Plague Ship (Yellow) by Clive Cussler

(Yellow) means this. Only in book form.

There are three different kinds of Clive Cussler books. The Dirk Pitt books, the Kurt Austin books, and the Oregon books. Three series with three different sets of characters (there is some cross over but it’s insignificant).

This is my first Oregon book. I didn’t have any desire to expand into the Clive Cussler world. The Dirk Pitt books and the Kurt Austin books were already so similar that I figured it was just pointless to add another character to the same tired formula.

The formula is this.

Every Clive Cussler book starts out way in the past with some lame ancient mystery. Sometimes more then one mystery. These are always a struggle to read. They are very detailed and their relevance to the rest of the story is very little. For Plague Ship it was almost laughable.

Dirk/Kurt are in a large body of water looking for sunken treasure when they find a someone in distress. The someone changes from book to book but there is always a hot girl involved. They save the hot girl who also happens to be an expert on whatever the villains of that book are cooking up.

The girl helps them through a series of random over detailed usually underwater hardships so that they can get to the villain. The bad guys get more and more far fetched with each book that comes out. Plague Ship is a prime example. I'll get to it later.

The first big event of the book is always the biggest which makes the endings very anticlimactic.

Dirk/Austin are usually beat an inch from their lives by the end of the book. The girl is always there to comfort them and when they end up together she is gone by the next book.

There is always an exposition character who only does exposition. They are the most boring chapters because they just sit around and talk about ocean mysteries. Not as cool as it sounds. Mostly it’s like reading a text book.

That is how to write a Clive Cussler book.

That doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy one every now and then. Sometimes I need a mindless action story.

But this Plague Ship book, my goodness. Prepare to suspend your disbelief as I drop a one line synopsis on you.

The bad guys are a group of people who are believe we are breeding ourselves to death so they are going to sterilize half the planet with a virus they found… on Noah’s ark.

I know right.

They don’t get into that stuff heavy until the last third of the book but when they do it slows the book right down. The first 100 pages were a page turner. The last hundred were a struggle to read. Just straight up boring. Mostly because it all revolved around several main characters being in peril and the question was were they going to die or not. I’ve read too many Clive Cussler books to know there was no way he was going to kill a good guy.

But for how horrible the villains were (and I am a firm believer that the antagonist is more important then the protagonist) there were some cool parts to this book.

As I said, this is my first Oregon book and now I know the Oregon books are the most unique in the NUMA world. The Oregon is a high-tech state of the art boat that looks like a piece of trash so it can sneak around the world and carry out it’s missions.

The crew is mostly mercenaries. Going from one job to the other. I thought this was cool at first but then I realized it didn’t mean anything because everyone on that boat has a heart of gold so money isn’t an issue. They always do the right thing, no matter what. A great quality to have but it makes for lame story telling (cause no one is really like that).

The captain is the most unique character. He is a real one legged pirate. But that’s not what makes him unique. He has some crazy prosthetics with hidden compartments that can hold guns and explosives and what not. It's pretty cool.

But the rest of the crew is just toned down versions of Dirk Pitt over and over. There is more of them so the antagonism gets split up between them so it’s not just one guy taking on the world like in every other Clive Cussler book.

There were some exciting chase scenes at the beginning of this book that kept me trapped in the story but it couldn’t be sustained. Just like in past books the most antagonistic part of the book is at the beginning. I kept waiting for a diabolical twist but instead I got the lame plot of sterilizing half the planet.

For this book the highs were entertainingly high and the lows were laughably low.

It averaged out to a normal Clive Cussler adventure.

The Last Airbender (Yellow)

If you're wondering what the (yellow) thing is all about click here.

The Last Airbender is a bad movie but not so bad that you should never watch it. Just wait for it to come out on DVD.

The boring parts are plentiful. The only parts of the movie I enjoyed were the element bending parts but they can be pretty spaced out. And the space between is filled up with characters talking about things we already knew.

This is the perfect movie to go to if you have a small bladder. You can go to the bathroom multiple times without having to pause the movie; I say pause because you should rent this movie not watch it in the theater. The characters are always talking about what they are doing but they never change what they are doing so they are always talking about the same thing. Over and over.

The acting in this movie is no good. I don’t know anything about acting and I can still tell it’s no good. It looked like the actors were struggling to remember their lines and where their marks were.

