The Storm

By 

Clive Cussler,

 

Graham Brown

My Rating: 5/5

Genre: Adventure, Sci Fi

Finished on: 8th June, 2021

The Storm

By Clive Cussler and Graham Brown

This was my first book from the authors Clive Cussler and Graham Brown, and this was one of those books I bought randomly having no context of the genre, and didn't once regret!

I had not tried Adventure books before, but once I finished this one, I planned to give all the others a try, this one was that great :D

Although this is fictional, I'm not even sure if half the adventurous stuff performed could be done in reality, but nevertheless I thoroughly enjoyed them all. And even the characters :'D

Let's dive in. 

____________

This book started with a prologue, which didn't make much sense in the beginning. 

It's the year 1943, and Captain Alan Pickett is trying to make his ship survive as the captain doesn't want the enemies to take over the cargo they are carrying, but the enemies around are trying hard to make it impossible for the ship to survive. There isn't much in the Prologue, just that the ship was badly injured, all crewmen lay dead save for Captain Alan Pickett. And in the end, the enemies (the Japanese) report that ship was burning yes, but also sailing in full power. And she was never seen or heard from again.

The significance of this prologue is not known.. at least not yet.

Now, It's the year 1967, the month of August. Northern Yemen.

We are introduced with the character of Jinn Al-Khalif, son of Tariq Al-Khalif. And also their companion/advisor Sabah.

Tariq returns home to find his family slaughtered by the bandits who invaded to steal from them and were still hiding around when they returned. In a fit if rage he kills them one by one, and poor kid Jinn was witnessing it all. One last bandit was escaping away, and Tariq wanted his son to take that shot. The poor kid was shocked and trembled, how can HE kill someone?

Tariq reminds how he'll be avenging the death of his mother and entire family. And how the future of the clan now rests with him. That pity and generosity won't get him anywhere.

Jinn is hesitant at first, but then, he takes the shot. And his hands don't tremble anymore.

(And this is how young innocent children are indoctrinated and turned into an evil version of themselves which they never would have become.)

Now we come to the main part in the book which starts it all.

June 2012, Indian Ocean.

Kimo A'kona, Perry Halverson, Thalia Quivaros are given an assignment to assess the water in the Indian Ocean. They find some anomalies, the water is unusually cold at this time of the year. What's causing it? What's happening around?

The following turn of events were nothing short of a super thriller/horror movie for me. Post this I decided this is going to be a book I'll definitely enjoy.

While these three were discussing the anomalies, suddenly they notice an oil like substance in the water. Little did they realise it was a looming death approaching towards them.

The oil like substance wasn't oil, if it was it wouldn't have been able to approach their boat, climb and reach towards where they sat.

They couldn't figure out what it was, you could almost tell it's pitch black water flowing towards them. But it wasn't that. It definitely wasn't that. All three were alarmed, whatever it was, they knew they have to stay away from it.

As the thing crawled towards them, they climbed on a table and tried to make their up and reach the top of the boat. It was almost like that black substance in spiderman 3, except in that it was a small substance multiplying and expanding itself, and in this one it was a whole blanket of something black and dangerous.

Perry Halverson wasn't fast enough, the thing reached him, and the other two witnessed a what you'd call a horrifying death. Those things were so minute, they penetrated inside whatever opening they found in Halverson. They pierced his eyes, ears, nose, probably went through his fingernail and what not. 

The other two saw Halverson writhing for few minutes and then.. he went still. This scene was enough for them to know they have to run for their lives.

I wish I could tell you this had a happy ending, but unfortunately it didn't.

They didn't have a proper escape plan. Those things/creatures surrounded them, their entire boat, and even the water surrounding the boat. Even jumping in the water wasn't a choice. They reached the top and just hoped they have some time to think of a plan, but they didn't. While Kimo tried thinking of something, Thalia slipped and Kimo could hear Thalia's screams and then muffled sounds which could only mean she's having seizures. They took her too.

Kimo realised even he doesn't have much time. He looks at his surroundings, and assesses what all he has. A short while later, he finds a way to set the boat on fire, while fully realizing that'll be setting himself on fire too.

If he's going to die.. he might as well take some of them down with him.

Honestly. This chapter was enough for me to believe this is going to be a great book. What even was thaaat? I could picture the entire scenarios fully and trust me, I wouldn't ever want to be in their position ever.

