Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by JK Rowling

Warning 1: This review contains spoilers.

Warning 2: I will not rest until this is my longest review yet.

I'm happy to report to you that this time, the conventional wisdom was correct: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is far and above the best book in the series so far. In fact, I would go so far as to say that after reading it I was satisfied, which is not the way I would have described myself after reading the first three. The reasons for this are myriad, and I shall address them each as well as some other facets of the novel.

Style: Lo and behold, this book doesn't open up with a comically repetitive depiction of life on Privet Drive with the Dursleys, but a long episode contained in a chapter called "The Riddle House," in which the groundskeeper of the Riddle family's old house stumbles upon Wormtail and the newly solidified Voldemort inside it. When Voldemort realizes he's there, he kills him, which, if I am not mistaken, is the first actual non-historical death in a Harry Potter book (but more on that later). What is really remarkable about this section is that it's well-written. No one ever required Rowling to be a fantastically gifted prose writer; all these books really need to work is a sort of utilitarian but well-balanced style that that doesn't get in it's own way, but parts of this book are even better than that. Somewhere between the third and fourth book, Rowling wisely threw away the formula that had been working for so long and went in another direction. Even the dialogue has improved from the sub-television pilot stuff of the first three books. Again, there's nothing really amazing, but it has good flow, and seems natural. Here is a paragraph that comes from the climax, when Voldemort kills Cedric Diggory:

For a second that contained an eternity, Harry stared into Cedric's face, at his open gray eyes, blank and expressionless as the windows of a deserted house, at his half-open mouth, which looked slightly surprised. And then, before Harry's mind had accepted what he was seeing, before he could feel anything but numb disbelief, he felt himself being pulled to his feet.

It doesn't bowl you over, but, hey, I've been reading the short stories from my Creative Writing class for the past hour, and I'll tell you, this reads like Nabokov. And what's more, look at the carefully chosen phrase, "blank and expressionless as the windows of a deserted house." That is a clear reference to the Riddle House that appears in the opening chapter and here at the climax, where two of the three deaths in the novel take place. The Riddle House symbolizes death! Rowling has discovered symbolism, and Harry Potter is a better book for it.

Plot: Each of the three previous books has had serious ending problems, the second one being the worst contender. This novel, however, ties things up quite nicely, I thought. The story is basically this, as if you didn't know: The Quidditch tournament has been cancelled because two other famous wizarding schools, Beauxbatons and Durmstrang, have been invited to come to Hogwarts to take place in the resurrected Triwizard Cup, a competition which pitches one wizard from each school against each other in three tasks. After three years of Quidditch--oh, the first game is against Slytherin, is it? Who knew?--Rowling is wise to give her wizarding sport a break for a while and focus on something new; for this reason Goblet of Fire feels particularly fresh. Harry is supposedly too young to enter, but someone enters his name for him--someone surely trying to kill him--and he is selected as the fourth champion to compete with Hufflepuff Cedric Diggory, Beauxbatons sexpot Fleur Delacour, and Durmstrang student/international Quidditch star Viktor Krum. In the end, it is revealed that the trophy he must grab is actually a "portkey" which whisks him off to the Riddle House to face Voldemort one-on-one, and the whole thing was staged by Voldemort supporter Barty Crouch, Jr., pretending to be Dark Arts teacher Alastor "Mad-Eye Moody." Unlike some of the earlier books which tried to be intense and suspenseful, Goblet of Fire really is both, and it's full of questions and mysteries that keep the reader in. Who put Harry's name in the goblet? Where is Barty Crouch, Sr.? What is Voldemort playing at, exactly? Will Cho Chang go to the ball with Harry? The scene where Hermione yells at Ron for not taking her to the dance is particularly good.

But for all that, the whole thing still takes a little suspension of disbelief, especially for one big plot hole: Why would Barty Crouch, Jr. go through so much trouble to make sure Harry Potter got in the tournament and won just so he could touch the trophy/portkey? Why not just make one of Harry's books a portkey or something? There are probably a thousand things Moody could have gotten Harry to touch far more easily--without running the risk that Diggory, Krum, or Delacour would touch them first (Let's not forget that Diggory actually beats Harry to the thing in the first place). Oh well.

