Book Review – Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child’s “The Ice Limit”
Last night I finished reading Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child’s science-fiction thriller, The Ice Limit.
The action and suspense continued building in the story until it reached this point where you just couldn’t put down the book. You’re forced to keep your eyes open as you continue turning the pages, trying to figure out what’s going to happen and which characters will survive in the end.
Such a first-class style of writing should be outlawed. People lose sleep when you’re forced to continue reading, trying to finish the book that night even if you have to sacrifice sleep time.
The Ice Limit is a story about a hunt for a meteorite that landed on an island on the southern tip of Chile near Cape Horn. Its location is in an unpopulated area home to some of the wildest weather both on land and out in sea. It’s a place where the brutality of nature constantly rules with an iron hand.
Set back in 2000, The Ice Limit begins with a meteorite hunter named Nestor Masangkay arriving on Isla Desolacion, an island off Chile’s southern coast near Cape Horn. Masangkay is on the hunt for a meteorite. He has the latest electronic equipment to aid him in his quest.
Sure enough, Masangkay analyzes the ground and finds what might be the impact point of the meteorite. He uses the equipment and locates the meteorite buried under the ground. Masangkay begins digging and soon reaches the rock from outer space. It’s bigger than he realized. Much bigger. The hunter has only uncovered a small portion of the meteorite. Excited for his incredible discovery, Masangkay reaches into the ground and touches his prize with his bare hand. The moment Masangkay touches the rock, he’s nearly vaporized in a blinding flash of light.
Fast forward a few months later.
Fellow meteorite hunter Sam McFarlane is out in the Kalahari Desert in Africa. Sam has finally gained the trust of the local bushmen and he’s in the process of teaching them to use metal detectors. The bushmen know the lay of the land, and Sam needs their help to try to find a meteorite that crashed in the desert eons ago.
Just as the bushmen are about to set off on the hunt, a helicopter arrives out of nowhere, sending the bushmen running for cover. Its passenger is Palmer Lloyd, a billionaire, collector of rare artifacts, and wannabe adventurer. Palmer needs Sam’s help for a sudden project, and as part of the fee for his assistance he’ll take care of Sam’s $250,000 debt that he owes to people. In addition to that he’ll pay him a rather generous sum of money.
Sam agrees to the job only after Palmer accepts Sam’s higher counteroffer for his fee. Sam and Palmer both return to Palmer’s headquarters in upstate New York.
It turns out that a local Yaghan native found Masangkay’s expensive equipment down on Isla Desolacion. News of the equipment, its location and its finder reached Palmer through his network of thousands of contacts. Palmer acquired Masangkay’s notebook, but he needs Sam to decipher it and analyze Masangkay’s notes, picking up where he left off. Sam McFarlane and Nestor Masangkay used to be partners in the fiercely competitive meteorite-hunting industry. There was a rift and the two men split, each heading off on their own.
Sam meets the rest of Palmer’s team in New York and analyzes the notes. Based on Masangkay’s research and findings, the meteorite on Isla Desolacion was one of a massive size. We’re talking the biggest meteorite in the world. It’s a rock so large and heavy that it’s going to require the best engineers and a massive oil tanker to bring it back to Palmer’s museum in New York.
That’s where Effective Engineering Solutions (EES) comes into play. Led by Eli Glinn, a former special forces soldier, EES is an expensive but extremely reputable company that finds solutions to problems. The company analyzes everything indirectly related to the project and creates solutions that guarantee 100% success. If the company cannot guarantee absolute success, then the company does not accept handling the project.
The trick for recovering the meteorite is that it’s currently buried underground on an island belonging to Chile. If the country caught wind of what Palmer was really doing, they’d shut down the operation and claim the meteorite themselves. With a prize this big, the operation of recovering the meteorite will have to be completed in absolute secrecy.
EES finds a solution and Palmer Lloyd accepts the contract from Eli Glinn. Additional members of the EES team include Rachel Amira, a brilliant mathematician, and Sally Britton, an out-of-work supertanker captain. Sally had an alcohol problem and it cost her captain position on a previous ship. Since that point none of the major shipping companys has wanted anything to do with her. EES studied the woman and found her to be extremely remorseful and very determined not to fail that way again. She was a perfect candidate to captain their oil tanker to and from Isla Desolacion.
The team set sail on the heavily modified and disguised oil tanker Rolvaag, and headed south on the long journey to Chile. Disguised as an old and weathered oil tanker, in reality the Rolvaag was a new ship and heavily modified with the latest equipment from military-grade radar and warning systems to weapons and communication equipment and special maneuvering thrusters. Inside the ship were luxurious accommodations that transformed the oil tanker into a four-star hotel.
