Stefan Ellis's Reviews > Treasure of Khan

** spoiler alert ** Terrible, Terrible, Terrible! An outrageously outlandish plot barely within sighting distance of reality. The "coolest", know-it-all, wise-cracking archaeologists-as-protagonists to have ever walked the earth. Decent dialogue is replaced by a bunch of dumb one-liners. Bad writing (ex. "The chills crept up her back like the Polar Express").

This was my first Cussler book, although I have been familiar with the character of Dirk Pitt. And it seems that Pitt is unashamedly based on Indiana Jones.

Late in the book Pitt is replaced with his son. Guess his name: also Dirk Pitt! This is lame writing, because he is not nearly distinguishable from Pitt Sr. This is merely a device the writer employed to show us how good Pitt is, since he can now simultaneously fight villains in locations on opposite sides of the world.

What really sent me over the edge was the action scene where Pitt and Giordino escape from an enclosed space behind a truck after being nearly surrounded by Mongolian sniper-archers battering them with God's Armageddon of arrows, spears and even bullets. They do so on a motorcycle with a sidecar that happened to have been standing on the truck, dressed in wooden boxes (yes, that ridiculous), not being hit once (because why would they be hit?), while Giordino-in-the-sidecar incapacitates most of the Mongolian sniper-archers by throwing them with horseshoes while Pitt makes donuts with the oh-so-mobile motorcycle...with a sidecar!

I gave the book about 200 pages after this ridiculous scene to redeem itself. But it never happened.

I still can not believe how bad this book was.