But it’s not like they had much to work with. There is zero character development. They try to create an arch for the Avatar but it doesn’t work. They try to create a love story in the final act but it doesn’t work.

The only thing that comes close to working is the fire prince's story but even though that was the strongest character and plot of the movie it still doesn’t work.

The only reason to watch this movie is for the cool fight scenes. And that’s just because they look cool. Don’t spend too much time thinking about why they have to break dance to use their bending powers. If you do you will ruin the only good part of the movie.

This movie only got 8% on Rotten Tomatoes. There is no way this is an 8% movie. It is not the worst movie I have seen this year (that goes to A-Team… so far). I think the main reason this movie got such a bum rap is because everybody likes to hate on M. Knight Shyamalan. This movie is way better then his last few attempts at film making. I'd say it's 30% or 40%.

I enjoyed it enough to want them to make the sequels just so I can see the cancer patient learn to bend more things. Ya, I know, I could just watch the TV show but anime scares me. Their eye’s are way so big and hair is long and pointed in weird directions, constantly wind tousled. Terrifying.

Also, I guess the thing the Avatar fly's around on is cool looking. It's like a cross between the luck dragon from The Never Ending Story and a beaver.

The Saga of Seven Suns, Book 1: Hidden Empire (Yellow) by Kevin J. Anderson

If you are wondering about what that (Yellow) means then click here. I haven't used it for a book review yet but the traffic light system can be applied to anything. My breakfast of Honeycombs this morning was (Green)

So the only reason I bought this book is because it is the first book in a series of seven and it’s spine is bright orange. I saw half a row of bright orange books and decided to stop and check them out. Turns out it was a science fiction series written by Kevin J. Anderson.

Before this book I hadn’t read a Kevin J. Anderson book since I was a kid. It was the Jedi Academy Trilogy and the only thing I remember about it is that I thought it was awesome. I decided I could trust him enough to read the first book in the series. Plus, I was intrigued by the plot description on the back.

Turns out the book was a huge disappointment.

There are some cool things about this book but there are way more bad things.

First bad thing: way too many characters.

For a story like this a lot of characters is necessary. You have humans and these alien allies called Ildiran’s so naturally you will need some characters from each group. But then the humans get even broken down into even smaller groups. The members of the Hansa organization who are kind of bad guys but only to certain people, the Roamers who are a group of space MacGivers who can survive any environment, and the people of Theron who have very interesting skills involving trees. I’ll get more into these people later.

Each of these groups are represented by multiple characters and it seems like none of the characters are more important then the next. In other words, there is no protagonist.

It also makes it hard to even follow the characters, especially the alien ones. Some crazy thing will happen to the alien leader but then you won’t hear from him for a whole bunch of chapters so that by the time you do get back to him you’ve forgotten his whole story line and he becomes less important.

The structure of the book is way off. Too many characters spread out too far. Because there are so many characters it takes forever to get their individual reaction to these awesome event s that are happening. Example:

The book is about an alien race’s reaction to accidental genocide. The aliens are called the hydrogues and they live inside gas giants all over the galaxy. The Hansa accidently destroy a bunch of hydrogues in an experiment to turn a gas giant into a new sun (in the Hansa’s defense no one knew the hydrogues existed).

The accidental genocide happens about twenty or so pages into the book. The hydrogues don’t start attacking people for another 150 pages. That’s a 150 pages of being introduced to a dozen or so new characters.

It doesn’t work.

I’m fine with soft science fiction but there were some things here that even I couldn’t look over. There were people breathing the “air” while mining hydrogen. There is no breathable air in gas giants.

There are other things like this that take away the readers ability to surrender disbelief. I could go into more detail but I don’t want to ruin things for you incase you do decide to read this.

But as lame as some things are in this book there are somethings that I thought were cool.

The space MacGivers, the Roamers, were interesting. Just the way they were able to build something out of nothing was interesting. Too bad the Roamer characters that are featured are way boring and make predictable choices.

The human’s on the planet Theron are also cool. Certain groups on this planet have the unique ability to talk to The World Forrest. They can actually talk to trees. It makes their skin turn green. Not only can they talk to trees but as they spread the trees to other worlds they, who call themselves Green Priest, can talk to each other and relay messages. It a cool idea that adds some uniqueness to this universe.

