Spartan Gold

Excellent book. Great story and plenty of action and intrigue. Highly recommended for Cussler fans. Props to Grant Blackwood also. I'm sure he wrote most of the book. On to book 2.

Clive Cussler is recognized as one of the leading authors in adventure fiction, and in "Spartan Gold", he introduces two new characters: Sam and Remi Fargo.The book starts out in the time of Napoleon. While Napoleon and his army were crossing the Alps, he stumbled upon an amazing discovery. Unable to transport it, he set about devising a unique mapping system on twelve bottles of rare wine. Each bottle contained a unique riddle which would lead to the location of the next, and so on. Upon Napoleon's death, the bottles disappeared...Until now.Fast-forward to present-day. Remi and Sam are hunting for treasure in the Great Pocomoke Swamp in Maryland when they come across the wreckage of a World War II era German midget submarine. Located inside the submarine is one of the bottles of wine. Immediately, Remi and Sam set off in search of the remaining bottles, but, unknown to them, they are not the only ones searching.On the other side of the world, Hadeon Bondaruk, a kingpin in the Russian mafia, is also searching for Napoleon's "Lost Cellar". What is about to begin is a world-wide chase that will pit the Fargos against Bondaruk and his henchmen. There are chases, shoot-em-ups, and riddles to solve thrown in as well.I've read other books by Clive Cussler, and I have enjoyed them all. "Spartan Gold" is full of action and intrigue, and Cussler's new duo of Sam and Remi Fargo are easy to like and root for. Cussler has done a good job of developing these new characters, and I enjoyed the thrilling nature of the story. I did find the story to slow down a little in some parts, but these minor lapses do nothing to take away from the overall story.The Fargos have instantly become favorites of mine, and I'm looking forward to reading their next adventure, "Lost Empire".

Slogged through this novel. Sam and Remi Fargo have no personalities. They're rich and blah. Yeah, they like adventure, and are hunting for something to do with Napoleon, WW Two mini U-Boats, a nasty billionaire Russian-Persian, and there are many riddles to be solved. They do everything via Google Searches. And the "action," such as it is, reads like a travelogue. Or worse, a social studies textbook from back in the '60s. I hoped for more since I liked Cussler's other series. The Fargo couple did not hold this reader's interest. Sorry.

Good story for the most part.I wont describe the story as other reviewers do, I never understood that. Anyway.The characters are a little too perfect for me but these characters sell books. So.This story was a little too long towards the end and was a so so ending. Maybe I was getting tired of reading it so I was kind of ready to be finished.I only read for a few minutes a day (bedtime). So that said, an avid reader that could just crank right through it would probably enjoy it more.It has been a long time since I found a really good adventure story/series. I was into Reacher for awhile but the last one really was awful. Not often I toss a book half way through. Where's Clancy when I need him.Sorry I digress.I would probably recommend this book.

I have never read a book so fast in my life! I have been reading now for over 60 years - (learned to read at age 2) -, and I love getting into a story written by someone who feels the same way about books THEY read! Clive Cussler is of course world famous now, but I remember when his books were all but unknown and found him a joy then as well. Clive Cussler IS what he writes about - an archeologist with a bend for buried treasure (I mean really - who isn't right? ) but he takes it to new heights by adding in suspense, drama, comedy, romance- everything a good book needs to "make good"! I only hope he lives to 130 year old so I can be assured of a continuing line of great books! Please note also that he often co-writes books with up and coming authors- Grant Blackwood being the co-author on this one and quite a few others. Mr. Blackwood also carries the Author title proudly and with good reason! - This is really an excellent fast-paced then steady-then fast-paced a(alternating) book you really can't put down! I read over 100 pages last night before I fell asleep with it still in my hands and my glasses still on my nose and my bedside lamp still on!