The Wizarding World: One of the great things about the Potter series is how each book adds a little bit to our conception of what the Wizarding World is like. From what I could tell from the movie, the fifth novel gives us a lot more insight into the insides of the Ministry of Magic; in this book, it's the Wizarding World outside England. First, there's the Quidditch World Cup--in which the Irish are pitted against the Bulgarians--and then the Triwizard Cup. They say in the book that no one quite knows where the two other schools are located, but, come on. After all, "Beauxbatons" means "Good Wands" in French. As for Durmstrang, well, all their names (like "Igor Karkaroff") are expressly Russian, but the name of the school is expressly German (Sturm und Drang, anyone?), so, I'm gonna guess Poland.

Death: Brent remarked to me earlier he didn't think the books got perceptively darker until the fourth, and he's right, but the sea change is obvious from the beginning: It begins with the murder of Frank Bryce by Voldemort. Of course, one would expect things to get darker as soon as Voldemort turns up in the flesh again. And then the novel is book-ended by the climax, in which Voldemort kills Diggory. This really is quite exceptional; I can't imagine how many people who read this upon its first release were surprised to find a character killed off, especially one as likeable and genuinely well-developed as Diggory. But Diggory's death represents a great shift in Harry's world--until then, the danger to Harry has always seemed a bit ineffective. How many times have we heard Hermione quote from Hogwarts, a History about how well the castle is protected, especially with Dumbledore's watchful eye around? But Dumbledore's watchful eye does nothing for Diggory; and for the first time in the series Hogwarts isn't all sweetness and light and shifting staircases and headless ghosts and shit. At the end of the year ceremony, all the tapestries, which usually are decked out in the colors of the winning house, are all black in honor of Diggory's death, and they are a sign that Harry no longer has a haven in Hogwarts. From now own, his world, like our own, is surrounded on all sides by the threat of death, misery, and ruin. Awesome.

As a sidenote to the progressive darkness of the books, we also get our first view of Lucius Malfoy, the Death Eater. In the first few books, it seemed to me that Draco Malfoy was the kind of template bully who would end up allying with Potter in the end to overcome some greater evil, but by the fourth book, it's clear that isn't so, and I think the series is better for it. Draco knows his father is a Death Eater, and he's delighted about it; he is full with bigotry and hatred for non-purebloods. Watching Draco go from bullying pest to truly evil should be fun.

House-elves: I'm sick of this B-story. Having to read through Dobby's vaguely racist dialect was bad enough, but having to read about Hermione's crusade to free the house-elves is excruciating, and the one element of this book I really didn't like. I feel as if it wasn't Rowling's plan to include it, but somewhere along the way it came to her attention in the second book that she had basically come up with a legal form of slavery in the Wizarding World, and she felt indebted to soften the practice of keeping house-elves. And so, Hermione creates a society to free the house-elves, whom she learns are the ones keeping Hogwarts clean and well-fed, and to give them benefits, unionization, and competitive wages. But the house-elves resent this effort, because the only thing they like to do is work and being "dismissed" by their master is their idea of torture. All right, that's all well and good and fixes the problem from before, suggesting that Dobby is basically an anomaly, but is anyone else not buying this? Isn't the "but they like it" defense scarily close to what we know to be justifications used by pro-slavery elements in the United States leading up to the Civil War? I'm not saying that Rowling intended anything offensive or racist, but I don't think that this was the right solution. Not to mention the things are just damn annoying.

Hooking Up at Hogwarts: Is anyone else really interested to find out what happens after the Yule Ball? I mean, these kids are all drinking Butterbeer (which is, I think this book implies, an actually alcoholic but relatively weak drink, and really shows you how different it would have been if written by an American) and getting rutty. It's basically a Wizard prom, right? And, well, I don't know this from firsthand experience, but some less morally conflicted than I might use the Wizard prom as an excuse to get a little Wizard booty. What is Wizard sex like, exactly? Does Cho Chang hook up with Cedric Diggory, leading to an awkward discussion when she starts to get involved with Harry? And what would have happened with the 18-year old Krum and the 14-year old Hermione if she hadn't been all pissed at Ron? I shudder to think. These are the things I really want to know about Hogwarts.

I don't think that's longer than the last one, but it'll have to do. Anyone have any other observations?

