Beyond the Ice Limit

by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child
375 pgs  (The Ice Limit series #2)

It's been 16 years since Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child published The Ice Limit, which told the story of how the world's largest meteorite ended up on the ocean floor near Antarctica. Approximately 180 people died when it and The Rolvaag, the ship which was transporting it went down. According to the authors, when they wrote it, they didn't intend to write a sequel to the story, but given the consistent level of requests from their readers for one, they reconsidered and here it is. Interestingly, Beyond the Ice Limit is not only a sequel to The Ice Limit, it's also an installment in their Gideon Crew series, as they made him a major character in the story.

Beyond the Ice Limit picks up five years after The Rolvaag went down. Gideon now works for Eli Glinn, the man who chartered the ship, and the only man to survive its sinking. Eli has learned that something is growing from the ocean floor where the meteorite settled, and that what they thought was a meteorite was in fact a giant alien seed pod.

When Gideon, Glinn, and the crew they've assembled arrive at the site, they begin observing the plant-like entity using small submarines and learn that it's growing at an incredible rate. They also learn that it's some sort of parasite and has begun to form multiple seed pods. Not surprisingly, they also learn that if it's not destroyed (and it doesn't want to be), it will destroy the entire planet.

Okay, I'll admit, things got a little far-fetched here. Preston and Child went a direction with this sequel that I never would have imagined when I read the first book so many years ago. Nevertheless, I found myself entertained throughout the story. It was a fun book and I got the impression while reading it that it was intended as a gift to their readers.

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