From Publishers Weekly
Adventure tales for boys (and girls) of all ages have no more vigorous champion today than Cussler, who has kept the spirit of Joe and Frank Hardy alive, albeit on a grander scale, in numerous bestsellers. This 17th Dirk Pitt extravaganza finds Cussler (literally, as he makes a cameo at book's end) and his entourage of paint-by-number characters in fine fettle, foiling a dastardly plot by outlandish villains to launch a new ice age, and at the same time demonstrating that the Achaeans were not Greeks but Celts, and that Troy was a town in what's now England. After a prelude set during the Trojan War, the novel proper starts with a roar, as a monstrous hurricane sweeps toward the Caribbean, endangering not only Pitt's twin son and daughter, engaged in undersea exploration, but also the Ocean Wanderer, a luxury floating hotel owned by a mysterious billionaire known as Specter. In a manly manner, Pitt and his longtime sidekick, Al Giordino, both of NUMA (the National Underwater and Marine Agency), save the hotel and Pitt's grown kids, but not before those kids discover a trove of underwater relics that indicate that the Celts, aka Achaeans, reached the New World millennia ago. And the Celts are still here, in the guise of a female Druidic cult linked to Specter and aiming for world domination by altering ocean currents via a vast underground mechanism in Nicaragua, which will plunge the earth into cold, then selling a new type of cheap fuel cell to supply needed heat. The action never flags, the heroics never halt and the bodies pile up as Pitt and Co. take on the villains; some big changes in Pitt's personal life close the book.Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From AudioFile
This is possibly the last in Cussler's series of Dirk Pitt adventures. Pitt and his sidekick, Al Giordino, investigate the origins of a black tide, rescue those caught in a mega-hurricane, and puzzle over artifacts unearthed by Pitt's twin son and daughter. Scott Brick is excellent at conveying the excitement that builds in each chapter as heroes battle villains in continuous action fraught with danger. Characters' voices are well drawn for the most part, though Brick's French accent leaves a little to be desired. There's not much suspense here as the good guys always win and the evil-doers are vanquished, but an enjoyable listen nevertheless. S.S.R. © AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

From Booklist
The latest Dirk Pitt thriller, like its 16 predecessors, is ready made for the big screen. (Let's hope it makes a better movie than 1980's Raise the Titanic, also based on a Pitt adventure, which gives you some idea of how long the series has been around.) A hurricane threatens an undersea resort hotel; meanwhile, Dirk Pitt's twin offspring are trapped at the bottom of the ocean in Pisces, an underwater laboratory. Oh, and Dirk himself swoops in to rescue the hotel, and its guests--but what about his children? Cussler has written a lot of seabound thrillers, and he clearly knows how to put one together to get maximum excitement from minimal material. Everything is done in shorthand, from the disaster-movie-plot setup to the characters and dialogue. There's the evil-named Specter, the man behind the hotel, "with a heart of cold stone." There are the twins, whose dialogue sounds like it was lifted from a Hardy Boys novel ("I want to take a closer look inside the cavern where I found the urn." "Can you find it in the dark?" "Like a fox to its lair"). In a nutshell, this novel offers precisely what readers have come to expect from a Dirk Pitt adventure: danger, heroics, villains, heroes. David Pitt
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"Long hailed as the grand master of adventure fiction, Clive Cussler has continued to astound with the intricate plotting and astonishing set pieces of his novels. Now, with a few surprising twists, he gives us his most audacious work yet." "At the end of Valhalla Rising, Dirk Pitt discovered, to his shock, that he had two grown children he had never known about, twenty-three-year-old fraternal twins born to a woman who he thought had died in an underwater earthquake. Both have inherited his love of the sea: the girl, Summer, a marine biologist; the boy, himself named Dirk, a marine engineer. And they are about to help their father in the adventure of a lifetime." "A brown tide is infesting the ocean off the shore of Nicaragua. The twins are working in a NUMA underwater enclosure, trying to determine its origin, when two startling things happen: Summer discovers an artifact, something strange and beautiful and ancient; and the worst storm in years boils up out of the sky, heading straight for them - and for a luxurious floating resort hotel square in its path." "The peril for everybody concerned is incalculable, and Pitt, Al Giordino, and the rest of the NUMA crew desperately rush to the rescue, but what they find in the storm's wake makes the furies of nature pale in comparison. For there is an all-too-human evil at work in that part of the world, and the tide is only a byproduct of its plan. Soon, the work will be complete - and the world will be a very different place." If Summer's discovery is to be believed, the world as we know it is already a very different place.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Adventure tales for boys (and girls) of all ages have no more vigorous champion today than Cussler, who has kept the spirit of Joe and Frank Hardy alive, albeit on a grander scale, in numerous bestsellers. This 17th Dirk Pitt extravaganza finds Cussler (literally, as he makes a cameo at book's end) and his entourage of paint-by-number characters in fine fettle, foiling a dastardly plot by outlandish villains to launch a new ice age, and at the same time demonstrating that the Achaeans were not Greeks but Celts, and that Troy was a town in what's now England. After a prelude set during the Trojan War, the novel proper starts with a roar, as a monstrous hurricane sweeps toward the Caribbean, endangering not only Pitt's twin son and daughter, engaged in undersea exploration, but also the Ocean Wanderer, a luxury floating hotel owned by a mysterious billionaire known as Specter. In a manly manner, Pitt and his longtime sidekick, Al Giordino, both of NUMA (the National Underwater and Marine Agency), save the hotel and Pitt's grown kids, but not before those kids discover a trove of underwater relics that indicate that the Celts, aka Achaeans, reached the New World millennia ago. And the Celts are still here, in the guise of a female Druidic cult linked to Specter and aiming for world domination by altering ocean currents via a vast underground mechanism in Nicaragua, which will plunge the earth into cold, then selling a new type of cheap fuel cell to supply needed heat. The action never flags, the heroics never halt and the bodies pile up as Pitt and Co. take on the villains; some big changes in Pitt's personal life close the book. Cussler's legions of fans are going to march into bookstores the day this title appears; expect whopping sales. 750,000 first printing; $750,000 ad/promo. (Nov.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

For the past 20 years or so, Cussler has produced one old-fashioned melodrama after another featuring the heroic Dirk Pitt and his faithful sidekick, Al Giordino. These novels are comfortably familiar: they begin with a story from the past (in this case, the Trojan War), switch to a modern-day megalomaniac determined to take over the world, and then place Dirk and Al in several "how-will-they-ever-get-out-of-this" situations that stimulate listeners' imaginations. Reader Scott Brick captures perfectly the blend of suspense and humor; his ability to verbalize the banter between Dirk and Al as they find themselves in adventure after adventure adds greatly to the enjoyment of this latest classic. For all public libraries.-Joseph L. Carlson, Allan Hancock Coll., Lompoc, CA Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

AudioFile

Dirk Pitt's two long-lost children are called in to help investigate a brown tide off the shore of Nicaragua. Their findings lead to a mysterious corporation with sinister plans and the possibility of finding the real location of Troy. The adventure is spiced by cliff-hangers, an evil organization worthy of a James Bond movie, and offbeat bits of humor—such as puns about two colleagues named Ford and Dodge. Ron McLarty gives the story a straightforward, tough-guy narration that moves briskly. The novel is a transition, setting up changes in Pitt's life and bringing in a new generation of adventurers. TROJAN ODYSSEY delivers excitement throughout. J.A.S. © AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews