!

Upon seeing the names F. Paul Wilson and Kevin J. Anderson together on the book cover I thought for certain I had found a jewel. However, I did not take into account that they were accompanied by two other names. Dual authors can create some of the best fiction (Weis & Hickman, Preston & Child...) because they can often present different points of view and character interaction more realistically than a single author. Yet, after plowing through ARTIFACT, an old cliche came instantly to mind; too many cooks can spoil the soup.
That is exactly what happened here. The story is jerky with sudden spurts through time in whitch (unrealistically) little happens to or with the characters. Many questions are left dangling, character plots left unfinished, but the greatest frustration comes from the fact that the title character (the artifact) is never adequetely explored. It is always hovering in the background, even at the supposed climax of the story.
Even the characters are bland for a supposed "daredevil club". The seemingly central character, Peta, is hollow and essentially meaninglass. One can see that she was supposed to be a strong, independent heroine, yet her every thought, feeling and action is dictated by the men around her.
After the wonder of the Repairman Jack novels, I expected so much more from F. Paul Wilson, and was extremely disappointed by ARTIFACT. While it may be easy to blame the other authors, I believe that none of them took the project too seriously and it shows clearly in the result.

I had to search for this book after hearing about it and reading a glowing review. I couldn't wait to start it. But it was not worth my efforts. The characters are shallow and uninteresting. Their idea of a daredevil stunt is to swim from a ship to a dock with the possibility of a shark nearby. Big deal. And the artifact only appeared in a few pages at the beginning and end and had all the powers of a radish. What were the authors thinking?

This is terrible. Unconvincing characters who speak only in cliches. Forced and boring action. Themeless and unstimulating. It's actually kinda funny, if you like bad writing - I laughed out loud a few times - but truly not worth your time.

There are certain things I demand of my summer reading. I want it to take me places I haven't been before, introduce me to characters whose adventures I want to hear more of, and, last but not least, blow stuff up real good.

Artifact does all this, and then some. Written by four excellent authors, it has the distinct feel of something that they all enjoyed writing. It's that kind of fast-paced fun, complete with a tough heroine, exotic locales, and an impromptu course in what to do if you get too close to a shark while scuba diving for pieces of an alien gizmo. (Hey, you never know)

Artifact doesn't have a traditional slam-bang ending, which might confuse folks who are looking for something a little more Spielbergian, but the ending it does have satisfies and makes more character sense than any special effects extravaganza would have. That being said, there's still plenty of room for a sequel, and I definitely wouldn't mind learning what the Daredevil's Club does next.