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March 01, 2005
Trojan Odyssey
I finished listening to Trojan Odyssey by Clive Cussler on Sunday. It had an interesting premise, but a lot of the writing was cheesy with everything taken to an extreme where there no average situations. The characters are constantly the most exhausted they have ever been, the happiest they have ever been, the women were all extremely beautiful, N.U.M.A. (the government agency the heroes work for) is the best run government bureaucracy there is, and so on. Sometimes it helps to have some average experiences and things to make the other bigger stuff seem more impressive.
The premise of the novel is that the traditional views of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey are all mixed up. The Trojan war was really fought because of tin and fought by Celts and other northern Europeans in what is now England three thousand years ago, instead of by various Greeks who fought somewhere in what is now Turkey and who fought over Helen. Afterwards Odysseus sailed all the way to the Carribean and lost his fleet of ships near what is now Nicaragua. Modern day Druids figure this out and form an evil corporation called Odyssey based around this idea. The hero Drik Pitt and his heroic friends must outsmart Odyssey and save the day by stopping their fiendish plans. While the Trojan back story is interesting the rest of the story was a bit unbelievable. The heroes (led by Dirk Pitt) were too perfect and everything worked out just a little too well. The drama was constantly laid on too thick with multiple instances of people being rescued at the very last possible second by Dirk Pitt. All the heroes plans always work out and the heroes have no real flaws or weaknesses. They end up being pretty boring and I stopped caring about them after I realized this.
I prefer that my heroes be believable, which means they are occasionally weak. This is kind of strange complaint to have about this story considering that Homer provided the inspiration for it. Homer’s heroes are all very powerful, but also very flawed. Achilles may be the best warrior in the world, but he can not control his temper. Odysseus may be very clever and strong, but his pride gets the best of him. Their plans work out some of the time, but not without big casualties and big mistakes that lead to more problems. That is why people still care about these stories thousands of years later and why the characters are still interesting to us today. Funny how Cussler missed this point when he was writing his characters.
Posted by Pete at March 1, 2005 04:13 PM
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