This one starts out with a bang,literally, as the car carrier explodes. I thought Soggy Acres was a cool idea and would like to see it rebuilt at some point.Just as I would like to see the Jersey Colony again.
Clive makes his first appearance in Dragon.It is still a scene that makes me smile when I read it and I still remember shaking my head and laughing the first time I read it.
Some parts of the story strained my credibility.Cussler can think and write big at times but this one definately didn't work.The robots were silly.Big Ben being dropped out of a plane and landing in the ocean without a scratch made me shake my head.
Overall I enjoyed the story it's just that I wasn't really all that interested in the story.I tend to find that after Clive writes a really good book he follows it with a not so good book.Not that any of his books are bad but some just don't measure up to what's gone before.

7 out of 10 for me.

I remember the story was good and was feeling anti-japan at the time back in the early nineties because there were many news stories against japan and their economy was doing better than ours. But like Rob says it pales in comparison despite the fight against the evil japanese. I give it a 7.5 just to be generous.

As I told Rob, I loved the way the book started out, pure adrenaline!!! I wish I could comment more on it but alas I'm only on page 100. The hard part will be not reading anyones comments on because I don't want to be influenced :)

I give Dragon an 8.75 - the race, the hunting game ... a lot of entertaining parts.

JULIE---DON'T READ THIS


I have made no secret of my disdain for this one. And while time has softened my ire, it remains at the bottom of the list for Dirk Pitt books.

First though, does it have any redeeming points? I think Dragon, even more than Deep Six showed that Dirk's relationship with Loren was going to be a serious one. To paraphrase another adventure hero's diabolical nemesis "Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, the third time is...true love." This book of course also marked the first appearance of a character who's quite a character...he has a strange name that I can't quite remember. There are also some very memorable action scenes that are, well, memorable. One thing I especially liked was the Nazi bunker, even if its place in the story was rather contrived.

But, Dragon cannot escape the fallibility of its premise. As anti-Japanes diatribes go, this one was pretty bad, even if, in broad strokes, it was right on the mark. Two big points lost for failure to make use of subltety.
The robots, as has been mentioned, were just plain goofy. I don't mind the automated bomb cars, but the robot guards on the Island...puh-leeze. -1
The big hunt--borrowed straight from The Most Dangerous Game--at least gives credit to its source, but it's been done to death. -.5
Oh, Pitt is now a fencing champion? Did we know this? And can a saber actually parry a Damascus steel katana in the hands of a kendo expert? Hmmm...that stretches credibility even more than the robots. This was an opportunity squandered--that fight could have been so much more, to suddenly bless Pitt with that kind of skill completely ruined the drama. -1
And the big finish? Pitt arrives late for his own funeral? Way too drawn out. It has been demonstrated that you can save a bad story with a good ending, but Dragon is not it. -1

Final tally: 4.5 out of 10.

Even though Treasure is where Clive really got good at doing the mutiple story lines I feel that Dragon is where he put it all together. This is an good story and a compelling page turner. I use this book when I want to draw others into the Cussler fold. I give it a 9.

I agree that the robots and Big Ben's landing were a little hard to fathom, but still a great story. Dr. Cussler being introduced enhanced it a lot. I'd say 9.5

I remember really enjoying this book. The carbombs were fascinating to me and I thought there was some pretty good action. The fencing fight was a bit of a stretch, but I've come to expect nothing less from Dirk, and at least it was really well written in my mind.

I don't remember the robots though.

This is my favorite Cussler book, a mere co-incidence that it is also the first one I read. th:

this was also the first book i read of CC...therefore it is one of my favorites just for that reason..but if comparing to all the others i would place it in the middle of the pack....7/10

I think this book was one of the better ones - yes it has anti-Japan sentiment, but that was no worse than Lee Iaccoca slamming Honda Accords with his inferior K-car crap at the time.

Raymond Jordan's explanation (narrative) seemed a bit tortured when setting up the MAIT team, and the fencing duel seemed contrived, and the robodog was unintentionally hilarious.

The plot was well done. Despite the above mentioned flaws, the action was pretty intense, the villians (Hideki Suma, Korori Yoshishu, Ichiro Tsuboi, and Moro Kamatori) were well fleshed out and credible, and had genuine motivations.

I have always felt that Quin Shang was a cheap carbon copy imitation of Hideki Suma. Suma was definitely a genuine villian. I couldn't wait for the chef to "slip a little something extra into Suma's noodle soup."