What even were those? Why were they attacked?

We'll find out soon enough.

With this crazy incident, now the main characters come.

Meet Kurt Austin. He gets a call from Dirk Pitt and he was briefed about what happens and what his mission would be. His crew would be his best buddy Joe Zavala, Paul and Gamay Trout. 

Kurt Austin and Joe Zavala are the duo who are going to — spoiler alert!! — save the world in a coolest way possible.

Also remember Jinn? From the year 1967?

Now in present time he's all grown up and has replaced his father in.. whatever operations they had been owning. Apparently now Jinn has a project, and he needs wealthy investors to invest in his project so that it gets kicked off. Some of them are Xhou, Mustafa, Alhrama. 

There is nothing much to comprehend at this point, but these names would be brought up later.

So back to Kurt and his crew. They go to Maldives to inspect the accident, as that's the place closest to the accident site. The places where they visit are - Hulhulé and Malé.

The team is trying to figure out what could have caused the accident. Was it accident or the boat was set on fire on purpose? And if so, then why?

So many questions.

Amidst all this, Kurt notices a girl eyeing them, almost looked like she's spying on them. And the moment she realised she was caught snooping around, she tries to retreat and ends up getting kidnapped by two goons. A little action scene happens where Kurt chases them and saves her (chases them on a scooter, btw!). Who were those two goons and why she was kidnapped is not known, as they escape away. But we come to know who this woman is.

Leilani Tanner. And she's half sister of Kimo A'Kona.

So naturally she's angry about her brother dying, and she knoows it wasn't just an unfortunate accident. There's something more, and something which everyone is missing.

And soon enough we can start making some guesses as we get some more insight on Jinn and his project.

I had been thinking in the beginning, the swarm of insects grouping together and attacking the boat was too unrealistic. I mean how is it even possible? It made much more sense after finding out those were not insects at all but they were microbots.

So tiny, so tiny, that it's hard to see a single one with your naked eye. And that's how they were being operated on too. The controller of the bots can do pretty much whatever they want with it.

Use it for some good or make it a very powerful weapon in possession.

And this is Jinn's project, with which he plans to make use of the bots to change the weather coarse, so that the dry countries would benefit from the countries which will be facing drought as a consequence of bot's actions. And in order to make this work, you need money. From investors.

Here we get to see the terrorist side of Jinn.

It's no surprise to find out the two people who got away after a failed attempt to kidnap Leilani were nothing but Jinn's men. And here we find out the main target was NOT Leilani but Kurt himself. Naturally because now he'll be investigating the accident and it might eventually lead to Jinn which he doesn't want.

So after the failed attention to kidnap Kurt, Jinn wasn't happy, so he executes them by making them fall to their death inside a very deep well.

And not just that. One of the investors, Aziz from Egypt, decided not to partake in this project and refused to invest. Jinn considered the rejection as betrayal, as 'refusing' should not have been a choice. So the angry Jinn decides to take avenge on not just Aziz but entire Egypt. Using his bots he plans to destroy one of the largest (and un-breachable) dams located there and flood the entire place.

How crazy can this guy get now. :|

Meanwhile here, Kurt's team does a pretty good job in their investigation. From the microscopic samples taken from the burnt boat, they find out about the microbots and that leads them to the very man himself who apparently designed those bots.

Elwood Marchetti.

They couldn't directly link this to Jinn, at least not yet. So we'll find out how Marchetti is connected to Jinn now. And locating him wasn't easy as he lives in an island, and that too his very own mobile island. Which doesn't stay in one place.

I found that so cool tbh.

It wasn't hard for the team to track him down though. But getting in the island part was funny.

They asked to enter nicely first. Got a denial. So they pretended their engine crashed and they need to do emergency landing and as per protocol they can't be stopped.. and well, how clever 🤭

So they are inside and here things get interesting.

First off, the island has a name - Aqua Terra. Wow again.

There's an attorney - Blake Matson, who doesn't like their presence on the island at all. And there's Otero - the head programmer who has programmed all the robots present on the island. Yes, the island has no human labor at all. It is entirely operated by robots.

