Remember The Ice Limit? One of my favorite Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child books, it was published back in January of 2000.
I didn’t have this site back then, so there is no review – yet – but I will get to it. I am editing right now or I would pull out my battered paperback copy and read it again and do a review, but edits come first!
The book ended in a Twilight Zone manner (Preston & Child compare it to one of their favorites How to Serve Man) and I have to agree with that concept. You were left with the denouement open ended. Not a ‘cliffhanger’ really, more of a “Make up your own ending to suit your personality and thoughts about the book” sort of thing. Personally, I would have compared it to the end of the last book of The Dark Tower cycle by Stephen King, but that is beside the point. The book was just darn Good.
Now, after fifteen years and, according to P&C, tens of thousands of letters over that time period demanding a sequel, it is on its way! Beyond the Ice Limit is a Gideon Crew novel this time around, but that shouldn’t disturb the story:
Five years ago, the mysterious and inscrutable head of Effective Engineering Solutions, Eli Glinn, led a mission to recover a gigantic meteorite–the largest ever discovered–from a remote island off the coast of South America. The mission ended in disaster when their ship, the Rolvaag, foundered in a vicious storm in the Antarctic waters and broke apart, sinking-along with its unique cargo-to the ocean floor. One hundred and eight crew members perished, and Eli Glinn was left paralyzed. But this was not all. The tragedy revealed something truly terrifying: the meteorite they tried to retrieve was not, in fact, simply a rock. Instead, it was a complex organism from the deep reaches of space.
Of course, it is too expensive for my blood. . . and this is what happens when I work through the night and sleep all day. I am now number forty-seven on the list to read the book at my local library. Sigh. So, I wait. But when the edit of Michael Angel’s A Perjury of Owls (Book 4 of Fantasy and Forensics), (and yes, I am squeeeeing like a little girl at this one!), I will pull out Ice Limit and give it another read and review. Then, when I finally get my copy of Beyond, well, I can hardly wait! And from P&C’s email: