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13 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
ICE OVER (DONE), 7 Nov 2003
For fans of Irwin Allen's VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA, James Rollins ICE HUNT pays loving tribute to the style, tone and form of the film, mixed with similar types of action, pacing and storytelling. It's a throwback kind of thriller, pulpy, but fused with current technology and hard science...and if you like what you've read there, then stop reading here, because ICE HUNT is for you, but if you're looking for something more, something that bucks the standard cut and paste techno/adventure/science/submarine/thriller/monster hunt/spy vs. spy/cold war/science shocker/adventure, then ICE HUNT fails on all levels. To be blunt, the book is just plain boring. It has a rich idea, and Rollins does manage to mine some promise from the storyline at times (and if the book had been more geared towards the horror/thriller side of publishing, then ICE HUNT would have fared much better), but for the most part the book is dragged down by too much cardboard, mind numbing backstory (no one is happy in this book, at all, about anything, and it seems NO ONE had a happy childhood, marriage or career... and Rollins isn't content just to give his characters one or two problems, but EVERY problem he can imagine...the leads, Matt and Jenny, alone in the book suffer through a host of problems that most people don't suffer in two lifetimes, let alone one, and all in the space of 394 pages), "one thing after another" action and repeative exposition (Rollins often repeats action from the previous chapter to remind readers of what has happened early on in the book, and by the end he has it repeated sometimes from paragrpah to paragraph), dialouge, and overly clipped and metaphor heavy writing (although to give Rollins credit, there are only so many ways you can write about snow and ice, and Rollins uses them all here, by the close of the book we've moved from the hard science of ice and snow down into Middle Earth where everything looks like dragons bones, teeth and claws). This book really seems less written for the reader, and more written for the small screen. It's a treatment, nothing more. Fused with all the bells and whistles a television mini-series craves for sweeps, if sold, I'm sure will be a big hit. But as a book, ICE HUNT doesn't reward you for the effort put into it. A bigger book for Rollins, some better ideas found inside, but still not a breakthrough... be brave, James, fear not, the fans will follow you even if you break with tradition and blaze a new trail.
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by James Rollins
by James Rollins
by James Rollins
