"Polar Shift"

OK folks time for another book review before I head back to the movies. Since I have recently started getting into Clive Cussler, I’ve read several books by him all designed around the NUMA group, Dirk Pitt, and his family, and associates. The latest one I had the pleasure of reading was entitled “Polar Shift,” and the Hero in this one is Kurt Austin.

Now I have to preface this review by saying that most of these NUMA books typically all have the same punch line, “Bad guys try to blow up the planet, good guys stop them,” of course this punch line has been the same for a century or longer in thousands of books and movies, but they really seem to follow this pattern almost to a fault in this collection of novels.

OK that point out of the way, let me turn it around, and say that this is a very good book even with it sticking to the pattern as mentioned before. Polar Shift takes a little different turn by branching out into what seems to be two completely different stories, and both are quite entertaining. The Bad guys in this book have stumbled on the works of a Hungarian scientist, and his works with polar shifts. Basically stated, a polar shift is when the earth’s electromagnetic field is thrown off balance by natural circumstances, and causes the Southern, and Northern poles to move. This can cause a wide array of problems with the modern day world.

The problem with the bad guys plot in this book is that even though they have the technology to cause a polar shift, they do not realize that they could inadvertently cause a physical shift of the earth’s tectonic plates which would basically mean the end of the world as we know it. Now, mixed in the middle of this story is a diversionary trek to an archeological discovery of a baby wooly mammoth that has been perfectly preserved in the permafrost since the animal died supposedly millions of years ago. With this discovery there are of course good and bad people after this animal, but what they end up finding in the end is.......Well....I can’t play the spoiler on this one, you will just have to read it, but man was it a cool twist. Personally I think the book could have held its own if they would have just stuck to the mammoth discovery, and the story that follows it.

As with all the NUMA books, this one has its fair share of cloak and dagger elements that have made Clive Cussler a #1 best seller book writer for a long time now. With every chapter you are clung to the edge of your chair wanting desperately to keep reading. This book is entertaining in every way, and there are no dry spots to speak of, or what is even worse with some Authors, an anticlimactic ending. This one has a great ending and leaves you smiling, while at the same time searching for the next book in the series.

My rating for this book is 8.00 out of 10.00