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

At a little over five hundred pages, finishing this book felt like an accomplishment. I was grateful for the length, though, because despite certain clumsy patches I could have done without, the book was so well written that I did not want it to end.

Throughout the novel I had to keep reminding myself that this was a work of fiction and not a biography. The story of three generations of a Greek family were woven in seamlessly with historical happenings: the Turks' invasion of Greece, WWII, The Detroit riots, ect. You first meet a couple-to-be whose relationship is so taboo that it can't start until they leave their country and start over in America, where the next two generations are born. Lefty and Desdemona's working conditions and slow assimilation into American culture add a little spice and help the story kick up a notch. Later on in the novel, watching Lefty work his way into old age tugged at my heart. Overall, he was my favorite character and seemed to be the most realistically written. (Other characters in the novel seemed to act out against Eugenides and think/behave differently than you would want or expect them to in ways that did not ring true... or to me, at least.)

The second generation of the Stephanides takes up the shortest portion of the book. I found them to be less likable characters. The further into adulthood Milton progressed, the more redeeming qualities started to show themselves. His wife always seemed like a pest to me. In the middle of such an unusual story, their subplot (minus two small twists) was too stereotypically middle class American to really fit in with the rest of the book.

The third generation brings you to the main character/narrator, a hermaphrodite that we see morph from a middle class Greek-American trying to fit in with her schoolmates to a character brave enough to set out to become who s/he was born to be. You see Calliope's friendships, adolescent humiliations, and triumphs. You also see how things unfold with the first object of Calliope's affection. This section made it seem even more like a biographical account, as the love interest's name is never given and they are called the Object in order to "protect their identity".

While I was frustrated with the way Eugenides ended the family's story, I was happy with the way he ended Calliope's.

Relic by Douglas J. Preston and Lincoln Child

Relic by Douglas J. Preston and Lincoln Child A novel hailed by Chris Strube as being, “better than Jurassic Park.” Of course Jurassic Park wasn’t much.

Anyhoo, back on task…Somewhere in the New York Natural Museum of History a three clawed creature lurks. Could it be a legendary Rodent of Unusual Size, abandoned by it‘s owners, forced to forge for life in the filthy under-places of New York City? Perhaps it’s alligator flushed away to reside in the sewers. Perhaps when left to it‘s own devices it became what it always dreaded, a second rate beast in a crappy paper back edition, found in the local Wal-Mart, for 7.99+tax. Whatever this creature maybe, it unscrupulously disembowels and removes the thalamus and hypothalamus, of it’s victims. From small children, security guards and so on up the social ladder no one is safe. This monster must be stopped, it’s giving the museum bad publicity.

It is up to Miss Margo Green and her wheel-chair bounded doctorate advisor, a smart mouth cop and an unorthodox FBI investigator to get to the bottom of this mystery. If they make it in time they’ll get a major motion picture with signed contracts and deals all around.

So this book, wasn’t that great or especially intriguing. For those of you concerned it’s not a ROUS or an embittered alligator. It’s not even a dinosaur, for which I was un-endingly thankful. I guess the thing about this novel is after reading a great deal of Michael Crichton and seeing a few sci-fi-ish type movies, this novel was pretty much a stereotypical disaster and rescue type of thing. The real intrigue is in the last chapter but by the time I reached it, I was so entrenched in the same survival plot, of all the precedent books that the ending was anti-climatic at best.

Hard Times by Charles Dickens

“NOW, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to Facts, sir!”

I started this book late last year, then it disappeared. I was cleaning my bed and it reappeared. Hard Times, magic novel. The story begins with the paragraph above, spoken to a group of children in the fictional city of Coketown. In Coketown, children are taught to be perfectly logical and utilitarian, and things such as fiction, imagination, and poetry are considered blights on society. The primary advocates of this doctrine are Mr. Bounderby and Mr. Gradgrind, who run the school, and the bulk of the narrative follows them and Mr. Gradgrind's children as they reap the fruits of their utilitarian philosophy.

The book is split into three sections, 'Sowing', 'Reaping', and 'Garnering', based on Galatians 6:7, “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” The plot is fairly complex (and I think Carlton might read this, so I won't spoil it), but Hard Times is a novel with an agenda. It's completely viscious to many of its characters, Mr. Bounderby in particular, and toward their overly-practical ideology. It also takes some pretty stinging swipes at factory conditions during the Industrial Revolution, the moral and social split between the rich and the poor, and the role of women in Victorian society.

