Customer Reviews

THE NAVIGATOR (NUMA FILES)

5 star:		(28)
4 star:		(23)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

Seems like a number of my library "recreational reads" came in at once, so I've had some down time from my normal fare of reading material. I finally made it to the top of the hold list for The Navigator by Clive Cussler with Paul Kemprecos. If you're in the mood for a fast-moving action adventure novel, it works pretty well...

The main story revolves around a statue called The Navigator. It was stolen from the Iraqi national museum but was recovered with the aid of a UN official named Carina Mechadi. While on a ship bound for the US with the other recovered items, the statue is once again the center of attention when an armed group invades the ship, attempts to transport the statue off by helicopter, and sets the ship to collide with an oil drilling platform to hide the evidence. But Kurt Austin and Joe Zavala of NUMA are able to pull off a dramatic rescue, saving the ship, the statue, *and* Ms. Mechadi. The mystery of why someone would want the statue deepens as a tie is discovered between the statue, Thomas Jefferson, and the ancient Phoenicians. When the statue is once again stolen and Carina once again kidnapped, Austin's full attention is focused on saving the damsel in distress one more time, as well as putting an end to the person behind it all.

Compared to Cussler's Dirk Pitt series, the Austin novel is much more sedate and comfortable. There's definitely enough action to keep you turning pages, but every chapter doesn't end with someone about to die and/or pull off a miraculous MacGyver-esque escape. The idea of Phoenicians being the first to visit North America isn't new in a Cussler novel (Serpent in 1999), but he does a nice job in putting together a Da Vinci-type mystery where people are willing to die to keep a secret.

If you're ready to kill off a few hours with a mental escape from reality, The Navigator should fit your needs well...

Clive Cussler and Paul Kemprecos follow a previously successful formula twisting around history to create a fast based action adventure tale surrounding the actions of members of the fictitious National Underwater and Maritme Agency(NUMA).

Special Projects director Kurt Austin and his sidekick Joe Zavala find themselves in the midst of a mid oceanic hijacking. The booty is a bronze Phoenician statue known as The Navigator being transported under the guardianship of the alluring Carina Mechadi working for UNESCO. The statue was looted along with other antiquities from the Iraqi National Museum in Baghdad during the U.S. invasion. Mechadi's mission was to recovered the purloined artifacts.

The Navigator happened to be the object of desire of industrialist Viktor Baltazar head of a large private mercenary cartel and mining empire. Baltazar who traced his roots back to the days of King Solomon believed that the statue gave clues to details of a pre-Columbian visit to the New World by the Phoenicians.

Tied in with these historical events were a recently and accidently discovered encrypted letter penned by Thomas Jefferson under the guise of the secretive Artichoke society. Analysis of the Jefferson papers detailed a letter from Meriweather Lewis of the famous Lewis & Clark expedition. The correspondence hinted at the existence of a Phoenician landing in the New World with a mission to hide a precious and sensitive item whose existence could change the fabric of society as postulated by King Solomon.

Baltazar desired the information that The Navigator contained to advance his own nefarious plans. Meanwhile Austin, Zavala and their minions along his Austin love interest Mechadi team up to deter Baltazar in a rollicking adventure that strains the boundaries of credulity. The plot was standard fare for Cussler and his ghost writers but the ending was a bit of a cop out. For stress free reading requiring very little mentation, "The Navigator" is right up your alley.

When American forces invaded Iraq the first time, the Baghdad Museum was looted of valuable treasures. UNESCO agent Carina Mechadi is on their trail, and jumps at the chance when wealthy businessman Viktor Baltazar offers to privately finance her search, asking only that she keep him informed of her progress. Carina crosses paths with our hero, Kurt Austin, quite literally when she recovers the most valuable of the museum's missing items and accompanies them on their containership voyage across the Atlantic to the Smithsonian. Kurt Austin and sidekick Joe Zavala had been in the same area of the North Atlantic known as Iceberg Alley, helping to rope in icebergs heading for oil rigs and tow them from harm's way, when Carina's ship, the Ocean Adventure, appears to be steaming directly for an oil rig. When Austin's derring-do puts him aboard, he finds the Ocean Adventure had been boarded by pirates in helicopters. Their one objective seemed to have been recovery of a statue of dubious value in Carina's collection called the Navigator. Austin stops the theft and rescues the ship, seeing Carina safely to Washington. Once there, the mystery deepens when Anthony Saxon, an ill-respected archaeologist and writer, joins forces with Austin and the gang. Someone wants the Navigator badly, for the statue contains an ancient Phoenician map supposedly leading to King Solomon's Mines and a controversial set of the Ten Commandments carved in gold. They aren't the only ones looking for the lost artifacts, and the other guys will stop at nothing to get there first.

