Ice Hunt
by James Rollins

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Book Reviews of Ice Hunt

Book Review: Insult [what remains of] your intelligence; enjoy the result
Summary: 1 Stars

Ooops, I forgot: a professional editor from a large publishing house is brought in to create the action-oriented landscape-depicting, technical-manual-quoting mumble (Ask youself: why Rollins sounds just like Patterson? and King? and Parks? and Newsweek?)

Mr. Rollins is a parasite: he exploits the woefully uneducated, but instead of letting the reader learn and grow he waves a net of poor research and destructive pseudo-ethics -- and covers it all with the trademark phrase: "Trust me, I am a veterinarian."

Rollins' saga is barely passable. A Fish and Game ranger (even with the Green-est Beret background) escaping two professional killers? -- As passable as the President of the US killing a man with his bare hands ('Air Force One', a.k.a "they will swallow anything")

I have no idea how Rollins scored on his biochemistry tests (hopefully, poor -- or there is no truth in testing) but the twenty or so genes that encode proteins that make glucose from glycogen are INDEED present in all mammals BECAUSE we store glucose as glycogen -- and disassemble it whenever we need sugar. Using this as the explanation of cryostasis in the arctic frog (or in "grendels" -- or in humans) is pitiable.

The name of the ice-station is, apparently such a big deal that it is repeated several times in its original Russian (printed in Cyrillic) -- Grendel... Grendel... Grendel... Clearly, the fact-checker didn't bother to wake up that morning. In Russian the name of the creature is GrendeL' (two letters are used: "L" and "SOFT SIGN") -- nobody would call this station Grendel-with-a-hard-L.

(Funny: in Rollins' ancestral language (Polish) there is an L and an L-slash. He should know better... but once again he chose the barely passable. I can almost hear the dialog: "But in Russian 'Grendel' is spelled with 8 letters" -- "That's too confusing. The unwashed masses won't understand.)

Admittingly, Russian is hard and the culture of Russia/USSR may be irrelevant. This may explain the insufferable cliches: FSB/KGB is running the country; Fleet Admiral reads (but what else?) 'Brothers Karamazov' before attempting to destroy the world; a submarine CO (a thirty year old Captain (?!) is sarcastic while talking to a Fleet Admiral. Americans are as bad as Russians (Operation Paper Clip etc.) but win nonetheless.

My biggest problem with this frosted fiction is not its paper-pulp-back-fiction quality. This is, after all, a 7.99-window-or-aisle-book.

The problem is its lack of morals. I don't believe Rollins even understands what's at stake.

A child is frozen alive in an OBVIOUSLY criminally inethical experiment (similar to what Nazi "doctors" did to POW) but everything ends happily: the kid is defrosted and is damn happy with his adoptive parents.

A veterinarian may not see the finer point here: ANY criminal experiment on ONE human being is a catastrophy for ALL humanity. Making it into a (barely passable) happy ending borders on cheering for the Nazis: what we do is inethical but it still ends well.

This is (1) a surreptitious justification for playing God. To Rollins science is omni-benevolent: even a criminally-warped science will somehow lead us to justice. After all, bad guy Craig is punished, and the frozen kid is happy

(Maybe Rollins should read some Dostoyevsky: "if there is no God than everything is allowable." = When scientists play God then everything is allowable?! Because it will all sort itself out?!)

(2) this also lends a hand to the Bible-thumpers of all sorts: see, folks, if not for the miracle (God's intervention) the kid would've been lost and evil would've not been punished.

(Brilliant! It will sell to both the religious right and the scientistic left! Congrats, Mr.(Dr.) Rollins!)

There *was* a simple (and ethically acceptable) save -- but Rollings is not a good enough writer to consider it: turn the kid into a character, not a cliche. Have him suffer from nightmares (after all, his consciousness was awake for 60 years!), cry for his mother, develop cold sores and unexplained sadness. Make the reader understand: any attempt to "play God" -- or to "know exactly what God intends" is harmful and the harm is lasting.

Grade: F+. A perfect example of 'literature' borne out by the self-perpetuating lack of education and foresight in our society. There is no reason to read Mr.(Dr.) Rollins when Jules Verne is still in print. (There was a man who honestly wanted to educate his reader.)

Side note. Want to *learn* something? Want to be *more* human? Read the *real* Grendel, a very decent book by John Champlin Gardner (ISBN: 0679723110) Available at Amazon used for 2.92. Written in a lucid modern English.

Final note. I am not a vet-basher. I just think that Rollins lacks a finer understanding of the human species.

Summary of Ice Hunt

Buried deep in the earth's polar ice cap -- carved into a moving island of ice twice the size of the United States -- is a secret place, the site of a remarkable abandoned experiment that could have frightening ramifications for the planet. The brain trust of the former Soviet Union who created the seventy-year-old Ice Station Grendel would like it simply to melt from human memory. But that becomes impossible when an American undersea research vessel, the Polar Sentinel, inadvertently pulls too close to the hollowed-out iceberg ... and one of the crew sees something alive inside. Something that never should have survived.

It is a discovery that sends shock waves through the intelligence communities of two powerful nations, as American and Russian scientists, soldiers, and unsuspecting civilians are pulled into Grendel's lethal vortex of secrets, violence, and betrayal. To preserve the silence -- to prevent others from uncovering the terrible mysteries locked behind submerged walls of ice and steel -- no measures will be too extreme. For within the station, experiments have blurred the line between life and death. It was a place never meant to be found.

One man already knows too much: Matthew Pike, a former American Special Forces operative, living in seclusion in Alaska on the edge of the Arctic Circle. On the run after rescuing the survivor of a plane crash no one was meant to observe, Pike is relentlessly drawn into the eye of the gathering storm -- even as a Russian nuclear attack submarine draws silently nearer to the men and women on the Polar Sentinel. The covert battle over Grendel is spinning out of control, and the future of all human life on Earth will be altered -- or destroyed -- once its nightmarish truths are revealed.

A masterful blending of science and adventure, suspense and explosive page-turning excitement, James Rollins's Ice Hunt is a novel that will chill readers to the bone, holding them in its icy grip from the first sentence to its final startling twist.

James Rollins invokes the polar environment so vividly you can hear the wind shriek and feel the ice forming on your nose, and the scientific/medical puzzles at the story's heart may remind you of Michael Crichton's best. The characters, while mostly familiar hero or villain types, are crisply drawn and in some cases quite sympathetic, but it's the nonstop action that carries you along. During several climactic chase scenes, you may find yourself laughing in pure delight--or gasping for breath--as Rollins keeps finding ways to ratchet up the tension one more notch. Ice Hunt is an escapist's delight. --Nicholas H. Allison

Action & Adventure Books

• Subjects > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Action & Adventure
• Mystery, Thriller & Suspense > Thrillers > Suspense