<i>"Are you saying doomsday is less than two months away?" "Yaeger nodded solemnly. "Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying." </i> (p.276)

I'd never read Clive Cussler before, and just had a vague notion of him as 'one of those authors your dad picks up at the airport' types of writers. 

That was completely correct (*affectionate*). 'Atlantis Found' was a romp wherein Dirk Pitt ran around the globe being a badass, 'pew-pewing' with his neat little gun while a bunch of neo-Nazis 'pew-pewed' back with really big guns, and the whole thing culminates with him rescuing a team of 65 top American military servicemen from certain death at the hands of the would-be Fourth Reich. 

And also, the Nazis found Atlantis, something something they want to destroy the world to rebuild it in their own image because of this for...reasons? But who cares? We're just here to self-insert as Dirk Pitt while he runs amok as a good guy with a gun, beating back the ladies with a stick.

He's not some corporate stooge or a wimpy techie or a bougie elitist -- he's just a down to earth, no-nonsense <i>man</i> -- just like you. Probably. Maybe. You could be. Some of this 'I'm a simple man' schtick turned back around and was unintentionally very funny. Like, at one point he's out to dinner at a French restaurant with his senator girlfriend, and when the waiter comes over, this happens: "Pitt did not attempt to pronounce the menu courses in French. He held to straight English." (p.290) 

Another unintentionally funny thing was Cussler's writing of women in this novel. Specifically, the descriptions as various women are introduced. The introduction of 'Atlantis Found's' token girlie almost felt like satire: 

"Ambrose guessed her height at five feet eight inches, her weight at a solid 135 pounds. She was a pretty woman, not cute or strikingly beautiful, but he imagined she'd look very desirable when dressed in something more alluring than jeans and a mannish jacket." (p.39) 

Like, I'm sorry, but who describes someone like this? I feel like this is how you'd describe a horse or an alien. As I say: the objectification is so out there it turns back around and it's just funny. 

My favorite moment like this has to be later, though, when Dirk Pitt is investigating a U-boot that has just been sunk in Antarctica by the US military (don't worry about it) and he finds the body of a woman aboard this sunken vessel and describes her corpse this way: "What had once been a beautiful woman stared at him through wide, sightless, blue-gray eyes [...] She wore the standard Fourth Empire black jumpsuit, but its material was shredded, as though a giant cat had raked its claws across it [...] A finely contoured breast was exposed by the torn cloth." (p.219) 

Just...why? For whom is this in there? (I shudder to guess) 

Bizarre descriptions like these aside, the plot itself is pretty unhinged on its face in a way not unexpected for 'pew-pew' man-lit (to coin a phrase), but in some ways I feel like it wasn't unhinged enough. I got the sense that Cussler was restraining the plot somewhat by trying to ground it in reality. Like, buddy, your starting point is <i>Atlantis</i>; go nuts. But by trying to keep everything within the realm of possibility, he ended up making that entire segment of the plot pretty dull, which was a pity. 

The same could not be said for the Nazi plot, however. Unfettered imagination on that count. And everything about that was more enjoyable to read (in that dumb fun sort of way) as a result. Once we established that a saved vile of Hitler's sperm was involved in creating a race of super-Nazis I was in. Like: alright, let's go for a wild ride. 

Based on other reviews of this installment in the Dirk Pitt series, I get the impression that a lot of fans didn't really care for this one, but since I've nothing to compare it to, I can only say that it was...fine. Silly and absolutely not something that was aimed at me by any stretch of the imagination (I realized that for certain when he described this random grandmother-aged side-character as 'twenty pounds on the plump side'), but for what it was it was interesting in an ethnographic sort of way. 

And contrary to popular opinion, I thought it was adorable that Cussler self-inserted in the story and had the main characters call him 'dad'.