I have only one complaint about this book, and that is its inability to resist the urge to oh-so-trendily cast doubt on stories of Biblical origin. The outrage has died down, and so has our interest in this type of subject matter, which is handled with little skill and no attempt at originality. That disappointing detail aside, this is a fast-paced, white-knuckle thrill ride as Kurt Austin and his friends unravel a centuries-old mystery, trying to stay one step ahead of the bad guys, who naturally have sinister motives. Though the engaging Paul and Gamay Trout once again played disappointingly small roles and, sadly, maritime historian St. Julien Perlmutter sat this one out, it was nonetheless quite the page turner I found very difficult to put down.

With its seventh book, this series has obviously found its stride. With its Cussleresque abundance of corny similes and nonstop action woven into an intricate plot, combined with Kemprecos' warm, down-to-earth prose, it's hard to find action better than this smoothly-paced novel. Once again, you can't go wrong with a book with Cussler on the cover.

I have been an avid Cussler fan for several years now. I can not finish this book. The plot is non-existent. The grammar is horrid. I even found several misspelled words. There are several places that even Word grammar check would have found problems. For instance; "is is" and "and the and the" is found several times. Don't waste your time reading this book. Cussler has lost one fan if this is what we should expect from future writings.

Clive Cussler is back and this is the book to read this Summer!

I wrote a review on Amazon a while back about Clive Cussler having lost his edge. The past few books have been a little on the stale side. Not anymore! Clive Cussler comes out with The Navigator and really impressed me. The book is reminiscent of his earlier books and was a really fun read. I highly recommend this as a summer read for the beach or your next flight.

Long live Clive Cussler and his NUMA adventures!

I have to admit that it helped to see a character in the book with my same last name- a cool coincidence! :)

Loyal Fan- Mike Stocker

I just completed "The Navigator." This may be one of the best co-authored books that Cussler and Kemprecos have written together. However, it is filled with proof-reading errors. I mean this book has more mistakes than a paper written by one of my high school English students. That's not the writers' fault but it certainly reflects on them. In my opinion, Paul and Gamay Trout are far superior to Sam and Remi Fargo. I wonder why the Trouts didn't get their own series?

I have read many Cussler books. I think he's getting complacent and has run out of ideas. This was an amateurish effort to say the least. I mean, doesn't he even have proofreaders anymore? This book seems to have been dashed off just to pay some bills.

I stumbled on many glaring errors that even a Middle School student would find. It distracts greatly from enjoyable reading. I'm glad I bought it from a bargain shelf in a bookstore, this is not a $29.00 book.

In my view Cussler is well past his prime or he has so much money he doesn't care anymore.

This was my last Cussler book - too bad, it was fun while it lasted.

What happened between chapters 46 and 47? In the paperback version of the book, this is around pages 470. Was it a deadline or simply a page count issue?

This book is interesting steady to read up to that point, but all of the sudden a chunk of story seems to simply be dropped in favor of getting to the end of the book. After reading 470 pages, this was very, very disappointing - to the point of writing this review and questioning whether to read another Clive Cussler book.

Really, the story builds. It is a bit slow. It takes some goofy turns -- like jousting. But, in the end there is an entertaining story up to about page 470. At that point it seems that the author's focus is simply on wrapping things up to get to an end and not really about taking the story to the end. The result was that I felt ripped off by the author and the publisher.

I threw the book away rather than donating it as I didn't want to waste anyone else's time. I don't like to throw books away. (Actually it will be recycled)

I hadn't read Cussler before so was looking forward to a good vacation read. I was a bit disappointed by the story line, which sounded fairly typical. Although the book ended well, the predictability was not appreciated. So I thought it was pretty average.

As always Mr. Cussler weaves a varied thread of intrigue and history. As someones else mentioned, I missed his appearance in the plot however trivial. One has to wonder how much of these books he is really able to write these days and how much the co author does. In any event it was very enjoyable as always, although according to the Kirkus Reviews it the best ever. That I can't agree with.