Wow, again x3

So they converse with Marchetti (privately, thankfully) and find out he's innocent after all. His design of microbots was supposed to be for a very useful cause, but that got rejected and hasn't been brought up again. He was surprised and refused to believe someone has already started making use of them until he was made to see the microscopic samples. And thaaat made him believe - yes, those are HIS bots after all 🤯

So if he's innocent, then how did his creation get in the hands of Jinn?

No surprise there, who else could it be?

Of course it has to be Otero, the programmer. Apart from Marchetti he was the one well aware of the design of those bots. And sure enough, few pages later we see Otero and Matson discussing the same. So basically Jinn has easily bribed Otero, which is why he must have readily sold out the design which could now be a potential threat to the entire planet.

Sigh. Oh you Otero.

Also no wonder Matson was so displeased when they landed! Makes sense now. He's worried because now they are one step closer to reaching them and connecting them to Jinn. Although Otero reassures they might never find out about it. They'll have to track down Jinn for that, and there's no proof about them ditching Marchetti and siding with Jinn now, is there?

While telling this all, Otero mentions where Jinn is really from - Yemen.

This information is not really relevant, but yeah.

Now on the other hand, remember the meeting Jinn had with some elites, aka investors? Well, one of them has realized Jinn could be a threat to them all in the future, so he tries brainwashing Jinn's right hand man a.k.a Sabah. Now, did that work? 

We'll find out soon enough.

So in the investigation, Paul and Gamay are on board too. Dirk Pitt gives them the info they got related to Jinn. They divide their tasks, Joe & Kurt go to Yemen meanwhile Paul and Gamay must stay and study the microbots. In order to study them, they would need more samples of it. So they fly over the water surface, hoping to find something.

While they were at it, Paul almost lost his life as he was determined to lean deeper to get some good samples from the water, and it was the oh-so-perfect timing for their  flying ship to tilt last minute making it very much possible for Paul to easily fall off. Had his wife not pulled and saved him on time, well.. he was lunch for the microbots.

"Paul Trout, if you ever do something like that again, it will be the death of me"

"And me", he replied.

Pun intended? 😂

Coming back to focus on Jinn a bit, it is soon revealed that Sabah would never betray Jinn after all. And now that Sabah knows Mustafa is against Jinn, they plot revenge against him.

And trust me, it's not good.

We see the revenge through the eyes of Kurt and Joe who have successfully landed on Yemen and nicely made their way past all the guard without getting noticed by any! *slow claps*

They hide in some corner and notice that preparation of a demonstration of some kind is going on. They could feel it in their bones, whatever they are about to see, is not good.

They see a similar model of Aswan High Dam placed in a room. When everyone were gathered, Jinn demonstrated how his microbots devour down the entire dam. I mean, entirree dam, and it is no small dam. Naturally everyone are thrilled to know what his bots are capable of. Jinn says this model collapsed within minutes. The real structure would be down in mere hours.

And while he was at it, and before Mustafa  could execute his failure plan, Sabah reveals his nature to Mustafa, and he and Jinn both lock Mustafa in the room, and well. You know.

The next you hear is loud bangs, screams, gurgle and silence. 

Kurt and Joe watch how the water from the model dam has turned all red.

As ominous as this sounds, it doesn't end here. We're barely done with half of the book that we come across a twist.

I had been wondering all this time, so much has happened, they found Jinn here, and there they have found the bots. It's easy to determine how bots function and possibly how to end them. And it'd be easy to take down Jinn here too (Well, they are heroes, aren't they?), and the book could very much end in another 20 pages.

What even is the rest 50% of the book about?

Well, well, well. The author has not disappointed me at all!

The twist which I'm talking about has personally shocked me. 

Kurt and Joe notice an imprisoned women near them. And her description matches exactly with Kimo A'Kona. Which could only mean she's the real sister of Kimo. She's the reaal Leilani.

Which means, Leilani back there with Paul and Gamay is an imposter. And her name is Zarrina.

I repeat, all this had been jusst 41% of the book. xD

Who is this Zarrina? Daughter? Sister? What is she to Jinn and-

Well, let's give it a rest. We WILL find out if we continue further in the story.

Here the Trouts couple with Marchetti were trying to understand what the purpose of bots could be. There Kurt and Joe were brutally getting tortured. And I mean, brutallyyy. *shudders*

They started with beating them up mercilessly. Then starving them for the entire day, depriving them of even a drop of water and let me remind you, that place is HOT as hell there.

