I listened to three books from the Oregon Files series in immediate succession during my trip to Laos, and quite honestly, I’m a bit bummed that I don’t have any others in my queue.

After truly enjoying Plague Ship with its fully-engaged cast and interesting plot of turning half the world sterile, I anticipated much the same excitement with Silent Sea. While the characters are a bit softer in this one and less personally involved—maybe even less “human” than they were in Plague Ship—I was greatly pleased with the Chinese plot and especially with Cussler’s use of the prologue.

Often in his books, Clive Cussler‘s prologues are ancient or historical anecdotes about a disaster whose effects play some important role in the future adventure. Usually this role is minor yet interesting, but without much impact on the novel itself. This time, however, the prologue of boys exploring a pit in Washington state plays such an important role in the overall story that we actually get to meet one of the fully-grown boys at his home in Washington, see two more of them dead in a blimp in Argentina, and find out that their Washington pit blows to pieces the world’s concept of marine history. I like that.

Juan Cabrillo and the crew of The Oregon find themselves all over the world once again, though they mainly keep themselves in Washington, Argentina, and Antarctica. The Argentinians and Chinese have broken world treaties by drilling for oil in the Antarctic, and the Chinese hope that an archaeological study proving their original discovery of the secret southern continent will help justify that the land mass is actually their own property. In a shocking twist, readers watch as Juan Cabrillo discovers their hopes are true and then actually destroys the evidence that proves it, in order to save the world from a new and Communist super-power.

That’s actually not the only surprising and weird thing about this book, because I counted three times when Juan Cabrillo desecrates the remains of the dead. Twice in one novel would be weird in itself, but three? Come on. In Argentina, he drives through a sacred cemetery and destroys a large portion of it; he then promises to make an anonymous donation to the cemetery, if he survives. In Antarctica, he digs up the remains of old dead whalers in order to use their bones as “proof” that eighteen hostages were killed in a fire; he then saves the hostages lives. And then, also in Antarctica, he finds and then destroys the ancient Chinese shipwreck that could help prove that Antarctica is actually a Chinese possession. Then, of course, as the book’s protagonist, he wins.

I enjoyed this book for its surprising twists, though by his actions, Cabrillo shows that he believes in “the ends justify the means”, which isn’t the best philosophy. I enjoyed how closely the story mirrored some findings from another book I read, 1421: The Year China Discovered America, by Gavin Menzies. While Cussler’s characters don’t believe that the “1421” part of the story is true, they do believe that Chinese sailors did more than their history acknowledges, though old selfish emperors destroyed their very own evidence to prove it. What a sad reality that is!

One thing I wondered about as I listened to this tale: In Atlantis Found (a Dirk Pitt Adventure), the NUMA crew discovered a hidden world buried deep inside Antarctica, yet that’s never mentioned even in passing in this novel. It would be nice if Cussler’s universe could maintain some consistency throughout, not merely so characters can overlap, but so that the histories of nations and places can as well. I think that would make reading each successive novel that much more enjoyable.

Next up in The Oregon Files: The Jungle (2011)—-not to be confused with the Upton Sinclair novel.

©2018 E.T.

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