David Gibbins has a problem. His prologue to his latest novel of marine archaeologist-adventurer Jack Howard is a taut short story of survival on the open seas. His opening act of the main novel, in which Howard and his partner Costas dive near a sunken volcano while using special protective suits, is a rip-roarer as good as anything Clive Cussler's put to paper. His flashback to the dilemma faced by German Luftwaffe officer Ernst Hoffman in the last days of World War II, which will set up the second half of the main novel, creates a full-bodied, rich character who interests the reader.

The rest of his book, though, is crap. The main sequence, in which Jack and some of his fellow scientists have to work to stop a European crime lord from gaining access to a terrible Nazi superweapon, is endlessly padded with reminiscing detours by Jack and others, and moves its events forward at a pace that would make glaciers say, "You're holding me up here." The clues to the resting places of the different weapon components are tied in with Nazi leader Heinrich Himmler's fascination with ancient mystical artifacts and lost civilizations, including lost Atlantis -- conveniently found by Jack in the previous novel. So the mysteries of Atlantis and its connection with the legend of Gilgamesh and the story of Noah must be puzzled out.

It's in those places that Atlantis drags the slowest. Gibbins is himself a marine archaeologist and the conversational expositorrhea he puts in his scientists' mouths reads like Victor Appleton reconstructed a lecture on the subject from notes he took while on Benadryl. That may seem like a harsh thing to say, but the good passages of this book prove Gibbins knows how to tell a story and it's not improper to hold him to that standard in the rest of the book as well. Especially when "the rest of the book" equals "the main story we bought the thing for."

Original available here.