And as if that wasn't enough, they were taken outside, tied and dragged around the desert. And when Jinn was done with them (finally), he decides to execute them. How? By throwing them off the well.

Reading all this you might think they might have regretted coming on this mission, but ha no, even at this point their sense of humor didn't drop one bit. Their determination remained intact.

While they were being pushed down the well, they fought even at that point and took down with them two of the guards (I think? At least that's what I remember. Apologies if I'm wrong! xD)

But the point is, are they even human?!

You might think after falling down in a WELL, at least that might crush their sprit, (along with their bodies I mean). But, no, here is our Kurt making jokes about his back getting hurt after that fall.

First of all.. How did you both not die? Are you both made up of cotton or something?

Second of all, HOW do you find the determination to keep going on after all you've been through??!

That's right. One might just give up and hope to die. And here they both were already up and planning how they can come out. And you know how they do? By having their backs together, and with the help of their legs, taking support of the wall and climbing up! 

Imagine the stress on your entire body while you do that. And imagine the fear. What if you aren't in sync with the other? One wrong step and down you go and restart all over again.

All those gym sessions might have paid off, to be honest.

And no wonder they don't hesitate to embark on an adventure.

Over there Marchetti is almost cracking the case. He and Gamay even discussed one theory, the details of which I do not currently remember, but we were taught a bit of geography here. We learned Volcano eruption causes the atmosphere to cool down? I mean wow. I didn't know that. And so they had been comparing that behavior with this one, where somehow the bots are responsible for the temperature change in the water.  

And now that they seem to be close to cracking the case, things can't all be too well now, can they?

Suddenly the engine is on fire. And ofc it could be our dearest Leilani who is responsible here and no one is suspecting her. Engine is on fire and Paul volunteers to go and fix it. Gamay's heart sinks. 

Idk I'm having such an odd feeling. Remember that one line in which Gamay thinks she would not find anyone else whom she'll love as much as she does to Paul. Now whyy was that mentioned? Is anything going to happen to him? 😭 I hope not! 😭

So they go to fix and things don't seem to be too well. The Robots are down, fire is too much, they'll need to activate something called Halon which will trap them inside while cooling off the entire place. They'll be trapped inside for only 10 minutes though, but the problem here is they are low on oxygen too. Marchetti got injured while trying to fight the fire, and now they are only left with the Halon option. 

They activate it, and time is running out. Oh Paul, please stay alive :(

And here our dearest Leilani reveals herself, finally. She gets Marchetti and Paul out safely, as she has Otero in her control. But ofc not without a catch. She has an ulterior motive, we don't know what it is yet.

Focusing back on our adventurous heroes, Kurt and Joe manage to take darkness as their help and disguise themselves as workers and roam around. They were almost planning their escape together when they caught sight of Leilani (the real one). Kurt couldn't just stand there and see Leilani get kidnapped by Jinn. So they decide to split, the rarest of occasions when they are splitting and going different paths on an adventure. One is going to rescue Leilani and the other will try informing NUMA about all of this chaos.

And their sense of humour doesn't leave even till point. Kurt is so chill 😂🤦🏻‍♀️

The two men stared at each other for a moment, friends who'd bailed each other out of countless scrapes. Splitting up went against every instinct in their hearts. 'Fight together, survive together', they'd often said. But in this case it would mean abandoning a young woman to a terrible fate or cutting in half their chances to alert the world and their friends of pending danger. The stakes were too high for that."

‌"Vaya con Dios, my friend"

And thus, they part their own ways, for their own missions.

Initially Joie had been on a truck, he later realised he's on a boat. Meanwhile there Kurt takes over one of the jet in which Leilani was being carried (or transported?). It took a while for Kurt to realize that they are heading towards Aqua Terra.

So basically here some action begins. He fights, almost fails, fights again. Through Radio, Jinn realizes that it is Kurt who is in one of the jets, and obviously tries to take him down. And he even does, the jet blasts off and there's no chance Kurt should have survived that.

But he is a protagonist here, and the book still has lots of pages, so.. he does. :P

He ejects from the jet moments before it blasted, and they are on a boat now. But, a sinking one.