It's also very funny, somewhat unexpected considering the topics at hand. Mr. Bounderby cuts a particularly ridiculous figure, as he spends most of the novel talking down to his formerly-aristocratic housekeeper and saying things like:

'By George!' said Mr. Bounderby, 'when I was four or five years younger than you, I had worse bruises upon me than ten oils, twenty oils, forty oils, would have rubbed off. I didn't get 'em by posture-making, but by being banged about. There was no rope- dancing for me; I danced on the bare ground and was larruped with the rope.'

Anyway, I enjoyed this book, but since I'm no good at deep analysis and I don't want to spoil the plot, I'll just end here.

Talk to the Hand by Lynne Truss

The utter bloody rudeness of the world today, or six good reasons to stay home and bolt the door.

Lynne Truss continues her saga by leaving the good pandas to eat their shoots, and stepping outside her door to teach the world a lesson in manners. However, while her lesson has reached grammatical perfection it is little more than a published rant.

The book is split into six sections where Truss delves into specific areas of manners that are sadly lacking. She explores both the effect on society and her personal feelings in each area, pointing out many problems and offering no solutions. She has given up on the hope of changing the world, but does wonder what brought about this onslaught of disrespect in our era.

Truss offers several good insights into why our world is falling apart, and I defiantly enjoyed the last section of her book where she explains how society has set up rules for getting along with one another, and these rules are called manners. I found this particularly interesting when compared to modern thoughts presented about religion by the secular world at large.

I know I am deviating from anything to do with the actual book, but this is the main thing I got from reading it. Many people will argue that religion has come about as man's way of organizing a system for all of us to get along. With a code of ethics we are able to survive as a species.

However, I found it interesting that this is exactly what Truss says about manners. Good manners are man's structure for knowing how interact with one another. The higher call to morality is something else that God Himself has put inside of every person. Man kind ultimately doesn't care so much about getting along, as each man cares about himself. This is what has brought manners into their current sad state of affairs.

Rabbit is Rich by John Updike

Running out of gas, Rabbit Angstrom thinks as he stands behind the summer-dusty windows of the Springer Motors display room watching the traffic go by on Route 111, traffic somehow thin and scared compared to what it used to be. The fucking world is running out of gas.

John Updike's third Rabbit Angstrom novel, Rabbit is Rich, opens up to find Rabbit in an unaccustomed state: He is satisfied. In the ten years that have passed since Rabbit Redux, Rabbit has started working at his father-in-law's Toyota dealership and, ultimately, upon Springer's passing, found himself in charge of it. It is a cushy job and provides him with financial success. His relationship with his wife, while never quite what one might call affectionate, has become stable and intimate, and he no longer feels the pull to run. Rabbit has even made peace with Charlie Stavros, the man who cuckolded him in Rabbit Redux, working with him side-by-side at Springer Motors and going so far as to call him one of his best friends.

But satisfaction causes a few problems of its own, of course--the backdrop is spelled out in the opening paragraph above: During the 1979 gas crisis, Rabbit himself feels his life--and his country--"running out of gas," losing spirit and movement to gravity, torpor, and "satisfaction." No longer are we in a world where Rabbit Angstrom can run off and find a girl to fuck--he seems to stumble upon them without looking in the first two novels--because he's far too old and it seems far less appealing. When his son Nelson brings home two girls in succession, his friend Melanie and his knocked-up fiancee Pru, he marvels at his own disinterest in having sex with him. Unlike in Rabbit Redux, in which we find Rabbit in a "devil's threesome" with Jill and Skeeter, there are no opportunities for strange trysts and absurd drug-addled affairs. Once, Rabbit sleeps with his friend's wife (they pee on each other, no joke) as part of a wife-swapping scheme, but even that happens on a holiday to the Caribbean, an otherworld far removed from the real time and space of Rabbit's Pennsylvania.

