Black Ice

Very entertaining book on survival in the Artic. Brings out the excitement of survival from both the extreme elements and a murderous adventurer. Enjoyed it very much.

Lauren Burgess is fulfilling the dream of a lifetime running Capricorn Base, a scientific research station in the Antarctic interior. Three hundred miles away, an expedition consisting of famous explorer Julian Fitzgerald and his companion, Carl Norland, has run into trouble. The two men would have been the first to cross Antarctica on foot at its widest point if they hadn't run out of supplies and begun starving to death 80 miles from the goal. The rescue plane they summon crashes, so Lauren and one of her four teammates, Sean, ride to the rescue, taking the two explorers and Richard, a journalist who survived the crash, back to Capricorn to wait out the winter. It is soon apparent that Julian Fitzgerald is not the hero the media has made him out to be; rather he is dangerously reckless with resources and lives, and Lauren and Sean believe he kept food supplies to himself while leaving Carl and Richard to starve while awaiting rescue. When he announces his plans to finish his trek, demanding a ride back to the crash site to resume his journey, Lauren refuses, and his behavior really gets out of control. Suffice it to say, the team at Capricorn Base finds themselves on the run with almost no resources, in a race to find rescue in the most inhospitable place on earth. While the story is intriguing and compelling, there were a few minor weak points. Julian Fitzgerald vacillates between being paranoid and just a spoiled brat in a way that lacks consistency. Also, while I liked the outcome, the ending left me feeling cheated. We had been with these characters through an entire Antarctic winter, suffered every step with them on their arduous journey, felt all their hunger and pain, and in the end, though we know their fate, they fade into the background instead of having the book show us their triumph. The same number of pages in the postscript that focused elsewhere would have been better spent with our team of six hardy heroes, and delivering comeuppance to the villain. That was an event I DESERVED to see after all I vicariously went through at his expense, but it didn't happen. While it is a black mark against it, the ending does not ruin the book because I did like the outcome, and overall it was very well written. Though it contained the clichéd scene of the good guy being too good to finish the villain when she had the chance, thereby needlessly further endangering her team before belatedly growing the spine needed to try to fix things when it was already too late, it was still nonetheless a very good Antarctic thriller. I don't think I've ever read a book with better descriptions of that continent and its frozen landscape. The heroes were also a likeable lot, and the villain deliciously detestable, as they should be in a good adventure tale. In all, Black Ice is a satisfying page-turner.

I picked up this book after finishing Matt Reilly's Ice Station in hopes of getting another fast and exciting adventure to enjoy reading, and I was not disappointed. I sat down with a hot cup of coffee and a nice warm quilt and let this book take me to the inhospitable Antarctica where scientists and explorers endure incredible hardships while on their personal quests. The scientists just want to survive and to be able to share their discovery of what they found in a lake deep beneath the ice. The explorer wants the glory of completing his trek on foot across Antarctica, and he is willing to do anything and sacrifice everyone to finish his journey. I found it incredibably entertaining to the point I was up till the wee hours of the morning telling myself I'll just read one more chapter before going to bed, again and again.

If you are interested in the hazards of Antartica and the difficulties of human survival in this desolate place then you will probably enjoy this book. The plot is rather bland. One rescue attempt gone bad results in a group of scientists trying to survive an unforgiving trek across an antartic glacier during the long winter while being pursued by a slightly crazy egomaniac. The hardships encountered while trying to survive with less than minimal supplies are described in detail. I had a chill just reading about the dangers of the antartic cold. Overall it is an average story, but provides a scary insight into a continent most people know little about.