Coming to Aqua Terra, since Jinn is already there, needless to tell that the Trouts are held hostage. Jinn shows them how he has accelerated the process to speed things up, to destroy the world through his bots. To take over the world and be the ultimate Monarch he wants to be.

He reveals that the world will have to bow down on their knees before him, as they can't even kill him. If he dies, the horde of bots would kill the entire world. Proper villain now, isn't he?

So basically, these bots by controlling the temperature, are also somehow controlling the climate. With this unpredicted disbalance in the atmospheric temperature, it's bound to cause some rains.

‌Now with the accelerated process, they are waiting for a storm.. 

Wait, storm?

STORM.

The title is finally here. At 71.2% of the book.

And if this wasn't already mentioned before.. this is how the storm is going to create chaos, floods in some areas, drought in the others, all in control of Jinn.

So when there won't be any chance of growing crops to survive, the world will have to bow down or crawl towards Jinn to beg and survive. That's his plan. Yep.

In the prison, Marchetti and Trouts are trying to come up with a plan to get out of this mess. Marchetti feels guilty as his creation is causing all this trouble. There's an amazing line which he tells

"Sorry", he finally said. "Denial is my favourite coping mechanism. When you have a billion dollars, problems have a way of disappearing if you ignore them long enough"

And they also discuss how storms actually happen and stuff, I learnt so much that suddenly I'm interested in geography again! ❤️

It was cool.

So coming to Kurt again, he is in that sinking boat and he hires Ishmael (the guard from the Jet who Kurt realizes is a kid being a puppet for Jinn) to do the job of throwing out whatever water which is coming in.

And at this point comes a very interesting part. I almost wished this book gets turned into a movie just so that I can watch this scene.

Jinn is trying to demonstrate how he is going to accelerate the process, right? So the plan is for the bots to form a reflective later around them so that whatever light we are getting from the sun, is reflected off and nothing gets absorbed by the water.

As Marchetti and the Trouts watch from the ship, it was almost ethereal. They had to turn their heads away because the reflecting light/sparkles was almost blinding them. Although this looked like a beautiful magic show, they couldn't smile as they are simply witnessing the accelerated process of destruction of the world.

Except for Jinn, ofc. He was enjoying every bit of it.

And thiss wasn't the interesting part! There in the boat, as they were trying to survive from the sinking boat, they notice that all three were sparkling too!

This means they ACTUALLY have bots on them which them all sparkly sparkly in seconds, wow!

And I have no idea how Kurt and Leilani were not much bothered by it.

Just imagine, what if they were programmed to do something else? Something bad?

They were all.. gone. Just gone.

But yeah, nvm. They finally find some land and head towards that place. But the moment they reach there, they find it to be Aboriginal Australian land called Pickett's island. And now they are under arrest by its people.

The person who arrested them, his name is 18th of Roosevelt, Tautog. And they have a sort of tragic story themselves where they expect (or awaited) to be part of some war which ended decades ago.

‌Captain Pickett and Sergeant Watkins.

Now remember our prologue?

The Captain Alan Pickett who did his best to make his ship survive back in 1943?

Looks like he did. He found this island and now it's name The Pickett's Island. And the people living in it, as taught my Captain, had been waiting all prepared for the enemy to come and to protect themselves and the treasure they have from the enemies.

But I won't dwell much on this part of the story as soon Kurt will charm his way out and they all befriend them. 

At this point we also learn about "El Niño La Niña effect". It's the same theory we talked about where one part will be incessant flooding whereas the other part will be incessant drought. We have a name for that and it is "El Niño La Niña effect"

Although why it is called this, I'm not sure. As after learning a bit of Spanish I know it stands for "The little boy, the little girl" :P

Anyway, so the people living on the island learn about Jinn's plan, and they have a plan themselves too. Apparently a device which was given to them during the world war 2, to be used on anyone who might come on the island to invade.. but they never got the chance to do so. 

They called it a very dangerous weapon. The Pain Maker.

Any guesses as to what it could be?

It was a Sound Weapon! 

An interesting one, apparently there won't be any sound or gun shot or any such thing. There will be just sound waves, so intense, that you can't move any step forward without crashing down. 

And yes, Kurt made them experiment it on Kurt, maybe he wanted to be punished for something. 🤷🏻‍♀️

But the plan is set, they are ready to accompany Kurt and treat this battle as their own World War they have been waiting to fight for so long!