In southern Chile, the team is forced to stop at a port and register themselves and their ship. Eli goes ashore with McFarlane and the ship’s captain, Britton, and they meet with the local Chilean officials. The team is posing as an iron ore mining company, and they bribe the officials to get the paperwork moving. The bribe doesn’t work that well and Eli is forced to “confess” that they’re really mining for gold. He bribes the officials with a small amount of gold which they gladly accept.
Commandante Vallenar, a Chilean naval officer stationed at the worst port in the country, overseas the meeting and is angered by his country’s officials accepting the bribe from the Americans. He vows to find out what they’re really doing in his country, especially in an area that does not normally attract mining companies.
While on shore, the team locates John Puppup, the Yaghan native who discovered the scientific equipment on Isla Desolacion. They carry his drunken body back to the Rolvaag and assign him a position with the team. Puppup is going to be their guide while on Isla Desolacion.
Once finished on land, the team members return to the ship and continue sailing for Isla Desolacion. Palmer Lloyd flies down on his helicopter and lands on the Rolvaag, surprising the team members. It turns out that he wants to be there in person when the meteorite is located.
The ship arrives just off shore of Isla Desolacion, and Puppup leads them to where he discovered the equipment. Sure enough there’s a sign of where Masangkay was digging. They locate his remains (now mainly a bunch of bones) which are later returned to the ship and analyzed by the team’s doctor. The doctor makes the conclusion that Masangkay was killed by a lightning strike.
The next day equipment is moved ashore and digging for the meteorite begins. They reach the rock and slowly remove the dirt until the rock itself is finally exposed. To everybody’s surprise, this is clearly no ordinary meteorite from outer space. This red rock clearly has more of a story behind it. It’s also significantly stronger and denser than anybody could have guessed.
EES begins working on its plan of digging underneath the meteorite and using a series of hydraulic lifts to raise the meteorite onto a mobile platform. They would then dig a massive tunnel and slowly pull the meteorite out of its underground home and to the shore, where it would then be loaded onto the Rolvaag.
Sam and Rachel try to get a sample of the meteorite to study it and make sure it’ll be safe on the ship, but the rock’s incredibly toughness destroys their drill. It takes a special laser to extract the smallest of samples from the meteorite to be used in the laboratory. Their findings take some time, but they discover that this meteorite is clearly beyond everybody’s expectations. Sam becomes more and more obsessed with the rock as it appears that this meteorite was formed outside of our solar system, something that other planetary geologists claimed would be impossible to discover.
There’s a problem when trying to lift the meteorite and two EES men die when trying to fix the problem. It turns out that although the rock is smaller than initially analyzed, it’s significantly heavier and incredibly dense. This causes a delay but the EES team can still handle the meteorite. They double the number of hydraulic lifts under the space rock and they continue with their plan of lifting and moving it.
Commandante Vallenar is in command of the Chilean destroyer Almirante Ramirez and positioned near Isla Desolacion, keeping a close eye on the American mining team. He sends a spy ashore, a man named Timmer, to investigate what was really happening on the island. Timmer sneaks ashore, kills an EES guard, and makes his way underground to where the meteorite is resting on the mobile platform. Mesmerized by the massive red rock, Timmer removes a glove and touches the rock. The moment he does so the man is zapped by a jolt of lightning, killing him instantly.
The EES team is aware of the electrical blast and discovers the dead man by the meteorite. They ultimately discover that the man is a spy and their team mate was murdered and hidden in a snow bank. But the mystery remains, why is the meteorite killing people who touch it? That is, killing everybody except Palmer Lloyd.
The Rolvaag is moored next to Isla Desolacion, and during the cover of night and a thick bank of fog, the meteorite is cleverly loaded into the ship’s cargo hold. Just as the fog is lifting the meteorite is lowered out of view of the Chilean destroyer. EES men secure the meteorite in the ship as the Rolvaag begins to depart the island.
Commandante Vallenar is angered by the loss of Timmer, who turns out to be his illegitimate son, and he tries to stop the Rolvaag from leaving. Vallenar fires ship-to-ship missiles at the Rolvaag, but the Rolvaag‘s defenses stop the missiles. The Rolvaag then fires back with her own munitions and they disable the Almirante Ramirez‘s propeller screws. Thinking that the Ramirez is disabled and destined to crash into Isla Desolacion, the Rolvaag begins sailing north back to New York.
