wickedplutoswickedreading's reviews
1214 reviews

Old fav from childhood. 

Kinda charming,  only the lightest of spooks, with interesting quirky characters. 

Not a lot of depth but its a simple cute story. I love Miss Miggie. 

Back when I read this the first time, I obviously thiught it was just okay or had a problem with something due to me having rated it 3 stars.

well I have to tell you on this 2nd read.....I'm DNFing. 
I made it through alot of crap that would make me chuck a different book out the window, just telling myself that of course you have to give this book context of the time period.
you can't judge a person completely on things they say in the 1940s by the standards of 2024. I mean, ya can judge them but .....what was socially acceptable was different and gives context.  
So I kept on though the bigotry and the utter superiority of these british assholes was sooo rampant because again, can't fully judge due to tome period. 
Guys. when she recounted a frustrating experience with a hired hand, and that her husband in response said he "now sees why Armenians were massacred ", I put this fucking book down. 
Yeah no, that my friends is my fucking limit. Thinking you're better than someone due to culture. language, etc is bad.  But justifying massacre and then treating it like a funny little anecdote in your stupid memoir?
Nope.  Fuck that.

Love escalated a bit quickly......there was a particular scene that was really rough to read. 
Otherwise, action-packed, funny, mysterious ish.....even though I 100% knew who the bad guy was the whole time because it was too obvious.  Can't fully fault it becaus  hey maybe we were supposed to know before the characters did. 
loved the whole hale brood.

DNF
I was raised Catholic but never considered myself that for real so I wasn't offended or anything, I just couldn't wrap my brain fully around anyone finding a dude in a priest collar to be sexy. 
A priest swearing and talking about how much he needed to whack off after seeing a girl he was attracted to...I mean, that was also something to wrap my brain around. 
The first thing that kinda killed the book for me though were the sex scenes. I'm no prude but like.....degradation is not it for me. I am not the target audience for this shit clearly. 
But I kept on as I was a little curious where it was going.....up until things just got too weird for me. 
Weird as in.....he's plainly fuckin  her but also....converting her? like what? 
it made my deconstructing ass feel some type of way and I'm just not here for whatever this is.

Action-packed as per usual. Al and Dirk are a hoot. Dirk is still not as awesome as I remember him being in later novels....still a bit of a chauvinist in this one. There's something Al does late in the novel that rubbed me the wrong way too but...spoilers. 

I think the main thing that bothered me about this book and took it down to a three star, despite the action, humor and the fascinating tech and action......was a major part of the plot. 

I'm sorry, but I just cannot suspend my disbelief enough to believe that the Japanese (even a group of corrupt nationalists) would build nukes on their soil and unleash them on the world. I'm not Japanese and I'm not an expert but as someone who has consumed a fair amount of media from there for more than half of my life.......I just don't buy it. Destruction and the sheer terror and devastation from the end of WW2 rocked the nation and is still affecting them. Those themes and hubris and etc are major parts of fiction still. So....I dunno. I know it's just a story. I know the Cussler's are always set a few years in the future and could be argued as an alternate future I suppose.....but still, I just don't buy it. 

[Also, I dunno, you can tell this was a boomer writing a book involving the Japanese, that's all I'm gonna say to leave off.]