Customer Reviews

The Hunt for Atlantis: A Novel

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(12)

 

 

Archeologist Nina Wilde is on a quest, a quest she inherited from her parents, who died on the hunt. She's searching for the lost continent of Atlantis. When her own university refuses to fund an expedition to the Gulf of Cádiz, Nina is offered funding from billionaire philanthropist Kristian Frost. Almost immediately, people start trying to kill her. In addition to the funds, equipment, and logistic help for the expedition, Frost gives her two more things--two bodyguards, Eddie Chase and Hugo Castille; and his daughter, Kari Frost, to assist along the way.

Soon the foursome is jumping from continent to continent--Norway, Iran, France, and Brazil being just a few stops along the way. And everywhere they go, they find themselves in mortal danger from a man called Qobras, the leader of a group determined to see that the remains of Atlantis are never discovered. Why do Qobras and his followers want to suppress the greatest archeological discovery of all time? And why is Kristian Frost willing to spend millions to find it?

Sounds good, right? This is an excellent thriller/adventure premise. Sadly, the execution of this debut novel was terribly flawed. For starters, the female protagonist, Nina, is bland and uninteresting. I can't say I really cared about her. Conversely, the male lead, Eddie Chase, is portrayed as a diamond in the rough. Unfortunately, there was not enough diamond and too much rough. Eddie can be vulgar and exhibits an offensively sophomoric sense of humor. (In general, what passes for humor in this novel fails.) Ironically, it was the secondary characters of Hugo and Kari that I found to be more interesting, appealing, and dynamic, but alas, they aren't the focus of what will be a continuing series.

Another thing McDermott does right is action. The book is full of it, and some of the fast-paced action sequences are really enjoyable to read. But the 500+ page novel is overly long, and the pace and storytelling are uneven. My biggest problem, however, is something I complain about a lot in these types of novels... just sheer stupidity. Over and over McDermott puts his characters into or pulls them out of frankly unbelievable situations. He succumbs many times to the cheat of convenient plotting. But most unforgivably, much of what he writes is so purely wrong as to be ridiculous.

I completely lost my ability to suspend disbelief when the characters finally got onto/into the water. Either research isn't Mr. McDermott's strong suit, he thinks his readers are stupid, or he simply doesn't care, but what he wrote displays a complete lack of understanding of the laws of physics, fluid dynamics, and several other sciences. I can't give examples without spoilers, but the dumbness was fairly egregious. And the novel's dénouement was the final nail in the coffin. It was beyond ridiculous.

Debut novels are often tough going, and I do see glimmers of promise here, but not enough to inspire me to read further.

This is another new author to me and that is because this is his first novel. You would think that a storyline which involved searching for the lost city of Atlantis would have been done to death by now, but this is a very good first novel for the author. The author is very adept at generating excitement and the book is fast paced. Like some of the previous reviewers I found it very difficult to put down.

A young female archaeologist believes that she has found the location of the lost city of Atlantis. She obviously would like to be able to prove this fact. The problem she has is that someone wants her dead. The main character Nina Wilde, the said archaeologist is a believable and likeable person and the reader can relate to her character and her race against time to find lost secret . . .

The book was very enjoyable and I was sorry when it ended. I believe the author has another book in the pipeline called The Tomb of Hercules and I shall certainly be looking out for it when it is published.

This book is full of action sequences. There are 2 antagonists against one protagonists. The heroine, Nina, vacillates between standing up to the bad guys, ready to sacrifice her life and being a total wimp, no gray areas. There is no plot to speak of. It's just Nina's body guard single handedly battling it out with untold numbers of bad guys and always winning regardless of his injuries. There is no time spent on the discoveries and all of them are always completely destroyed with no one upset that all the archeology is destroyed as the search continues.

I enjoy spy books and thrillers, but despite my best efforts, I couldn't find much to enjoy in this book. The characters are one dimensional and there were few I found likable. The plot is improbable and often predictable, and the action sequences ridiculous. I never realized how boring action sequences could get, until I read over 600 pages of nearly non-stop, absurd action scenes. If you like a sense of realism and a bit of intelligence in your thrillers, avoid this one.