And this Pain Maker is going to be their secret weapon.

Meanwhile Joee, how could we not focus on Joe. The path which he took, in the hopes of going out there and warning NUMA, ends up in Egypt. The very same Egypt which Jinn had plans of destroying.

When Joe realizes this, he does his best warning people there, but nobody pays him any heed. :(

And when Major Hassan Edo takes him to the dam to prove there is nothing wrong, it could already be to late. 

Both Joe and Kurt are trying to save the day. For Joe, the major almost doesn't believe it unless they actually witness the breach in the dam. 

Was it too late? It could have been had the supervisor not given the Ultra Set workaround which could potentially block the breach. They get started, on evacuating as many people as they can, and also forming a plan which can save the day.

And I tell you how unbelievable Kurt and Joe are when it comes to life threatening missions? So Joe obviously volunteers to go down there and execute the Ultra Set workaround, while the supervisor and people up there are asking him to 'hurry up', Joe responds

"I'm not exactly having a lunch break down here" 

😂

I mean, he IS right here. Just cut him some slack and let him do his job, okay? He is putting his own life on the line too.

And over there Kurt is trying to save the world. He now has the people from Pickett's island to side with him. So he easily takes over the island, with the help of their Pain Maker too.

Now that Jinn has seen that he is sort of outnumbered, he does the very one thing which will make him feel like he has won.

He activates the Doomsday Code. Which will instantly make every single bot in existence to abort their mission and just go around and devour any human they find. That includes Jinn himself.

And he kills Otero and destroys his laptop moments after activating the code, so that there should be no way to deactivate it.

Typical. What made you think Jinn will be considerate towards you, Otero?

Siding all this time only to be abruptly killed in the end? Huh. 🤷🏻‍♀️

So yeah, Kurt, like the hero he is, asks everyone to leave while he stays to battle Jinn. The typical battle which any adventurous movie/book MUST have. Here Jinn didn't even spare Zarrina when she was trying to be reasonable one. Ofcourse she is smart enough to realize the bots are not going spare her too. She could hear the gurgling sounds from below (as the bots started eating their way up) and didn't want it to be hers next. So she tried reasoning with Jinn, to give in and hand over the passcode to Kurt for deactivating, only... to be pushed off the building 😂

Sorry for laughing, but I mean, all these people who supported him, died for nothing. They died for a man who doesn't care two hoots about them! But I shouldn't be the one caring now, Jinn should.

And he does. You want to ask when? Good question.

When those bots were not only just on his body, but when they had started penetrating inside his eyes and skin pores and when he started feeling the pain, that's when he gave in. I must say, he is one determined one. Almost let himself die a horrible death than surrender.

But sadly, before they could arrest him or hand him over to the authorities, Jinn says this is not the life he would like to live. And.. jumps off the building.

He wanted exactly that though, to die rather than surrender, difference here is he would prefer an easy death than a gruesome one.

Fair enough. 🤷🏻‍♀️ (This is becoming my emoji of the review)

Soo yeah! Kurt saves the day.

And there Joe saves the day too, Oh Joe ❤️

He manages to successfully accomplish what they have planned and saved the dam from collapsing completely.

Although still 10k lives were lost. But that's better than the millions it would have been.

So ‌Jinn kills himself. Sabah is killed. Jinn's base is bombed.. and they have dinner at the end. Jinn is anonymously praised across the country. All ends well, happy ending :)

Just an extra addition to this review.. so since Kurt has saved Leilani, it was apparent that he is developing slight feelings for her. So he indirectly tries to find out if she would be available to see him. And she subtly denies his ways. 

And he goes ahead and asks

"What's his name?"

Ahh 😆It's Kale Luka, btw. In case you were wondering.

—————————————————

So yeah, this book was one roller coaster ride for me. A proper adventurous one I thoroughly enjoyed every bit.

So much had happened only for me to realize I'm only half way through!

Kurt and Joe's sense of humour throughout their adventures made it even more enjoyable.

Will be looking forward to embarking many such adventures with them :')

Quote from the book:

"Denial is my favourite coping mechanism. When you have a billion dollars, problems have a way of disappearing if you ignore them long enough"

Words: 5585

Chars: 30176