Atlantis Found (Dirk Pitt Novel) (Hardcover)

by Clive Cussler (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Dirk Pitt, indestructible hero of 14 previous Clive Cussler novels and special-projects director of the National Underwater and Marine Agency (which is something like the CIA of the ocean depths), makes James Bond look like a tuxedoed, martini-swilling poseur. Pitt has raised the Titanic, escaped massive volcanic eruptions, ducked nuclear explosions, foiled criminal plans for world domination, saved everyone on earth from germ warfare, and mastered the ins and outs of various electronic gizmos and futuristic vehicles while evading every imaginable form of almost certain death. (Of course, he's also wildly successful with brilliant, beautiful women, but in an admirably circumspect, sensitive-guy way.) It stands to reason Pitt's the right man to handle a crisis of millennial proportions.

When mysterious black obsidian skulls and other artifacts of an exceedingly ancient culture begin to turn up in odd places, Pitt jumps in with both feet. It soon becomes dangerously apparent that a powerful, amoral group of fanatics calling itself the Fourth Empire wants the strange discoveries to remain underground. Pitt teams up with a beautiful red-haired expert in ancient languages to decipher the meaning of the artifacts. They were made 10 millennia ago in a then-temperate Antarctica by a seafaring civilization advanced enough to predict its own destruction by a comet impact. Now the Fourth Empire (whose literal and figurative progenitor comes as no surprise) is predicting a similar disaster in only a matter of months, and preparing to take control of the earth.

Cussler's known for hands-on research--his hobbies are the backbone of Pitt's adventures: flying, climbing, diving, racing. The scientific and historical riffs that fill in the background of Atlantis Found are the weakest parts of the book--they're Pitt-less, and they give every discovery in the book away early. But what the heck--Cussler's not the king of suspense, he's the emperor of nonstop action. Atlantis Found bounces along on a good-humored techno-joyride, and for Cussler's legion of fans, that will be more than enough. --Barrie Trinkle

From Publishers Weekly
Dirk Pitt, Cussler's larger-than-life hero, butts heads with an army of elite killers seeking to destroy the world in another wickedly engrossing yet predictably scripted tale of bravery against all odds. As the story begins, artifacts from a previously undiscovered civilization, ancient but highly advanced, are popping up all over the globe. Pitt himself is on site in a Colorado mine when archeologists come across strange carvings and mysterious inscriptions. But then an explosion traps the party below ground, and a band of black-suited terrorists arrive at the scene with guns blazing. Though Pitt saves the day, the incident points toward a wider network of evil schemes. Working for the National Underwater & Marine Agency, Pitt finally identifies the terrorists as members of the Fourth Empire, an organization headed by the diabolical Wolf family, a secret clan of genetically engineered people who worship the Nazi Third Reich. But it's only after Pitt and his able sidekick, Al Giordino, battle old German U-boats, dodge surface-to-air missiles and narrowly escape death on a remote island off Australia that they find out what the Fourth Empire is up to. The neo-Nazis aim to prevent the world from discovering the artifacts of this previously unknown seafaring culture because they tell of a catastrophic event that wiped out civilization 9000 years ago and reveal when the next cataclysm will hit. The Wolfs plan to accelerate the date through their own scheme to destroy Earth, meanwhile sheltering themselves and their thousands of followers on enormous, disaster-proof ships. Pitt knows his assignment: save the world--a tall order, but one he's filled many times before. Cussler's 15th Pitt adventure (after Flood Tide) is a rampaging story of history, technology and heroism, written with Cussler's typical make-no-apologies enthusiasm. For muscle-flexing, flag-waving, belief-suspending fare, he has no equal. 750,000 first printing; $750,000 ad/promo; BOMC main selection; simultaneous audio; author tour.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 534 pages
• Publisher: Putnam Adult; 1st Edition edition (December 6, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0399145885
• ISBN-13: 978-0399145889
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (360 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #584,885 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

• This is item 15 in The Dirk Pitt Series.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

82 of 82 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the Grandmaster's Best!, December 6, 1999

By A Customer

"Atlantis Found" is Clive Cussler's best work since the terrific "Sahara" came out in 1992. The plot is one of his best, the action is non-stop and there are also several pleasant surprises in the book that will make you smile when you're not rooting for the dynamic duo of Dirk Pitt and Al Giordino.

I had enjoyed his most recent novels ("Flood Tide", "Shock Wave" and "Inca Gold") but they didn't grab me like his previous novels. But "Atlantis Found" leaves no doubt that the "Grandmaster of Adventure" hasn't lost his touch at the keyboard. A rip-roaring read!

