Plague Ship

by Clive Cussler and Jack Du Brul

Book Overview

Captained by the rakish, one-legged Juan Cabrillo and manned by a crew of former military and spy personnel, the Oregon is a private enterprise, available for any government agency that can afford it... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0399154973
• ISBN13: 9780399154973
• Release Date: June 2008
• Publisher: Putnam Adult
• Length: 515 Pages
• Weight: 1.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.6" x 6.3" x 9.3"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Plague ship

Missing the first nine pages.

One of Cussler's best novels

I have read many of Clive Cussler's novels, and I consider this to be one of his best. Since other reviewers have discussed the plot, I will comment on other aspects of the story. The characters or larger than life, but not ridiculously so. The same is true of the Chairman's ship. What I liked most about the book was that the authors challenged the reader to think about real problems--over population, and provide information of historical events mostly unknown--Unit 731. Unit 731 is real, and worse than described. Japanese chemical weapons and agents are still being discovered and removed in China. Medical information created by Unit 731, regardless of how horrible the methods used to obtain it, had value. At the end of WWII, the U.S. exempted one or more of senior Japanese officers from war crimes trials in order to obtain Unit 731's files. It took me a long time to finally reach the conclusion that doing so was the best option. Stalin's Fist is based upon proposed technology. Biological warfare was a real threat during the Cold War. The Soviet Union and the U.S. had large stockpiles of biological agents and delivery systems. Spreading a virus as described in the story is possible. I thought basing the story on an ancient ship was clever. One commenter noticed that the chief terrorist's wife changed from Heidi to Susan in Chapter 33. Unless you have written a book, it is difficult to understand how this can happen. Sometimes the author or editor decides to change a character's name. Using global search and replace, changing the name is easy--unless you decided to replace a chapter with one from an earlier draft that had the old name. Ooops. I was ready to send the manuscript of my second novel to the publisher, after numerous rereads and reviews by others. I happen to notice that I had reversed the names of two characters in a chapter. I caught the mistake while looking for something else. Plague Ship is a great adventure read. I am waiting for the authors' next one.

A work of art!

Cussler does it again. The total idea of a merchant ship called the Oregon that is actually a futuristic modernized boat is fantastic. Typical Sussler entertainment, some history, some story and that abililty to write that makes the reader not put the book down!

Another wonderful installment...

I love reading the Oregon Files. I haven't been disappointed by one yet. This book has all of the favorite characters and their quirks. Very entertaining and fast paced. These books make for a great plot line in the Cussler universe. I would recommend this and all of the other Oregon installments to any adventure reader. I can't wait unitl the next one...

Best in the Oregon Series

Cussler's Oregon novels have been uneven at best. However, those books "co-written" by Jack DuBrul have been consistently superior. This one is easily the best. I couldn't put it down--fast moving, excellent character development, and a nice twist on the "archvillain trying to take over the world" theme. If you haven't read DuBrul's Philip Mercer series, those books are also great.

Yet another home run for Cussler & DuBrul

Before I begin my review, I want to rant a bit here: When are the publishers (and Clive) going to give Jack DuBrul credit for the MAJORITY of the work done on these novels? (same goes for Paul Kemprecos on the NUMA Files books) Sure, Clive may come up with the storylines, but the writing is PURE DuBrul. He is the single reason why the Oregon Files novels have been resurrected from certain death after Craig Dirgo virtually put the 1st two books on life-support. Let's give credit where it is so very deserved to be: squarely on Jack's shoulders. Okay, enough of the soap box...how is the book, you ask? Even better than Skeleton Coast, which was better than Dark Watch, which was INFINITELY better than Sacred Stone, the last book co-authored by Dirgo (thanks again Clive for making the choice to dump Dirgo for DuBrul). This one really takes Clive's patented storytelling to heart. The opening of the book from deep within World War II and the discovery of something rather surprising, to the opening of the story where Juan Cabrillo and his intrepid group of Do Good mercenaries attempt to hijack some Russian designed super-torpedoes in the heart of Iran and the eventual discovery of an apparently abandoned cruise ship on the high seas just ripe to claim as their own after exercising international law. Only this ship, as you can tell from the cover of the book is in for a bit of a shock--literally. We learn the cruise ship was chartered by a group called Responsivists, a VERY similar-to-Scientology religion that exhorts that we are breeding ourselves to death and encourages people to sterilize themselves in order to get a handle on world over-population...they even have a group of doctors that'll do it just as soon as you make the choice. Rather extreme don't you think? Well of course it is, otherwise we wouldn't hate the organization enough to want to see their eventual downfall which we KNOW is coming by books end. This time, one of Juan's crew is directly affected when he discovers his son has fallen victim to the Responsivists Preaching and joins the cult. They hire the worlds best-known and successful Responsivist DE-Programmer to help them as they hatch a plan to kidnap the boy and set him straight with extreme therepy prejudice. All does not go as planned (as one would expect) and this is where the action really heats up. We even see a run through some rather narrow straights with the Oregon herself which if ever put on the big screen would make it one of the most talked about visuals you'd ever see. Not surprisingly the Responsivists are up to some rather disturbing plans, one that has global consequences, and Juan and the crew of the Oregon are thankfully in the right place at the right time to take action. Let's face it, there were few surprises to be had within the pages of Plague Ship (or pretty much any Cussler/DuBrul novel for that matter) but that isn't the reason why we read them. We crack open a Cussler/DuBrul novel beca