Valhalla Rising

Infobox Book |
name = Valhalla Rising


image_caption = 1st Edition Hardcover
author = Clive Cussler
cover_artist = Lawrence Ratzkin
country = United States
language = English
series = Dirk Pitt Novels
genre = Adventure; Techno-thriller
publisher = G.P. Putnam’s Sons
release_date = August 13, 2001 1st Edition Hardcover
media_type = Print (Hardcover)
pages = 531 (Hardcover edition)
isbn = ISBN 0-399-14787-X
preceded_by = Atlantis Found
followed_by = Trojan Odyssey

"Valhalla Rising" is a 2001 Clive Cussler book in the Dirk Pitt series.

Plot summary

Dirk Pitt has to stop an evil CEO of an oil and natural gas company in the US from establishing absolute monopoly over oil resources and supplies. It is a typical Dirk Pitt novel dealing with a countdown, bribed officials, and ruthless evil leaders. Pitt also unravels the work of a brilliant, reclusive scientist who had made great advances in oil technology, traced the history and found the remains of a Viking settlement on the Hudson River, and discovered the remains of Captain Nemo's "Nautilus" and unriddled and improved its power system (a magnetohydrodynamic engine). In the end Dirk is approached by his 23-year old twin children and finds out from them that his former lover Summer hadn't actually died in an underwater earthquake (as Dirk had believed) but had survived and raised the kids herself because she didn't want Dirk to know about her injured and pathetic state after the earthquake.

Goofs

In chapter 12, one of the NUMA scientists claims the "Titanic" to have broken apart while she sank. In reality this was the case. However, in Cussler's bestselling novel, "Raise the Titanic!" Dirk Pitt not only found the ship to be in one piece, but was able to raise her to the surface and have her towed to New York Harbor. Of course "Raise the Titanic!" was written long before the real "Titanic" was discovered; the author couldn't have known about the ship's poor condition on the sea floor. Nevertheless, the storyline in "Valhalla Rising" deviates from previous Dirk Pitt novels. The matter is complicated further in his next Pitt novel, "Trojan Odyssey", which makes reference to Pitt's raising of the "Titanic".

In the "Monster of the Deep" section, the wooden-hulled warship Kearsarge is in the Caribbean Sea on voyage from Haiti to Nicaragua when she is attacked by an underwater mechanical monster. As the ship is taking on water, Captain Leigh Hunt orders her turned toward a "coral reef" which his First Officer, Lieutenant James Ellis, having "checked the charts", identifies as Roncador Reef. The error is that Roncador Reef is not in the Caribbean Sea, rather it is located in the South Pacific Ocean near the Solomon Islands. The "Kearsage" was wrecked on a reef off Roncador Cay, off the coast of Nicaragua.

On page 390 a plan is being hatched to send a large crude carrier into a US harbour for destruction, the name of the ship is mentioned as "Pacific Chimera"cite book
last =Cussler
first =Clive
authorlink =
coauthors =
title =Valhalla Rising
publisher =
date =
location =
pages =390, 415, 416
url =
doi =
id =039914787X] , however from pages 433 onwards the name changes to "Pacific Trojan".

References