Rating: 
Summary: A fun ride beginning to end!
Review: After reading some of the reviews here, I think we must not be reading the same book. I agree with the quote from Clive Cussler on the book's jacket, "A page-turner with enough spellbinding intrigue to last until the authors' next tale." The story was fast; the characters and settings were
fascinating. The authors hooked me and didn't let me go until the end. I don't know what more someone could look for in a thriller.
Rating: 
Summary: page--turner
Review: After reading some of the reviews here, I think we must not be reading the same book. I agree with the quote from Clive Cussler on the book's jacket, "A page-turner with enough spellbinding intrigue to last until the authors' next tale." The story was fast; the characters and settings were
fascinating. The authors hooked me and didn't let me go until the end. I don't know what more someone could look for in a thriller.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing
Review: Being a fan of 3 of the 4 authors I had hoped for something more. Very choppy flow and an overall simplistic plot lead to a very week read. The ending is one of the worst I've come across in some time and leaves you completely unfulfilled.Don't let the names on the cover fool you, I imagine had they not been involved this manuscript never would have seen publication. Save your $$$ or spend it on better books.
Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: Being a fan of 3 of the 4 authors I had hoped for something more. Very choppy flow and an overall simplistic plot lead to a very week read. The ending is one of the worst I've come across in some time and leaves you completely unfulfilled. Don't let the names on the cover fool you, I imagine had they not been involved this manuscript never would have seen publication. Save your $$$ or spend it on better books.
Rating:
Summary: What a disappointment
Review: I had to search for this book after hearing about it and reading a glowing review. I couldn't wait to start it. But it was not worth my efforts. The characters are shallow and uninteresting. Their idea of a daredevil stunt is to swim from a ship to a dock with the possibility of a shark nearby. Big deal. And the artifact only appeared in a few pages at the beginning and end and had all the powers of a radish. What were the authors thinking?
Rating:
Summary: Probably one of the worst books I have ever read...
Review: I love F. Paul Wilson. His Repairman Jack novels are some of my favorite. I have read his collaboration works with Mathew J. Costello and enjoyed those. Kevin J. Anderson is another author I enjoy. And while I have never read Janet Berliner, this should have been a "can't miss" book, right? Wrong. It is absolutely terrible. I have been buying books from Amazon since it first had a web presence and have never returned a book because I didn't like it. I returned this one.
Usually in a collaborative work, the authors take pains to write such that you cannot tell where one author ends and another begins. Not so here. It is painfully obvious that different chapters are written by different authors. It even appears that when a change in author takes place that the new author often takes a drastic turn in the book by changing how you view a character or the entire direction the book appears to be headed. You develop empathy for someone and next chapter his/her personality changes. It is a book full of split-personality characters with passages that seem like they were written in haste by a junior high student.
The story had great potential, but the delivery and readability is just not there to pull you through the book. Don't waste your money here.
Rating:
Summary: A fun ride beginning to end!
Review: I'm no pro, but I can say this, this book was a fun read from beginning to end! I don't often read "adventure" type novels, and had a hard time putting this one down. Who am I to argue with Clive Cussler. Unlike many other reviewers, I knew none of the writer's and came to the book with no preconceived notions, other than a good recommendation from a friend. I am looking forward to the next adventure!
Rating:
Summary: fast-paced, action thriller
Review: Off the Venezuelan coast, local workers of Oilstar Drilling bore through an underwater ceiling leading to a cavern. They bring up four stones that seem not of this earth. CEO Frik Van Alman understands the ramifications of the finding once his lab concludes that the connecting of the stones along with a fifth one generates energy that will end oil dependency. Lab chief Paul Trujold worries that the avaricious Frik will do something harmful so he sends the stones to people he trusts like his daughter Selene, the leader of an ecological group protesting Oilstar's drilling that is destroying the ecosystem of Dragon's Mouth Channel. Frik is badly burned and Paul dies in a lab fire before the CEO learns what happened to the stones. Frantic to regain the missing stones and to find the fifth one, Frik secures the help of his thrill-seeking comrades of the Daredevils Club. Off of Venezuela, the risk-takers begin the adventure of a lifetime. ARTIFACT is a fast-paced, action thriller that never slows down as the story line moves faster than the speed of light. Frik is an interesting character with flaws that endanger the members of the Daredevils Club, who overall are heroic, but if readers want a deep character study they need to look elsewhere. Instead the writing quartet of Kevin J. Anderson, Janet Berliner, F. Paul Wilson, and Matthew Costello provides a one sitting, on the edge of your seat tale with critical alien elements but more a fabulous action thriller than a science fiction story. Harriet Klausner
Rating:
Summary: Pulpy Goodness
Review: There are certain things I demand of my summer reading. I want it to take me places I haven't been before, introduce me to characters whose adventures I want to hear more of, and, last but not least, blow stuff up real good. Artifact does all this, and then some. Written by four excellent authors (Janet Berliner, F. Paul Wilson, Matthew Costello and Kevin J. Anderson), it has the distinct feel of something that they all enjoyed writing. It's that kind of fast-paced fun, complete with a tough heroine, exotic locales, and an impromptu course in what to do if you get too close to a shark while scuba diving for pieces of an alien gizmo. (Hey, you never know) Artifact doesn't have a traditional slam-bang ending, which might confuse folks who are looking for something a little more Spielbergian, but the ending it does have satisfies and makes more character sense than any special effects extravaganza would have. That being said, there's still plenty of room for a sequel, and I definitely wouldn't mind learning what the Daredevil's Club does next.
Rating:
Summary: Thrilling action by four great authors
Review: This book is a lot of fun. Great characters involved in exciting adventures, with lots of twists and turns. The book opens with an introduction to the first adventure that leads to the creation of the Daredevils Club, as two of the three founding members, Fredrick "Frikkie" Van Alman and Ray Arno, and a young woman named Peta Whyte rescue the third member, Peta's mentor Arthur Marryshow, from a prison on Communist-controlled Grenada. Skipping forward seventeen years, the story picks up as oilman Frikkie's exploratory rig pulls up four strange objects from beneath the sea floor in the Dragon's Mouth, the narrow waterway between Venezuela and Trinidad. Those four stones, along with a fifth piece left underwater, may provide unlimited energy, a prospect that scares Frikkie who makes his millions selling fossil fuels. What follows is part treasure hunt and part mystery as the characters try to put together the artifact, without getting killed themselves. I can hardly wait until these four write another Daredevils Club book.
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