Unfortunately for Grisha, he and his men stood between the rampaging herd of mammoths and their goal of freedom.Synopsis: Kurt! Austin! must foil an evil plan involving geophysics, arctic volcanoes and miniature woolly mammoths.
The Russians raised their guns to fire at the crazed animals, but the herd was almost on top of them. They turned and ran. They got only a few steps before they were knocked to the ground and trampled underfoot by tons of mammoth flesh. Grisha had sprinted past the others, his eyes frantically darting from side to side as he looked for an escape route, but he slipped and fell under the furred onslaught.
In the course of investigating monster boat-eating waves in the North Atlantic, not-Dirk-Pitt NUMA badass Kurt Austin stumbles on an evil plot to reverse the earth's magnetic poles, using the secret equations of a WWII Hungarian scientist.
There is nothing about that sentence that is not awesome reading.
In the course of foiling said plot, Kurt rescues some colleagues from a giant whirlpool, an old man and a beautiful mammoth scientist from Russian ivory traders, Dirk Pitt's car from a gang of anarchist bikers, and the entire world from doomsday-style annihilation. Seriously, this man gets up very early in the morning. Sometimes he stretches, but most of the time he just leaps into the ass-kicking.
The thing about Clive Cussler novels is that you pretty much know exactly what you're gonna get: derring-do in spades; a lantern-jawed hero and his ethnic sidekick being ocean badasses; antiquated ideas about gender roles; science made understandable for the lay-person, and a beautiful and brilliant scientist who, after being rescued, flings her drawers at the hero's head. It's a classic formula.
Polar Shift, I have to say, is one of the better entries in Cussler's arsenal. First of all, the beautiful-but-brilliant scientist is too busy saving the world to take her pants off right this red hot second, which is refreshing. But second, and more importantly, the science behind the evil plan is faaaaaaaascinating, and explained in terms that even I could understand and realize holy smokes, that is really, really evil. Plus, as shown in the pullquote, there's a woolly mammoth stampede! And that alone, combined with the breakneck pace of the plot* made this a very enjoyable read.
That's not to say the book's not without its flaws.
Look, I'll say this one more time for those late to the game: using the death of an animal as a way to show your reader how truly super-evil your evil genius is is simply lazy. And annoying. Even if you do it off-screen. Come up with something new.
Also, this is the second Cussler book in which the bad guys, in order to show they're bad, presumably, threaten the heroine with rape, and the second Cussler book in which said heroine is rescued by the hero while she's just lying there frozen in fear. Would it seriously kill you, dude, to have the heroine haul off and slam the bad guy square in the lads and then have the hero have to rescue the bad guy from being pulped by a truly pissed-off heroine?
That would say quite a bit, I feel, about everyone involved.
Plus there are the archaic gender roles and casual sexism that is sort of part and parcel of reading adventure stories written by men of a certain age. To wit:
Austin was at a loss when it came to the working of fate. The gods must be laughing themselves to tears at their latest practical joke. They had locked the secret that could save the world in the finely sculpted head of a lovely young woman.
Okay, someone's going to have to explain that joke to me, because offhand, it just doesn't seem funny so much as blatantly sexist. Seriously, is there something I'm just not seeing? Feel free to comment and help me out. I've been reading these books since I was like nine years old, so I might simply be inured to certain realities.
In conclusion: great plot, and Austin finally, I felt, stepped out of Dirk! Pitt!'s shadow to become a lantern-jawed hero in his own right. Plus there was the mammoth stampede, which was awesome. At the same time, you really have to overlook the sexist wank and general helpless-female set-up (the heroine doesn't actually do anything to help save the day except remember a poem)(and don't start in on me about Gamay Trout. One kickass woman at the sausage factory does not an excuse make). Recommended for diehard Cussler and adventure fans only.
*including the whole bit where everyone larked about on the Arctic island without feeling, you know, cold or anything. Hey, let's sleep in a tent in the Arctic. No, just a regular old sleeping bag in a tent, but uh, hey, we'll wear jackets...