Though this book started off strong it ended in a vortex of frustration...The story starts with the Wildes, two doctors on a quest to find Atlantis. During their quest they are murdered in an attempt to hide the fact that Atlantis may be on the verge of discovery. After their deaths about ten years later, their daughter Nina who I believe the author modeled off of Amy Adams reopens the quest.
From the beginning there is nothing but action, so much action that I had a headache by the middle of the book. In addition the fact that frail beautiful Nina, all of sudden learns to poke the eye out of her attackers...come on now!!
Not to mention all the destruction of the artifacts and remains from Atlantis, its like why try to find anything if you know there is someone following you just to destroy it. I get that the author is trying to make us think that is why we never heard about these findings, but COME ON! Every time I thought OK this is it, boom bam boom, here we go again. Even previous reviewers said the same thing about the action. The other items aside, the physical torture that these people take, my god clone them for the US and UK Marines, after all the marines mentioned in the epilogue were made to look like they could not shoot themselves out of a paper bag!!. The fact that all these mercenaries and hired commandos existed in the book, let alone the Nigerian commandos at the end just made me cringe. The US Green Beret's trained the Nigerians, and now they are over taking US Marines!! My 17 year old son writes better stories then this book.

There is one part where Nina and her bodyguard (who she has obviously fallen in lust for), crash into the water from 100 feet. Her bodyguard who is one step below Batman, winces and contorts in pain from hitting the water, but Nina, oh, she is perfectly OK. Not to mention the fact that there actually is a part of the Brazilian Rain forest that has been hidden all these years, but the Nazi's in 1944 were able to find it!
My last thought here is that by about the time of the destruction of the Brazilian Temple, I pretty much figured out the plot, the real evil, the ending, which character was going to die etc...When I bought this book I also bought two more, guess what I just donated all three to my local nursing home, problem is I think most of the Veterans there will hate me after they read this stuff.

I am going back to my Clive Cussler novels, they are just so much better. I would suggest you do the same...

Reading the back cover of the book should give you fair warning: any story involving Atlantis, a beautiful archaecologist, an eccentric billionaire and a former SAS bodyguard would give anyone's sense of disbelief a good stretching. But hey, there's nothing wrong with giving the brain cells a rest for a easy and fun read. However, I didn't expect to be bored; the plot is soooo predictable it was like reading the plot of some bargain-bin Indiana Jones/James Bond rip-off that never made it to the theatres. The charcters are paper-thin sterotypes, the banter between the charcters is actually painful to read and the motivation of the crazy world-dominating madman (guess who that is?) when it is predictably revealed is way beyond ridiculous. Literally every location in the story is utterly destroyed in a big explosion before we grind onto the next location - why is that? If you are determined to be entertained by this book, I would recommend getting completely stoned first.

this will be the 1st and the last book I buy from this author.
it's horrible. no plot, no atlantis, just escaping from random 'bad guys' and try to survive over nothing.
reading this book was painful and definitely a waste of time.

This book had been recommended to me from people who knew I enjoyed pulp fiction from the 30s and 40s. It had been said this followed an over-the-top adventure but in modern times. It IS that at least but the writing displays non of the flair for adventure found in the original pulps. The sameness of each step of the adventure makes this novel too long by half. The fact that the "bad guys" attack at the height of the "good guys" successful venture three of the four times with the fourth being just the reverse makes for a predictable plot and chapter skipping doesn't help. But worse yet is that as a reader you can figure out what is going on and what is supposed to be the shocking plot twist at about chapter four and the book just goes on and on and on. This displays a stupid heroine or perhaps the author thinks the reader is dumb too.

Will I read the sequels? Only if forced to since they all seem to hinge on the events of this book. The Kindle edition is the same price as the paperback edition and not worth the time to download. But if you like long, over-written novels with stupid protagonists and shallow plots, this is the book for you.

Written more in the style of a passed-during-class junior high school note - small sentences! lots of exclamation points!

Premise was good, execution poor.

Stopped reading when only 7% in - resented wasting my time & the Kindle purchase.

My guilty pleasure is a good action/adventure novel. This one delivers fun, fast paced adventure. Although somewhat predictable it's still an easy and entertaining read. Adventure novels don't leave a lot of time for getting to know the characters, so I felt like some of the big 'reveals' about their personalities (particularly Eddie) seemed sort of odd in context, but not distracting enough for me not to like it. Took me no time at all to finish, I enjoyed it!