Atlantis Lost - J. Robert Kennedy

   2018; 250 pages.  Book 21 (out of 34) in the “James Acton Thrillers” series.  New Author? : Yes.  Genres: Technothriller; Pulp Thriller.  Overall Rating: 5½*/10.

 

    It's a good-luck/bad-luck situation.

 

    While diving in the ocean off the shores of Pico Island in the Azores, Sergeants Carl “Niner” Sung and Jerry “Jimmy Olsen” Hudson find themselves dangerously close to an underwater landslide just as they're running low on oxygen.  Bad luck, guys!

 

    Ah, but the shifting of the seabed has uncovered what looks like some ancient Roman columns.  That might mean there’s a whole sunken city here, previously undiscovered, and who knows, it could even be the legendary lost city of Atlantis!  What a stroke of good luck!

 

    Too bad neither Sung nor Hudson know anything about how to excavate a site, especially one under a couple hundred feet of ocean.  Bad luck, guys.  If indeed this is the remains of Atlantis, you might’ve become famous.

 

    Luckily, you’re pals with a husband/wife team of archaeology professors, James Acton and Laura Palmer.  You can give them a call once you get back to shore, and they can fly over and check out those columns.  There’s nothing wrong with sharing half the fame with them.

 

    As long as no one else snorkels into the area in the meantime.

 

What’s To Like...

    The title of the book notwithstanding, the book’s main storyline involves a group of anti-technology, anti-social-media protesters that just happen to also be carrying out their plans in these same waters.  They don’t appreciate the archaeological intruders, and intend to take steps to oust our heroes no matter what.  And although their ideology is ultimately flawed, it appears that J. Robert Kennedy sympathizes with their aims, which I thought was kind of neat.

 

    The action starts right away, and continues slam-bam throughout the entire book.  Most of the excitement is over-the-top, but if you like Clive Cussler’s Dirk Pitt tales, you’ll love this series.  There are a pair of secondary plotlines: one set in ancient times as Atlantis faces its impending doom (which is not a spoiler; the reader is told this on the first page of the first chapter); the other set in present-day Shanghai.  More about these later.

 

    As the author notes, although Atlantis is generally considered a myth, Plato makes reference to it in his writings, implying that it had sunk into the ocean centuries before his time.  The truth is, to date no reliable evidence has ever been found of Atlantis’s existence, but that just means J. Robert Kennedy can let his imagination run wild in creating his version of it here.  I thought the Atlantean rapid transit system he dreamed up was quite intriguing.

 

    I chuckled at the interjection “damn skippy”.  Until reading this book I had always assumed it was just a made-up phrase coined by Janet Evanovich.  I was also happy to see the Luddites get mentioned, and loved the cited copyediting conundrum: “is it ‘Briticism’ or ‘Britishism'?  

 

    Speaking of which, it should be noted that someone did a great job at editing Atlantis Lost.  I didn’t catch any typos, although the history buff in me needs to mention that an ancient Atlantean seen wearing “undergarments” at one point is historically unlikely.

    For those averse to excessive cussing, Atlantis Lost is quite clean; I counted only 8 instances in the first 25% of the book.  There were a couple rolls-in-the-hay, however, which makes me wonder who the target audience is.

 

    The ending, at least for the main storyline, is decent, if predictable.  The bad guys get their comeuppance and most are disposed of; the good guys all survive, ready to save the world yet again in the next book in the series.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.5/5 based on 233 ratings and 46 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.33/5 based on 220 ratings and 11 reviews

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Damn skippy (n., phrase) : a term of approval or excitement.

 

Excerpts...

    The fringe elements were, of course, out in full force, claiming pending doom, but they had always existed, long before the earthquakes began.  Killer waves, angry gods, invasion fleets from beyond the Pillars of Hercules, even massive rocks from the skies, were always dominating the conversations of those with too much time on their hands.  (loc. 557)

 

    “Do you want to get real answers, or continue the name-calling?”

    There was silence for a moment before Nelson took back the meeting.  “We’ll move forward with your suggestion, Leif.  In the meantime, we have to assume that this individual is serious, and decide what to do about it.”

    The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs shook his head.  “We can’t pay the money.  We don’t negotiate with terrorists.”

    Morrison grunted.  “We all know that’s bullshit.  We’re always negotiating with terrorists, we just do it through third parties.”  (loc. 1592)

 

Kindle Details…

    Atlantis Lost costs $7.99 at Amazon right now, with the other books in the series running anywhere from free and $7.99.  The prices generally increase as the e-books get newer.  J. Robert Kennedy has several other action-adventure series to offer, with similar pricing strategies.

 

“Somebody remind me to insult him when we go topside.”  (loc. 509)

    There are nits to pick.  Atlantis Lost was my introduction to this series, and I gather that there is a recurring multinational, multi-agency team of agents who help our husband-wife pair of archaeologists save the day on a recurring basis.  I don’t think this hampered my ability to grasp what was going on, but it did introduce some head-scratching tangents.

 

    Most notably, the subplot featuring CIA special agent Dylan Kane in China has absolutely no tie-in to the main storyline.  For that matter, about the only purpose the Atlantis-based subplot served was to give the book a catchy title.  I kept waiting for it to tie in somewhere; but it never did.  Indeed, after flip-flopping chapters with the main storyline, it disappears around 50% Kindle, surfacing only briefly at the very end as a disappointing and predictable epilogue.

 

    The characters are either all black or white, none are gray.  The Russian and Chinese officials are corrupt, cold-blooded, and cruel, and will only cooperate with the Western agents if they’re sweet-talked into it.  They also like to hire simpletons to serve as guards for very critical missions.

 

    The Atlantean worldbuilding was unconvincing to me.  The “copies of portraits” didn’t make any sense (did they have copying machines?), and “message stream” strained my suspension-of-disbelief ability.  The “protests for free speech” felt 20^th-century, not ancient, and the whole idea of a "Senior Enforcer" being a young female is historically doubtful.

 

    But maybe my expectations for this series are askew.  First and foremost, Atlantis Lost is a pulp thriller, not a work of historical fiction.  Perhaps I should just put my analytical brain into deep-freeze at the first page, and sit back and enjoy the thrills, kills, and heart-pounding thrills, without musing about how Atlantis, if it ever existed, might have really been.  Indiana Jones would approve.

 

    5½ Stars.  I have a couple more books from this series on my Kindle, which means I have a couple more opportunities to get the hang of J. Robert Kennedy's literary approach.  For the record, the only Clive Cussler book I've read did not impress me at all, but I have many (adult) friends and acquaintances who are totally addicted to Cussler's Dirk Pitt tales.  I may be in the minority on this.