Commandante Vallenar is more dedicated than noted in the EES reports. Knowing that it would cost lives, Vallenar ordered divers into the frigid water to repair his ship and make it mobile again. They succeed and repair one of the two screws despite several divers dying in the process. Underway and cruising slightly faster than the Rolvaag, Vallenar pursues the fleeing cargo ship.
The Rolvaag‘s crew notices the Ramirez on their radar and are forced to make a decision about where to go. They’re too far away from a friendly military base, and Vallenar has positioned himself to cut off the Rolvaag from reaching a port in Argentina or even back in Chile. Eli Glinn makes the decision of heading south to the Ice Limit, losing Vallenar amidst the icebergs and intense weather.
While sailing, the EES men securing the meteorite get zapped by electricity, killing all but one of them. The problem is that nobody touched the meteorite before it sent out a spark of electricity. Sam and Rachel analyze the security video of the cargo hold and discover that it was the sea water dripping into the cargo hold that touched the meteorite and caused the deadly spark.
Sam discovers that it was the salt in the water that reacted with the meteorite. It was sweaty hands from Timmer and Masangkay that caused their deaths when touching the superconductor rock from outer space. It was Palmer Lloyd’s dry skin that prevented him from getting zapped when he touched the rock.
There’s a tremendous ocean storm as the Rolvaag continues sailing south to the Ice Limit. The Ramirez survives the massive, destroyer-toppling waves and comes within firing range of the Rolvaag. Commandante Vallenar opens fire and damages the Rolvaag‘s engines. The ship is heavily damaged and Vallenar easily closes the distance to finish her.
Following Eli Glinn’s instructions, Sally Britton has the Rolvaag slip beside and then behind a massive ice island that’s slowly drifting north from Antarctica. Vallenar follows her around the ice island, but when he does the EES men on the island detonate charges and break off an extremely large chunk of ice. The ice lands next to the Almirante Ramirez and capsizes it, ending the destroyer and Commandante Vallenar.
The Rolvaag‘s engines have seized and are beyond repair. The cargo ship is slowly drifting away from the protection of the ice island and back into the storm and 40-foot waves. As the ship rocks in the storm, the meteorite slowly begins to roll free of its holding. Thinking he can repair the holding and save the meteorite and ship, Eli Glinn goes to the cargo hold and tries to secure the meteorite. Sally Britton follows him down there while the rest of the crew prepares to abandon ship.
Sure enough, a wave rolls the ship to its steepest list yet and the meteorite breaks free, punching a hole through the ship’s hull. Once the meteorite touches the sea water, the salty water sparks the biggest reaction yet from the meteorite. It’s implied that EES leader Eli Glinn was killed when the meteorite broke free and the Rolvaag sank in the frigid water.
Meanwhile, most of the ship’s crew made it to the lifeboats although the boats themselves were not designed to handled these extreme weather conditions. People begin suffering from hypothermia as the boats take on water. They make it to the ice island and everybody climbs onto the large chunk of ice.
Unfortunately, nobody has any real survival supplies and people begin dying from the extreme cold. Rachel tries to tell Sam something she discovered with the meteorite, but she dies before telling him. Just as Sam is about to die from exposure, a rescue helicopter lands on the ice island and takes the survivors to a British research station on Antarctica.
A few days later in the British research station, Sam McFarlane talks to Palmer Lloyd about the meteorite. He reveals that the spot where the Rolvaag sank is now experiencing minor earth tremors. The salt water contact with the meteorite sparked some kind of a reaction. It’s believed that the meteorite was something not naturally created in nature. It was sent to this planet for a reason. Now it’s down at the bottom of the ocean doing something unknown. It’s . . . sprouting.
That’s the end to Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child’s The Ice Limit.
As a whole, The Ice Limit is a fantastic book that takes you along for a meteorite hunt in an extreme location. The characters are solid, the action is great, the engineering is clever, and the powerful winter storm is relentless.
The first half of the book is a little slow, but once you’re in the grasp of the meteorite and sink deeper into its mystery, the second half of The Ice Limit races along at a blistering pace. Be prepared to set aside some free time so you can quickly finish the story.
The Ice Limit leaves you wanting to know more about the meteorite. Where did it come from? Are there any more on Earth? What’s happening to it at the bottom of the ocean?
If you love action-adventure stories blended with science and mixed with a little bit of science-fiction, then you’ll probably love The Ice Limit. I was caught off guard by the awesomeness of this novel. I can’t wait to read the next Preston & Child book in my growing collection.
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This article was originally published at www.chamberofreviews.com on January 25, 2013.