Terminal Freeze

For the first quarter of the novel, I was sure it was a stinker and I was prepped to give it maybe 2 stars maximum. However, the energy of the thing picked up and even things I found tedious - film/film theory/film production - seemed more lively. The ending is pretty much what you predicted it would be. Underground in an old ice station trapped with a beast - the scientists versus the un/supernatural. Logan, though, is a weird and utterly unncessary character.

This was a fun book to listen to. It had a decent level of suspense and I enjoyed listening to the whole thing. It had a host of interesting characters some you liked and others you couldn't wait for something unpleasant to happen to them. I will say that the one of the characters made me wonder if he wasn't from a series by the author, since he seemed to have a past that we know nothing about but are almost expected to. Like he was just making a cameo appearance in this book.

A group of scientists are doing research up in the Nordic Circle out of an old Army base when they make a 10,000 year old discovery. They find what appears to be a large sabre-tooth tiger frozen in a block of ice. Their sponsors consider this an excellent chance to show more make a great documentary and so the circus comes to town. Little do they know that a tiger is lose among the clowns.

I like how the book ends by giving three possible explanations of what happened and how. The best part was I found the 'scientific' version to be the least believable of the three. show less

Like reading Relic all over again but without an interesting set of characters. No surprises in this book and I only finished it because I didn't have another book available (probably should have spent more time looking). I don't expect great literature but I do expect real characters and situations that are at least somewhat believable. The George Noory "coast to coast" style story based upon a bigfoot premise only works if the characters are interesting and the situations are plausible. This reads like a bad screenplay and the only thing that reminds me of a Child/Preston book is the pace that kept me turning the pages. Don't waste your time with this one, go back and read Relic. It's not classic literature but it is a fun story.

A team of scientists funded by a media conglomerate who wants to shoot a documentary are researching the effects of global warming in the frozen tundra that is Mount Fear. They find what they think is a fantastic prehistoric discovery. And then bodies start to pile up!

As with any book by Lincoln Child you're going to get great thriller moments, an interesting overall story subject and explanation that is just plausible enough but not to the point where it doesn't leave the reader asking questions at the end.
I enjoyed this one alot.

I first encountered Lincoln Child through his co-written (with Douglas Preston) "Relic", which became the first of the Agent Pendergast novels. I loved that scifi/thriller/horror novel. And I've thoroughly enjoyed Child's independent works, as well.

This is, nominally, the second in the Jeremy Logan series. To be fair, it seems to have kind'a fallen into that. Logan is a blink-and-you'll-miss-him character in "Deep Storm". In a movie version, his character would be cut. He's a secondary character in this one. He shows up late and is mostly there for colour and to offer insights that the scientists and soldiers and film crew wouldn't.

So we have a bunch of climate scientists, running some routine experiments in the Arctic, at a show more mostly-decommissioned DEW (Distant Early Warning) base. In the Cold War, these bases in the Arctic provided a first-contact warning for any potential Soviet strike that came over the Pole. Now down to a rotation of 4 soldiers. A University paid to have the scientists based there, for their work. Well, a media congomerate offered a grant, which paid for it (important point).

But they find... something... frozen in the ice. The assumption is a Smilodon (Sabre-Tooth Tiger)... but it's too large. This causes the media conglomerate to activate a contract clause that allows them to essentially take over from the scientists and set up a documentary to film the thawing of the creature.

Of course, this being a scifi-thriller-horror novel, the something seems to defy known science and conform to a local tribe's mythology.

And then the killing begins.

Lots of thrills, horror, chases, plans, failures, more plans... and a hell of a lot of, well... madness... ensues. A ton of fun, of the "through a mirror darkly" type.

I'm looking forward to the third book in the Jeremy Logan series, where Logan finally takes over as the protagonist! show less

Loved it! It was an imaginative plot combined with some serious science and technology understandings to build a great sci-fi/horror/adventure story. This is the first book that really features the Jeremy Logan character (he makes only a brief appearance in the first one) and I really like the character. The plot moves quickly and it builds in intensity making it a page turner.

Sci-fi and global warming fans will love this Lincoln Child novel set in Alaska, a locale so remote it is north of the Arctic Circle. There is already a military facility there, though it is being maintained, so to speak, by a skeleton crew. In the 50's there had been a military research center there. A disaster led to it's closing, but the details of the disaster have largely been forgotten all these years later.

Meanwhile, a university research group has landed some funding to pay for a team to go onsite to study the alarming effects of global warming where the world is never supposed to thaw. What they find is glaciers that are calving off huge icebergs, accidentally uncovering a cave where the scientists find themselves face to face show more with a carcass of some unknown prehistoric creature, a creature flash frozen so quickly that it still has open eyes to stare into! Scary, to say the least...and then a small contingent of aboriginal people turn up to warn the scientists that this creature is evil and represents the revenge of the local gods, who do not want the environment to be disturbed. And you can bet nobody was scared away by that...

The team had been so glad to receive the grant to go to Alaska that they had not read the fine print of their agreement. Thus they find themselves at the mercy of a film crew which arrives in a flash with the intent of filming the thawing of the ice block containing the creature on live television. But the ice block thaws and the creature turns up missing. Who stole that carcass, and where did they hide it??

The only thing more ominous is how dead bodies start appearing at an alarming rate. It takes several bodies before the surviving folks quit blaming the hungry polar bears.

There is a lot more going on here and the quest to locate and eliminate the creature is involved and as scary as the harrowing journey of the folks who try to escape the military base via truck and trailer before the creature gets them.

The author offers up multiple theories of the source and psyche of the creature, including an extra-terrestrial origin, but there is no definite answer offered. Lots more fiction than science offered here, but it is a fun read. show less