Spartan Gold, Clive Cussler

Spartan Gold, by Clive Cussler

This book was a happy find when my manager at work loaned it to me. I've said it once, I'll say it again, recommend, lend, or mention a book, I will read it!!!!! I love getting new reads from people. Anything and everything, people! I read it all!!! Anyways, I digress...

This was an awesome, amazing, couldn't put it down, action/adventure book. It follows married couple Sam and Remi Fargo, treasure hunters, on a whirl wind adventure. This is also a historical fiction book, so there are lots of little historical nuggets about Napoleon's lost treasure, Greek history (Delphi and lost Greek statues made of pure gold...), Persian history (focused on Xerxes the Great, a very kick ass dude, until he died, at least) and all that is brought together by the power hungry Persian Bondaruk who is OBSESSED with all this stuff because he thinks he is a direct descendant of Xerxes himself.

Sam And Remi are vacationing and happen to find a shard of a wine bottle that kick starts their journey of finding Napoleon's lost treasure, a convoluted treasure hunt with secret codes that the Fargo's research team flawlessly decode. Bondaruk catches wind of these finds and tries to threaten the Fargo's to give up the search. When that doesn't work, he just uses them to continue his search. What really cracks me up about these two, the Fargo's, is that they will literally have just gotten gunned down, and then in the next scene they are getting deep tissue massages at the Four Seasons! Like nothing happened! Just another day, I guess!! But anyways, the Fargo's follow the trail of the wine bottles, and into Bondaruk's mansion to get the other bottle, and discover the bad guy's obsession with Persian history and weapons. They put the pieces together and figure out the whole Persian side to it, are lead to a cave, and BOOM, they find missing Greek statues made of pure gold (Napoleon's lost treasure). Just like that...

Well obviously not, there are of course huge cat and mouse chase scenes, car crashes, war wounds, etc.  Like is said, it was a pretty great action/adventure story, so getting to the treasure was just a fraction of the good stuff...

My only real complaint of this book was the ending. It was like Cussler was only given so many pages to write this story in, and such a fantastic story going, that he got to the last 10 pages and was like, Oh yea, this has to end like now. And that is pretty much how it did end. They got to the cave, had a shoot out with the bad guys, and then called in a chopper to pick em up, and they decided what their next adventure would be. It was just...to quick. I wish that there was just a little more closure, like what happened with the statues, the repercussions of Bondaruk and his men and his obsessive collection. It was all wrapped up very quickly in a neat and pretty bow, and I don't know, just wasn't the ideal way for it to end for me.

With that said, the next adventure, The Lost Empire, looks promising and I can't wait to start reading it!!!!!