The payoff at the end of the book was very well done - the nuclear explosion and the ensuing tidal wave were a fitting end to the Dragon Center, and Dirk's escape and subsequent return from the dead were masterfully done.

IMHO, this was one of the better books, and far more interesting than Trojan Odyssey, Valhalla Rising, or any of the Kurt Austin/Oregon Files books.

I thought the ending was the best out of every Clive Cussler book he ever wrote!!! NICK KISMET, obviously you were reading a different book than I was <_< I give it a solid 9 out of 10 th: th:

Robots are the only thing that lowers the points. Otherwise it´s a well written book with good plot. I give it a 9.

Just finished this one.... took 3 days to read (obviously not non-stop)..

I actually like this one... better than Treasure by a fraction...

The Game Hunting bit was very good.... only because I am very familar with the short story "The Most Dangerous Game".... My Nickname throughout high school was Sanger Rainsford, becuase my real name resembles Rainsford's first name. When I read the bit about Pitt being let go and being hunted a short time later it made me remember that "TMDG" short story. Then on the following page it reference to this same story I knew of. It made me laugh (of joy and humour) out loud.

Overall.... take away the extreme AI robots and it would have been great. Overall suspense and story telling was good.

9/10 for me.

Next up... Inca Gold.... (i've read Sahara... best book I've read so far).

I'm new to the Dirk Pitt books so correct me if I'm wrong but to me, Dirk seemed out of character during the scene where he and Plunkett were driving the DSMV. Compared to situations in "Sahara" and "Shockwave" he seemed a lot less optimistic and more pessimistic. Am I completely off-track here? It was kinda bugging me when I was reading "Dragon" last night. I would love to hear your input!

Can you give us a line from the book as an example?

Welcome to the forum by the way.

Cheers ... Tony

Like anyone else my opinion or viewpoint is just that, mine, and I must say that all of Dr. Cussler's book have done one thing for me. They have taken me to many interesting places that I will never personally visit and each book has introduced me to some very interesting people. I have learned that if I was ever in trouble I would want Dirk or Al on my side right or wrong. Without over analyzing each and every book what each and every book has done for me more than anything was to take me away, for a time, from my own problems or those of my children. There are other authors that I have read and at some point of the book I find myself losing interest or worse yet I will put it down and not read it for a few days or weeks later and it seems to be a drag to read the book. This has never happened to me with a Cussler book and so with that limited perspective I would rate all of the books a 10 for the distraction factor if for nothing else. Dr. Cussler's books are meant to entertain and they certainly do that.

I just re-read this book, and I have to say that I enjoyed it. I have to disagree with everybody regarding the robots though - they are far fetched, but then many things that Clive has written about have been futuristic and ahead of their time. I went to Disneyland yesterday (June 26, 2005) and they had the Honda ASIMO on display in a whole stage show, and I have to say that it was very amazing. Watching this presentation and then coming home and getting to the part with the roboguards made them very fathomable, at least to me. The host of the show said that Honda had been working on these self-walking and self-thinking robots for the past 20 years, so it isn't inconcievable that Clive had heard something about projects like this when he began writing, and being that the books are all set a few years in the future anyways...long story short, I found the robots to be believable in Dirk's timeline. The only thing that didn't make much sense, robot wise - is why they had to have robot drivers for the car. Wouldn't you just make the car into a big R/C car with servos on the steer gear, etc.? Makes no sense to have a crazy robot that might loose it's grip on the wheel, just make the whole car the robot, but then that wouldn't have been so literarily forboding as seeing "skeleton-like" robots in the cars, I suppose.

Still, a darn good read. I think, if my memory isn't failing me, that this was my first Dirk Pitt book. It was either this or Night Probe, I can't quite remember. I would have liked more explanation at the end, but it was a sure relief the first time I read the book when Dirk came out of the water.

Muramoto Motors was an interesting choice for the car company name, as I played a game (Grand Prix Legends, a great early Grand Prix racing game) that used the same Muramoto name to represent Honda, because Honda wouldn't give them the rights to use their name in the game. They made the logo by pretty much just flipping the Honda "H" upside down and pinching the middle to make an "M." I wonder if the game manufacturers read this book, or if it was just a happy coincidence.