External conflicts frame Rabbit's internal struggles: Foremost is the return of his son Nelson from Kent State, shiftless and angry, looking for a job at Rabbit's Toyota dealership so that he can both support his pregnant fiancee and avoid going back to college, which he feels is phony. Nelson and Rabbit do not understand each other: Rabbit refuses to give Nelson a job and resents his alienation from his son; Nelson seethes with anger and hatred for his father over the tragedies of the first two books (which I will not enumerate for Brent's sake). But unlike Nelson and Rabbit we have the benefit of Rabbit's very youth documented in Rabbit, Run, and we see how much Nelson is like his father, in his frequent nastiness toward Pru, in his stubborn avoidance of his problems, of the way he finally leaves his wife as she is about to give birth and escapes back to Ohio. What Rabbit only knows in a halfway fashion is that much of his resentment toward Nelson stems from how closely Nelson's life is coming to mirror his own. When he insists that Nelson is a "Springer, through and through," we recognize his willful ignorance. And then there is the girl who comes into the dealership one day in whom Rabbit also sees something from himself, and who he believes might be the child his ex-lover from Rabbit Run claims to have aborted.

And then there are the ghosts of the dead, whom Rabbit faces because in the downswing of his own life he faces his own death as well. Rabbit thinks of them while running near his vacation home in the Poconos:

Becky, a mere seed laid to rest, and Jill, a pale seedling held from the sun, hang in the earth, he imagines, like stars, and beyond them there are myriads, whole races like Cambodians, that have drifted into death. He is treading on them all, they are resilient, they are cheering him on, his lungs are burning, his heart hurts, he is a membrane removed from the hosts below, their filaments caress his ankles, he loves the earth, he will never make their mistake and die.

When Updike is really on, I can't think of anything I've ever read more affecting. Though I doubt any of the Rabbit books could be as powerful as the first, I liked this one much more than Rabbit Redux, because it is more full with moments like that one. Updike wisely tones down some of the period details, resisting the impulse to make Rabbit the "prototypical American," as I wrote about that book. Rabbit isn't a metaphor; he's his own man, unique, individual, lonely, and that's why we identify with him.

Up next: Rabbit at Rest.

Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis

" I would much rather say that every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses , into something a little different from what it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all its innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing either into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature: either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow-creatures, and with itself. "

Mere Christianity gives an argument for the truth of Christianity, and tells what Christans believe. Lewis explains how the Christan World View is the only belief system to adequately answer the questions men ask about their own existence.

He begins by giving the basic idea that all men have a built-in moral code that they demand others to follow, but that they themselves ignore. He goes on to say there is a part inside each person that makes them feel guilt at ignoring this standard. (A man will acknowledge that he has not been fair, but he will have reasons why this was acceptable in his case.) Our sense of justice is a proof that God exists, not because we expect other people to 'keep to the code', but because we feel the need to excuse ourselves when we do not.

Lewis then looks at the practice of the Christan life. What does a Christian life look like when followed to its logical conclusion? The answer is both convicting and encouraging. However, it is unlikely that a non-Christian or atheist would be able to grasp many of the concepts. As Lewis says, the more badness a man has the less likely he is to see it.

Finally, I do respect Mr. Lewis very much and I am thankful for the gift God gave him in encouraging other Christians in their faith. I do have a different understanding from Lewis' belief that anyone who is sincere will take part in heaven. At this point I am still of the opinion that you must sincerely accept Christ, and that it is Christ, not sincerity that gets us into heaven. I may be misunderstanding Lewis or simply wrong in my own belief, but there it is.

Lewis is a wonderful writer. His style makes you want to keep reading no matter how heavy the content. He makes you think and develop your reason. His writing is clear and understandable to most people, but insightful and compelling at the same time.

Haunted-Chuck Palahniuk

“To save us all,
please, tell someone.
To create real peace on earth.
Let us all be-
Haunted.”-Haunted

Haunted is another weirdly twisted novel by nihilist author Chuck Palahniuk. Due to its graphic content I suggest that the morally sensitive and the easily nauseated go read something else.

Nineteen desperate people each with their secrets attempt to escape their past by signing up for a writer’s retreat. They use pseudonyms such as, “Lady Bag-Lady,” Sister Vigilante” and my personal favorite, “Saint Gut-Free”. Each nick-name will eventually fall into place with the stories they tell.

Unfortunately for them, this particular retreat is held not on a compound with private cabins, rolling hills, and a gentle lake, but in an abandoned theater, which doors get locked as soon as they get inside. It turns out that the “director” of this retreat is boy suffering from progeria, who is using this particular set of people for an experiment. His point is that everyone needs someone to blame. And so starring Mr. Whittier as “Mr. Devil Hisself” and they do a pretty good job at proving his point.