As with most Cussler books this is chunky and filled with twists and turns that are either clear and obvious or opaque and bizarre with no middle ground. The story is told with rich, almost excessive detail and his usual use of specific brand names. Who cares that the ice axe is Petzle or they flew on a Gulfstream (neither of these is a spoiler)? But the story gripping (hate phrase) and will keep you reading "just one more chapter". And, as happens more often than not you'll be looking for the next adventure. Down side? The next and all following books as Kindle are all priced at paperback rates.

I love the adventures of Sam and Remi Fargo. Clive Cussler has a knack for keeping you on the edge of your seat with his adventures. With the dialogue between husband and wife team, you will enjoy every second spent following the riddle as they solve this mystery.

This is the first of the Fargo Adventures and for me completely stupid and will not bother reading anymore.In fact I will only read a Clive Cussler story if I am desperate for a read and there is nothing else.Think would rather read the label on a sauce bottle.

Excellent book and speedy delivery

For years now I have been reading almost all Clive Cussler novels, and novels published with his name on them. All in all when you're not into realism too much you generally can expect a highly entertaining sometimes even thrilling story to pass the time. Safe to say I'm a Cussler fan. Although I was intrigued by many of the newer series, I found some of them - like the NUMA Files - a little redundant since their characters were often too similar to his earlier heroes. Therefore, after reading "The Chase" with much delight, I was quite pleased to find another completely new idea coming up. A couple - husband and wife - working together as treasure hunters. The idea in my opinion promised a lot of potential.Reading the first pages I immediately started to warm up to the familiarity and banter between Sam and Remi Fargo and was preparing for a really nice read. Soon, however, I had to discover that the author did very little to give his new characters credibility or depth. Apart from said banter they act more like business partners and friends than a married couple and throughout the whole book there's little mention to where the characters came from, how they met and married and only passing remarks of their previous adventures which tell you nothing. (However I learned quite a bit about Napoleon's life) So quite surprisingly I found them easily outmaneuvering and disarming a hired assassin early on in the book. The two didn't strike me as the types to do that. I imagined them to have been in tight spots before, but the ease with which they escape some ex-Speznas Operatives form a secret Nazi base in the Bahamas (!) and later infiltrate a highly secured private castle, get trapped inside unarmed, and then - severly outnumbered - manage to dodge a firefight against the whole heavily armed security force and escape unscathed, really would have made any Special Forces Team proud. Even Dirk Pitt and Al Giordino wouldn't have come out of that this easily and Sam and Remi Fargo simply don't seem to have the guile to get away with something like that. Their intellectual brilliance in solving sometimes rather far-fetched riddles, finding secret devices hidden in their electronic equipment - always aided by their almost all knowing researcher Selma - brought credibility down another notch.The story itself has some typical "Cussleresque" qualities to it. As in previous books we start off with a quasi-historic event, which of course the later story will center on - the mystery of Napoleon's lost heritage to be unraveled and a great treasure to be found. A megalomaniac bad guy who lets nothing stand in his way to achieve his goal. And as in previous books Mr Cussler himself makes an appearance as well. Quite like in many James Bond movies the treasure hunt takes the reader to beautiful places all over the world, starting in a swamp in Maryland to the Bahamas, Monaco, the Island of Elba, Venice, Croatia, Switzerland, Bavaria and the Black Sea. Very entertaining and the locations - most of which I had had the chance to visit myself - where very nicely and accurately discribed. This makes it especially sad that some logical issues really painfully stand out and crush the positive impression. It was quite surprising for me to find Sam and Remi swimming in early spring in a Maryland Swamp as well as the Black Sea for an hour without protective gear while getting into a snow storm in a Southern Bavarian valley only days later and then standing on one of the highest mountain passes in the Alps (which normally opens for traffic in June) between spring flowers and without any snow. Also taking a plane from Venice to Trieste via Rome and then getting a rental car to Croatia, instead of driving the 100 miles by rental car in the first place makes no sense at all. A little more common sense here wouldn't have hurt.The end - like the whole story - is rather anticlimactic. No great obstacles to overcome. Almost everything comes easily to the Fargos. No plot twist, no feel of danger, no surprises and the solution is - well - obvious. The utter ruthlessness our two main characters managed to display in the end, however, really shocked the hell out of me and made me feel an instant dislike and left a really bad aftertaste.While Dirk Pitt stories always had a feel to me like "James Bond meets Jaques Cousteau" I imagined Sam and Remi Fargo to be more like maybe a mixture between "Hart to Hart" and "Indiana Jones". Instead I found the Fargos to be unemotional, unbelieveable and sometimes even not very sympathetic main characters. I don't feel with them. In fact I somethimes don't think they feel anything themselves. The ideas and the background story in itself is as believeable as in other Cussler books and I quite liked. The way the story is told however is disappointing at best. I give it two stars for the nice idea and I simply can't say I "hate" the book, but I didn't like it either. Clearly an opportunity has been missed here. Let's just hope Remi and Sam will return and get a chance to redeem themselves ...By the way:The one thing that really made me angry was the constant and annoying product placement! As opposed to Dirk Pitt's famous classics - the Doxa Watch and the Colt Automatic - here advertisement is so obvious that it really got on my nevers. Everytime one of the characters pics up an electronic device you can be sure to be informed which one it is and who built it. Safe to say I would never like to read the words "Apple", "iMac", "MacBook" or "iPhone" in a novel again - EVER!