54 of 58 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The result of Mixing Indiana Jones, James Bond, and others., December 8, 1999

By	taking a rest - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)

Mr. Cussler's books are great escapist fiction. His newest, "Atlantis Found", I believe is one of the better tales he has told. The other enjoyment that comes with a Cussler novel is watching the professional critics try to trash his work. They don't get it, but as these novels routinely make the best-seller lists, we the readers do. The critics do get it, but they prefer books that get the literary equivalent of an Academy Award, while Mr. Cussler takes home The People's Choice Award.

"Atlantis Found" is way over the top, fantastic in what is spread on its' 534 pages, and most importantly fun, and a great read. Dirk Pitt and Al Giordino are a combination of, Indiana Jones, James Bond, The Saint, the members of the old and new Mission Impossible teams, and a dash of The Duke John Wayne leading the cavalry. Sure the book has its cliché's, but does not every Bond film as well? Mr. Cussler gives his readers what they enjoy, and what may be one person's cliché, is another's cue that he or she is about to embark on an adventure with old friends. If you read Mr. Cussler you have probably read well into this latest work, and if you are not yet amongst his readers, "Atlantis Found", is a good place to start.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good fantasy fiction of a particularly masculine variety, July 19, 2003

By	Atheen M. Wilson "Atheen" (Mpls, MN United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Atlantis Found (A Dirk Pitt Novel) (Dirk Pitt Adventure) (Mass Market Paperback)

The geological descriptions, mirroring those of the catastrophic meteor impact at Chicxulub off the North coast of Yucatan implicated in the extinction of the dinosaurs, caught my attention with the first page of Atlantis Found and kept me reading to the end. Although I really don't care for the Dirk Pitt persona-he seems too much of a comic book character-I did enjoy the pace and shear adventure of the tale. It is certainly very imaginative.

Like the Bond series, every woman is a beauty of one type or another, every bad guy (or gal) is totally reprehensible, their demise justly deserved, and every "good guy" from 8 to 80 exhibits intelligence, fortitude, cavalier indifference in the face of physical danger, and the comic repertoire of a Bill Cosby. Each one is a hero at whichever of the different stages of the male life cycle he may be. If middle aged fathers have fantasies, they are undoubtedly of exploits similar to the Dirk Pitt series: their hair "maturely" greying at the temples, their muscles aching but undaunted by their travails, and just their very life experience able to outwit even the most brilliant of the bad guys. (Too bad, though, that we don't give the guys in our lives the credit they are very much due for reading us to sleep as children, helping us with math problems as adolescents, and forgiving us our arrogance as young adults, and for the very much braver task of being there day after day when they might possibly have realized more of their own dreams instead!)

I was glad for once to find the oft repeated Atlantis story told in a more light hearted vein. I've studied ancient history, including early Greek history, and have come across the persistent modern belief in Atlantis often enough to cringe when I meet it again. The author's treatment certainly made it much more fun to contemplate. Like some of those mainstream geologists mentioned by Cussler in the book, whose stodgy concepts of earth science forbade them to believe in a continent that sank beneath the sea, I too am skeptical. But then I've studied geology extensively, too. Continents are really too light to sink. They float. Not on water, but on the much denser but more plastic magma that lies beneath them. Cussler's concept of a transgressing sea is almost the only way that Atlantis might be considered remotely possible. (Though I too believe that the Greek island of Santorini, ancient Thera, is a more likely candidate.)

Although a little pedantic, the information that the scientists in the book provide Pitt about history, geology, astronomy, and anthropology is, for the most part, quite accurate. The reader gets to learn a little bit about these subjects along with the adventure (and just might develop a new interest, following up on one of them). Cussler's own background in underwater archaeology (he participated in the search for the CSS Hunley, the world's first successful submarine lost during the Civil War) and in deep sea diving make the oceanographic descriptions and the underwater exploits of his characters seem more real. Certainly his widely traveled life has given him a talent for describing the details of the world's different cities, landscapes and cultures. The pacing of the story is superb. One hardly has a chance to get in sync with any one adventure before the heros are off chasing the bad guys again in some other part of the world. I particularly enjoyed the descriptions and adventures in the gold mines of Colorado, and the description of the Opera House in Buenos Aires.

Enjoyable too is the fact that the book does not take itself seriously enough to try to place itself in any "real" time. The President is a fictional character. Technology that for us is just beyond the horizon and therefore familiar only as buzz words (nanotechnology) is in the present tense for Pitt and his peers. That leaves the door wide open for the author to let ancient Atlantis and its artifacts survive the end of the story. Unlike similar stories where all traces of the discovery must be "lost" to keep the story "true" to our times, Cussler lets the reader glory in the relicts of the ancient city preserved beneath the ice. We get to imagine the treasures as existing for our enjoyment, not forever lost. Much more satisfying.

The book presents itself as good fantasy fiction of a particularly masculine variety.