8.5/10

Chris

Not so good but not so bad. The book starts well, and the final is really great. (I really wanted to be there when Pitt and this weird machine appeared) And as a fencer i can easily say that it is not really important if your opponent is a kendo master. The deadliest attack of Pitt was to fingers-it is a very important extreme attack for fencers because most of them think that the bowl over their hand will protect the hands forever but they doesn't.- and it was a great detail. But as i said before not so good. Seven from ten points for me.

Now correct me if im wrong, but at the end, doesn't it say that Dirk was missing for a month? So that would mean he was trapped in Big Ben for 30 days. So how did he not run out of air? That always gets me.
I would have liked this book A LOT better if the ending would have included everyone finding out that he was actually alive. Its like, the book never REALLY ended...like it was rushed. You know how Pacaific Vortex has parts switched around, changed and missing, well, maybe Dragon's end was really THE END...until Clive all of the sudden decided he wanted to continue on, and quickly changed the ending. HAHA :lol: Im sure it's really nothing...its just always fun to speculate, especially after reading The Clive Cussler Code. :P
I did love the book though...Ummm, I give it a 7. th:

It's interesting you mention the ending Heather since I've always felt the same way.
I thought Clive maybe wanted to end it there and his publishers or family didn't want the golden goose (so to speak) to end.

It's interesting to note that it's the first book with Clives appearance and the only book that ends with Dirk's supposed death and convenient ressurection.Maybe Clive was saying hi to Dirk and that would have brought it fulll circle so he had him die at the end.Neat,tidy little package to end the series on.

Then again I could be so far off base that I'm not even in the same ball park :lol:

My first-ever post! This is a cool site.

Anyway, I agree the original post that this is not my favorite Dirk Pitt book. Some of the elements required too much suspension of belief for my liking. (It's been a while since I read it, so I can't recall specifics without digging out my copy.) That said, even a bad Dirk Pitt novel is still an entertaining read. I initially listened to it on audiobook, and was kind of neutral about it. I went back a few years later and read it, and enjoyed the story, even though I put it at the bottom of my Dirk Pitt list.

i think this is explained by there extreme efforts to keep the workings and the appereance to the cars as close to precise orginal specs as possible(i.e. making of the a/c compressors inot nukes) in order to get the cars thru customes inspections .the extra parts(servos on the gera boxes etc. would have been very noticable. but going on the idea how did they get the robots thru customes??( or was that expalined and i just dont remember)
anyway this book was given to me and i had it for awhile b4 i would read it.For personal reasons ijust couldnt hardly bring myself to open it up, but leave it to Cussler with his writeing i was able to really enjoy a book that i had to force myself to open.
if i had been Dirk though i would have made kamatori a long misearable dishonorable death.Pitt was far to kind to kamatori,but thats just me.
also i never gace noitce to the ending.i thought of it as adding to the drama and suspence.
6/10

I have to agree with Heep and Heather that CC wanted to end the series but for some reason (thank goodness) he decided to keep it alive. To me it was a good and bad ending to the book. Dirk Pitt believed to be dead and miraculously still alive is typical for this series BUT I agree with Heater it seems he would have run out of oxygen.

This book has been the most unbelieveable out of the ones I have read - I started at Pacific Vortex and am going in order. The robots were fairly unneccessary but the one thing I think CC did which worked was that he didn't make them a huge part of the story. If you think about it though robots / AI was fairly new when he wrote the story so information would be scarce - at least that is what I think. The robodog was really over the top and would not have been missed.

I believe the history story of the extra planes being used to drop the atomic bomb was awesome but then it didn't tie into the story like the previous history stories have. It was important to the story but really never mentioned until the end when they had to have a way to blow up the Dragon Center. I would have liked to read more about this in the story - not sure how though.

I thought the story was awesome with the threat of terrorist attacks on our home soil was riviting because after 9 / 11 it could happen. Granted the book was written before then but it really made an impact. Also the enemies were very strong and realistic. I would have liked to see them come back in later books but this is also another thing which make the books great. To have a climatic end to where it seems the villian has perished but then make a comeback is sometimes hard to swallow - in CC books the villian dies and stays dead (I know Foss Gly came back but it was somewhat realistic).

Overall this is my least favorite book but I still really really really enjoyed it.

Yes, the robots were far-fetched but have we all forgotten about the Jersey Colony? Also a bit far-fetched, especially for its time.

Granted I enjoyed Dragon, I would not put it among the best of Clive's books.