Okay, I'll admit I was fairly sceptical about this one going in. Cussler's novels have, excluding The Chase, been heading downhill for a while now, and starting yet another new series, with yet another 'co-author' (I assume this is like Clancy, where the big name comes up with an idea and the little name does the hard work of actually writing it). The beginning backed up my idea - the main characters, Mr & Mrs Fargo, are conveniently and unbelievably rich in order to fund their treasure hunting lifestyle, and have a set up not all that unlike the Corporation in Cussler's Oregon Files series - a team of computer whizzes to back them up, training in black ops and the old friend in the CIA.It started a little cringe worthy - the characters are two dimensional and have very little that I can identify with (except that they own iPhones, and more on that later), and just don't feel natural - they are very much like film characters - there's nothing going on inside their heads, and it's all action and no emotion. There's a dynamic between them, as always with the double-header Cusslers (Pitt/Giordino, Austin/Zavala. Dirk/Summer), and that they are married makes it a little more personal, but in places gets too annoying. One of the running gags involves Sam saying 'aren't I always' and Remi replying 'except that time when' - once is cute but it happens again and again.In a similar vein, everywhere the characters travel they greet a local in the local language and ask them if they can speak English - exactly the same exchange just in a different language - and every time the person can speak it perfectly. Really irritating. Another irritating repetition is that every settlement is referred to as 'home to x number of souls', which to me seems an utterly bizarre way to give population data.The novel spends a lot of time dealing with history, which is informative and possibly vital to the plot but there is too much of it - it's like every little section starts with a mini-essay on the background of the part of the world, and it's just too educational. There are also technological errors - one moment they talk on their iPhones, the next they have to navigate by 'dead reckoning' as they have no GPS, then the next they explicitly mention that their iPhones have GPS. As an iPhone user that really grated.However, towards the end of the novel things begin to get better. The history begins to tail off and the action too after a point, leaving the plot more gripping - however the whole thing seems to speed up as well. The Fargos spend a good part of the novel working out the solutions to the first few clues, but then it takes barely any time at all to race through the last couple (and the earlier plot point about the clues not being in sequence is forgotten), which seems like the author hasn't planned these parts as well.There's a second Fargo book coming later this year, but I'm not yet convinced that they live up to the Cussler mantle - I don't know if his novels have gone downhill or I'm just growing out of them, but since Atlantis Found things seem less believable. I'll wait and see how I feel before ordering the next book.

Another brain teasing adventure which takes us all over the world with mystery, violence and humour. It is worth the price and will have you turning the pages as quickly as you can. Fantastic action with an unforgettable finish.