In an attempt to get out of their prison they resort to damaging the electricity and plumbing and destroying three months worth of food. Eventually they resort to self-mutilation, but to no avail. Their captor is bound and determined to have them tell their stories. Eventually one by one their stories each accompanied by a poem. None of them are pleasant or worth mentioning, and most of the observations seems to be between the stories with Mr. Whittier, forever talking about humanities dependency on victimization.

This probably isn’t one of my favorite Chuck Palahniuk, in fact reading this book is like staring at something horrible and perverse but not being able too look away. Sometimes I wonder if Palahniuk is King Lear’s fool who knows that mockery is no longer a venue for hiding truth, so he moved onto to shock value. Or maybe Palahniuk really is just some sick bastard who doesn’t really seem to put any redeemable qualities in his characters, that aren‘t hidden under steaming piles of dysfunction.

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

Apparently, I am the only English major I know that has made it this far along without reading this book, so I suppose it’s about time I got around to it. If you haven’t read it, I should warn you that this contains spoilers.

Heart of Darkness is a long short story about a man named Marlow whose career as a boatman mirrors Conrad’s own. It opens with Marlow recounting a past trip down the River Congo to several other men on a ship called the Nellie. The text is told with a strange combination of English liberalism and racism that would later enrage the famous Nigerian author Chinua Achebe to speak out against Conrad, fifty years after his death.

While this book is well written and reeled me in, I still found it hard to swallow. Specific scenes, like Marlow finding some shade under a tree and then realizing the people sitting around him were not doing the same, but instead propping their emaciated bodies up against the trunks as they waited to die, were understandably disturbing. The thing that upset me the most was the character Kurtz. Everyone from the company was in awe of this man who had been sent not only to procure ivory but also to be a missionary who desired to better the lives of the natives. Some missionary… After running out of materials to trade with, he procured his ivory by raiding the villages with his guns. Furthermore, he did not bring God to the natives. Instead, he let them believe that he was some kind of god himself after he won them over by showing off the firepower his guns made possible to him. When Marlow and others from the company went to relieve him from his station that had run out of materials, he had the natives attack the company’s ship so that they would turn away because he did not wish to leave a place where he was held highly to return to a place where he was merely a man.

The story was exciting, though, minus the seemingly unending period where Marlow was waiting for rivets to mend his ship so that they could set off. Extinguishing fires! Sharing a ship with thirty starving cannibals! Dodging whizzing arrows! I can’t quite imagine than any combination of yoga or breathing exercises would get me through that trip.

My one disappointment with the book that had nothing to do with morals or the stripping of humanity from the natives of the Congo was that the reader does not get to hear much from Kurtz until he is on his death bed, fever dreaming. This man who “enlarges minds” and is known as a Voice above all other things, who seems to impart wisdom to everyone around him gives the reader none. Instead, what we see is an obsessive and flawed character through Marlow’s fixation with him. We see his hypocrisy but never get to understand why the other men of the company (minus the irked Manager) were so inspired by him, making their adoration slightly less than believable.

Treasure of Kahn by Clive Cussler

A couple weeks ago my car broke down in this tiny little town in the Smoky Mountains, and I was trapped there for 2 days. The closest thing they had to a bookstore was a CVS, where I found this book.

It wasn't bad. It far exceeded my somewhat low expectations of the produced-for-mass-consumption paperback genre. Once I realized it was almost 100% plot, I kind of enjoyed it.

It's the latest in a series of novels following the adventures of Dirk Pitt, an Indiana Jones meets James Bond type character. The story is that a supposed descendant of Kublai Kahn, emperor of 13th century Asia, has discovered a technology that can create earthquakes. The evil genius then uses that technology to disrupt the international oil market and attempt to reconquer China in the name of Mongolia. Of course, Dirk and friends foil his plan and the world is saved. The utter predictability didn't really take away from the book. With most of the words dedicated to action, a lot was left to the imagination, which I had a fun time doing. Cussler apparently works with a crew that salvages shipwrecks, a job that's probably a lot less glamorous than how it's presented in the novel, but that's the fun in imagining, right?