Medusa by Clive Cussler and Paul Kemprecos

MEDUSA-By Clive Cussler and Paul Kemprecos

Review by Ed Homa

MEDUSA by Clive Cussler and Paul Kemprecos is the eighth Kurt Austin novel in the NUMA Files series. Austin and his team make up the NUMA Special Assignments Team, trouble-shooters for Cussler’s National Underwater and Marine Agency.

Medusa opens with a prologue set on a whaling ship in the Pacific Ocean in 1848 and then moves to present-day China. As with all NUMA Files novels, the action quickly moves to locales all over the world and under the sea. In Chinac we learn that there is a new epidemic brewing and we know that Kurt Austin and NUMA will be playing a major role in unraveling the mystery.
Austin enters the book in Bermuda with his partner Joe Zavala reenacting a famous bathysphere expedition, quickly finds himself in harm's way, and is pulled into the adventure at hand.

Austin and Zavala must battle the dangerous virus; investigate the mystery of a strange jellyfish, the Blue Medusa; and battle a deadly Triad from China, all before the pandemic spreads throughout China and across the world. The action moves across the globe at lightning pace; from China to Bermuda to Florida to New England to Micronesia and back again. All the while, Austin and his newfound friends are in harm's way while looking for a solution to the threat of the virus, and searching for a stolen underwater laboratory.

I did have a few problems with the villains and the ending of the book but that didn’t stop my enjoyment of the novel. The action was fun and entertaining and the plot kept me interested the entire book. This is just the kind of book I look for as a summer read- fun, action-filled and entertaining!

Cussler and Kemprecos’s Kurt Austin and company are like an old pair of jeans, or a broken in pair of shoes; favorites, and once you put them on you don’t want to take them off. Kurt Austin has taken over Dirk Pitt’s spot as my favorite NUMA adventurer. This is the perfect book for the beach, the pool, or just kicking back on a summer day under a shady tree.