Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com

Average Customer Rating:

Chussler Does it Again	Customer Rating:
One of the Oregon Files, exellent as usual. Action packed. Unable to put down.

the golden budha	Customer Rating:
Terrific and easy reading - a suspense that is worth waiting for with action packed chapter after chapter

Like a Twinkie: a confusing mess with all the good stuff in the middle

Customer Rating:

This book was not quite up to par compared to Clive's history of thrill rides. I love the concept: build a series based on a minor character in a previous book. The Oregon Files are a series revolving around a mercenary crew and their ingenious technology, who save the world and make millions doing it. This open concept makes for an "anything goes" type atmosphere because nothing is too expensive or too impossible to do. Golden Buddha, though, left me flat. I could not get into the story for the first 85 pages. Then, the middle 200 pages were fantastic, involving an incredible heist, motorcycle chase, shoot-out, pursuit through flooding storm drains, and general all-around death and peril. Then, after a breathless winching into a rattling helicopter in the middle of a storm (you'd have to read it), the action stops abruptly. The final 100 pages of the book plod along, and it was a chore to get through the last couple chapters. The front of the book contains a glossary of names, and it is definitely required: I was completely confused by the dozens of minor characters from 4 different continents, and the various helicopter, plane, boat and car types. The character development was minimal, and this added to the confusion: I never understood from one page to the next who was where and why they were there. ("Oh, so HE'S on the boat, ok.... wait, why is he in China? Wasn't he supposed to be flying to Tibet?") In the end, this book dissolved into mass confusion which translated to impatience and boredom. I miss vintage Cussler.

Cussler in Top Form

Customer Rating:

The Golden Buddha is Clive Cussler's first offering in his "Oregon Files" series and he's pulled out all the stops. We're introduced to a new cast of characters led by Juan Cabrillo and his band of merry men that roam the world doing good deeds for a fee. Think soldiers of fortune with a dash of conscience mixed in for good measure. In a departure from the Dirk Pitt and Kurt Austin novels, Cussler keeps the action moving and avoids the drawn-out survival-against-the-elements routines so typical in those other series. In Golden Buddha, Cussler still delivers terrific character development, meaningful dialogue, and of course, tons of intrigue and suspense. It's some of the best fun you can have reading.

This stuff sells?

Customer Rating:

I was writing stuff like this when I was 14. All his characters are basically the same and make the same dry jokes throughout the book. The real people he uses are not convincing (I can't imagine Valdimir Putin laughing during a negotiation.) The plot manages to avoid being exciting for most of the book because the team always seem to have things under control, and almost nothing goes wrong. Having said that, there are countless plot holes and things that just don't add up. Poorly written and thoroughly disappointing.