Rating: 
Summary: Hard to follow choppy action/adventure tale
Review: Like most Clive Cussler fans, I wait around for his next book like a junkie waiting for his next fix. When I heard that he was teaming with Craig Dirgo (who wrote the rather entertaining 'Einstein Papers') for another series called, 'The Oregon Files', I just KNEW it was going to be every bit as great as anything and everything Clive had already written. Unfortunately, I was wrong.'Golden Buddha' is unlike ANYTHING that Clive has done before. At least with the Kurt Austin stories, Clive & Kemprecos followed the tried & true formula which had served so well over the course of the Dirk Pitt tales...however the Oregon Files treads over different ground. I was encouraged -- at first -- that the beginning started off as so many of the Cussler novels do with a re-telling of an event that happened decades before as the Dali Lama is forced to flee into exile from Tibet -- but this is where ANY similarity to previous books ENDS. As I began chapter 1, I had the distinct feeling that I had walked into an action movie 20 minutes AFTER it had started. The story was already in motion making me feel as though I had missed some critical details into the plot. As the story unfolds, the Corporation running the Oregon are hired to steal the Golden Buddha, which had disappeared when the Dali Lama had fled from Tibet into India many years before in an attempt of a good-will gesture to gently nudge China into giving up control of the country they cannot afford to run any longer anyway. It IS an imaginative caper, I assure you -- but it is VERY difficult to follow. There are a LOT of chapters in 'Golden Buddha', and MANY even smaller segments within each chapter, forcing the story to jump from one scene to another. Now I'm certain that this was intended to move seamlessly, but unfortunately, the story moves from one location to another so often and so choppy it was quite a chore to remember where things were if you put the book down for just a few minutes, let alone pick it up after a day of sitting on the shelf. There are a LARGE assembly of characters to keep track of, and even with the help of a Cast of Character List at the beginning of the book, I found myself wondering just WHO this or that person was. Part of this problem was due to the Corporation characters taking on the alias of other people, and within certain segments of the chapters, the authors refer to them with their alias names as well as their real names, thus confusing me even MORE. I pride myself on being able to follow complicated stories and convoluted plots with reasonable ease, but 'Golden Buddha' had me wondering which way was up many times. While I have HIGH hopes that the next Oregon Files story will be easier to follow, reading this latest Cussler tale turned out to be a bit more of a challenge than I had originally figured it to be. With that said, I still found 'Golden Buddha' to be a fun story (provided you could follow what was going on) and although not on par with Dirk Pitt or Kurt Austin, the tales featuring Juan Cabrillo and the ship Oregon just might end up scoring Cussler an even larger following than he already has. I fervently look forward to the next Pitt tale, 'Trojan Odyssey'. Judge for yourself, but remember that just because this story says Clive Cussler on the front, does NOT mean that you will get a novel that even remotely resembles anything he has written before. I think that starting 'Golden Buddha' with this knowledge up front will make the story easier to digest and enjoy, which I did -- just not as much as I would've liked.
Rating: 
Summary: don't bother
Review: The Golden Buddha by Clive Cussler Over the years I have been reading most of Clive Cussler's adventure stories. They were always very entertaining and some of the descriptions quite beautiful. The stories are at all times fast moving with good development of their often implausible tales. They had a kind of inner truth which an adventure story achieves by good storytelling. Always good fun! If you are a reader of Clive Cussler's books I need to warn you that "The Golden Buddha" fails on all counts. There is lots of confusing plot, poorly developed, dialogue is so banal that it is an insult to the reader.
Mysterious? The greatest mystery is the question who actually wrote it? Is the name Clive Cussler used only as a brand-name to make a quick buck?
Where is Clive Cussler? Does he still write?
Rating:
Summary: MIGHT BE BETTER ON FILM
Review: This is my first Clive Cussler read. My wife adores the writer and has read all of his books from the Dirk Pitts to the NUMA to this Oregon bunch. I thought I'd give him a try by going with his shortest series, the Oregon crew. Well, don't tell my wife, but if the Dirk Pitt books are like this, I don't know what she's seen in them!
GOLDEN BUDDHA is filled with so many characters, you have to keep referring to the cast of characters in the front of the book just to keep track of who the heck they are. None of them have any real personalities, they merely serve as a kind of Mission Impossible team, donning disguises, coming up with unbelievable weapons, etc., and setting right the wrongs of the world, while getting disgustingly rich doing so. The head guy, Juan Callebro, is about as exciting as doing laundry and the bad guys are so out and out stupid, they offer little suspense or intrigue. If there's anyone who can write a better action novel out there, one need look no further than Matthew Reilly, whose Shane Iforgethislastname books offer non-stop action, a little more fleshed out characters and some incredible action scenes. Cussler may carry the weight of being a best selling novelist for years, but if Golden Buddha is an indication of his skills, I don't feel that motivated to read any more. It might be better filmed as we could dispense with all the sophisticated albeit boring narrative and get to the action.
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