Serpent
Review
Found this one in a local catholic church's little library. I been feeling a little overwhelmed recently, but habits are holy rituals that we must cultivate. Keeping the habit & reading trash garbage is way better than not reading anything at all.
This is some sort of action novel indiana jones nathan drake find the maguffin type beat. The writing is focused on suspense and it's playful & classy when it needs it. It honestly drew me in way better than I was expecting. Been a while since I've gotten sucked into a book like this. Right from the start, the prologue has this wonderful sequence...
...of a collision of two ships. Cussler descibes the decision making of the character in the navigation room, making orders, checking radar pings, doing ship math. There's much talk of knots, and speed, and weight, and the contents of each vessel, but it's all spread throughout in a way that didn't overwhelm me. Many characters enter & exit the reader's view. Cussler builds suspense by creating a disparity between the concern of the navigator, & the true danger of the situation. Maybe I just don't read much of this type of novel, but I found it to be very well paced.
also there certainly seems to be a focus on attractiveness in people. Sometimes Cussler will spend an entire paragraph or more descibing appearances of characters in detail.
“She slipped out of the oversized T-shirt. The floral bikini she wore underneath revealed a strong, long-legged body nearly six feet tall.”