The last cool thing is these weird insect like robots that are all over the place. There are thousands of them all over but no one knows where they came from. The alien race who built them is long gone. As early humans started exploring the universe they found these robots on random planets. They are mysterious and some people don’t trust them. Their story is interesting and to be honest it’s the only reason I started reading the next book.

Extreem caution when reading this book. It’s not as good as you think but there are good lessons here for you to learn from if you are looking to write your own science fiction book someday.

For starters, Orbit will publish crappy science fiction.

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (Yellow)

(If you're wondering about the (Yellow) business click here.)

If you want to go see this movie in theaters you won’t be wrong. You also won’t be wrong if you want to wait for the DVD.

Watching Jake Gyllenhaal parkour his way through the movie was awesome. I never played the video game this was based off of but from what I know I think bouncing off walls was a major part of the gaming experience. I also caught a hint of Assassins Creed in there.

The time traveling dagger had me worried but it was handled well. It’s good to see it can only be used for a minute and only certain sand will work. Without these restrictions things could have gone sideways in a hurry.

Oh, and the ostriches were amazing. Possibly the best part of the movie. I had no idea that they looked so ridiculous when they ran. It is quite the sight. I hope they get their own spin off movie. Also, you can get the ostrich race Lego set.

The story is really simple, in theory. It all revolves around the dagger. And yet I was constantly asking myself what was going on. It was always clear that they needed to take the dagger somewhere but the where and why were confusing.

It has too many pointless scenes and too much blah blah dialog for the protagonist to decide to do things I thought they were already going to do anyway.

Don’t see this movie for the dialog. See it for the action.

The predictable parts of the movie (I’m looking at you whatever Ben Kingsley’s character was named) are as abundant as the twists and cool parts. This makes the bad stuff easier to forget.

But there is no forgetting the scene where the black dude (did he even have a name?) steels the dagger. Nothing about that scene made sense and it drove me mad.

It’s safe to say that Prince of Persia is the best video game adaptation out there. Hopefully it explodes on home video so the studios will want to make a sequel. Prince of Persia: The Doom Ostrich.

I'd watch it.

Iron Man 2 (Yellow)

If you're wondering what the (Yellow) business is about click here.

I predicted that Iron Man 2 would be a disappointment and it was but not as much as I thought it would be.

Before the movie came out I kept an eye on its Rotten Tomato rating. It started in the eighties and had sunk all the way down to 66% before raising a bit and settling at 75%. That's a good spot for it.

This movie had so much potential but fails to even try to be an original movie. When I got out of the theater I was only slightly disappointed. Mostly I was just disappointed by the lame climactic showdown. At work the next day, the more I thought about the movie the more disappointed I became.

Why on Earth was Scarlet Johansson in this movie? Her character had no arc and did nothing to move the plot along. At best she was there to help the Avengers/SHEILD story but if you ask me that subplot had way too much screen time. The Black Widow character should not have been written.

Mickey Rourke as Whiplash was almost a cameo. The movie didn't start to get disappointing until after Whiplash's first attempt at taking out Iron Man. That's when he, who was supposed to be the main antagonist, stops having direct conflict with the protagonist and instead spends the rest of his time working in a lab until the end of the movie. Lame sauce.

When he does come back he has his own bigger and better suit but I'm pretty sure that was the same climax as the first movie. It's bad enough that they do it again in the second one but they also have Iron Man and War Machine teaming up to do something we've seen Iron Man do himself. The fight is also way too short.

There is so little antagonism in this movie, it comes dangerously close to boring.

But it's not all bad. Antagonism issues are almost a given in comic book movie sequels .

This isn't a bad movie. Just disappointing. I still laughed out loud more then once. The Iron Man suit is still way cool (as is the new War Machine). The suit case suit was a great throw back to the comics.

I don't know much about acting but I enjoyed RDJ and Mickey Rourke (for the short amount of time he was there). Don Cheadle as Rhodey had some solid moments as well. That roof stuff at the end made me laugh. The only Rhodey complaint I have would be the conflict between him and Tony. The filmmakers were trying to get some much needed conflict in the middle of the movie but it didn't work.

I would say lower your expectation and go see this movie. You'll have a god time if you already know it's not as good as you hopped.

(On the plus side Tony does get drunk while wearing the suit and it's really funny)