Customer Reviews

The Big Chunk of Ice: The Last Known Adventure of the Mad Scientists' Club (Mad Scientist Club)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If you enjoyed Bertrand R. Brinley's three previous books in this series: The Mad Scientists' Club, The New Adventures of the Mad Scientists' Club, and The Big Kerplop!: The Original Adventure of the Mad Scientists' Club, then you'll certainly want to read "The Big Chunk Of Ice", lost and unpublished for over 30 years. The boys return in the second novel-length adventure of the Mad Scientists of Mammoth Falls, which is also their last known adventure.

Professor Igor Stratavarious, the world-famous geologist (and borderline nutcase) first introduced in The Big Kerplop!: The Original Adventure of the Mad Scientists' Club is having trouble recruiting people beyond his entire class (of two students, Angela Angelino and Angelina Angelo) for a month-long summer expedition to study the Pasterzen Glacier in the Austrian Alps so his friend Henry Mulligan talks him into inviting the entire Mad Scientists' Club. Mayor Scragg and the Mammoth Falls Town Council are so enthusiastic about getting our heroes out of town that they pass a resolution offering to pay the expenses of the expedition for an additional two weeks. After some initial difficulties in communicating with the two college girls, who speak "hep" rather than English, they find common ground while playing the game of Geography, a truly pun-ishing contest involving replacing English phrases with sound-alike geographic place names in a sentence: "Hawaii?" instead of "How are you?", etc. (Don't worry; they get MUCH worse!) However, upon arrival in the nearby village of Heiligenblut, the group hear's a legend about a diamond the size of an apple supposedly lost out on the glacier a century before and during their following weeks of research out on the glacier begin to suspect that somebody wants them to leave, dead or alive!

I almost knocked a star off my review of this, my least favorite in the series, but decided to keep it at 5 stars after the clever finish. The problem is certainly not the writing. Mr. Brinley shows improvement with every book, and TBCoI is no exception. His vividly sketched characters and detailed descriptions of places make this tiny spot in the Austrian Alps and its peculiar inhabitants come alive before our eyes. The problem is rather that by this point IMHO Mr. Brinley was starting to forget what made the Mad Scientists stand out in the first place.

First of all, Professor Stratavarious, a minor though important character at the end of The Big Kerplop!: The Original Adventure of the Mad Scientists' Club, utterly destroys the atmosphere of scientific realism that has always been a key part of the appeal of these books. Based on a broad Sid Caesar parody of a paranoid smart-aleck of a scientist, Professor Stratavarious continuously spouts such utter if hilarious nonsense that having the boys play his straight men makes them look like fools, particularly when they accept without objection his repeated inversions of the scientific method involving discarding any evidence that doesn't fit your hypothesis!

Second and far worse IMHO, for most of the book the boys are little more than guest stars in their own story. The prime movers of the first three books are reduced to passive passengers for most of this ride, the people things keep happening to rather than the people who make things happen. Even their contribution to solving the central mystery is primarily a matter of dumb luck by their dumbest member; only at the very end do the Mad Scientists of Old swing back into action. Nevertheless, this final book is a must-read if not necessarily a must-have for fans of this series. It's a lot of fun watching our old friends develop a little more (and discover girls!) even if we wish they had more to do and a less obviously unscientific scientist for a tutor.

I grew up with "The Mad Scientists' Club" and "The New Adventures of the Mad Scientists' Club." Thus it was with great anticipation that I read "The Big Kerplop" and now "The Big Chunk of Ice." The late Bertrand Brinley did not disappoint.

"The Big Chunk of Ice" takes the story of the Mad Scientists' Club to a more mature level spinning an elaborate mystery for our heroes to solve. The story is set in the context of a geological expedition to a remote Austrian village. Prof. Stratavarious (the geologist introduced in "The Big Kerplop") makes an encore appearance, recruiting our heroes to help him investigate the eponymic glacier. The title refers to more than just the glacier, however. Another big chunk of ice - a diamond - was lost in the glacier years ago, and its location may be determinable through our hero's efforts. The professor's two female students bring an interesting element to the mix (when they aren't being annoyingly cool with their dated hep-cat lingo). Finally, the conclusion takes a satisfyingly bizarre twist that manages to surprise just when the reader thinks he's figured it all out.

Overall, this is a very satisfying last adventure whose sole defect is leaving the reader wishing there could be additional installments.

After hearing rumors about this book for years, we finally get to read it. I was pleased with the story, and it does indeed show the characters in greater depth as they enjoy their European expedition and try to solve the mystery of the long lost diamond.
I could've done without Angela and Angelina's overdone "hip" slang, as it definitely gets annoying and makes the story seem dated. But that is a minor quibble, and Brinley has crafted a fine tale for all lovers of the Mad Scientists' Club. It's a shame this is the last one we'll see, and I almost didn't want it to end for that very reason.
Thanks to Purple House Press for bringing this one to life.

I first met the club as a tween in the 7os. I've just re-read the first two, and read the last two for the first time as an adult of 42. The first two hold their charm, but the Big Chunk of Ice goes in too many plot directions with mad character Axel and ghosts, as well as being bogged down by very very dated 60's slang speech patterns of the "hep college girls". Also from a feminist perspective it's very backward.

As a child, I loved the first book of short stories. When, in my post college years, I found The New Adventures, I loved those too. The Big Kerplop was pretty good. This one, however, should have stayed unpublished. The Professor is irritating, and gives a horrible view of science. The girls are ok, if dated. The boys in the club really don't do much of anything. Where's the cool techie toys (ham radio and so on) that were in the short stories? Where's the adventure? The only sense of wonder in the entire thing is when the boys are finding the passageways in the castle.

So again, give this one a pass. There are reasons it wasn't published 30 years ago. It is the Mad Scientist's Club, so I won't give it only one star, but ...

A very enjoyable set of books for boys to read or to be read to. I enjoy reading them to my son as much as he enjoys hearing them.

The Mad Scientist Club collection by Bertrand R Brinley stands as one of the great series in young adult adventure fiction. His first two books (Adventures of ... and New Adventures of...) are classics with no peer. The following two books (Kerplop and Ice) suffer from the long novel format and the introduction of an adult character lead (Dr Stratavarious). The strengths of the first two books are that the kids run the show with no adult interference, and that they are gritty and believable. With the arrival of Stratavarious an adult became the leader and the complete unbelievability of the Stratavarious character ruins the whole mood and tone of stories. If you have kids, grandkids, neices, nephews, friends, etc in the 8 to 13 year old range, buy them the first two books, its not too late to get them off the Wii and facebook and back reading again.

I bought the book to complete my set. It has its fun moments, such as when the mayor pulls every string he can - including those of Washington - to ensure the boys get off on schedule because he will do anything to be rid of them for a while, or when the boys navigate the Blimp. And the fun with geography and Germanic phrases is a riot. It isn't quite the same without Harmon Muldoon, but having the boys face dangers on the glacier and meet up with creepy guys like the butler Axel and "The Smellow Fellows" makes a change of scene.

However, in the end I was disappointed, but I can't say why without giving any spoilers. And having the two student girls named Angela Angelino and Angelina Angelo is just way too absurd to be even coincidence! Brinley probably intended it for comic relief (he has a lot of fun with people's names in the book) but it's not even funny because it stretches credibility too far.

Having read the original short stories so many, many times, and always with enjoyment, I waited with great anticipation for this final installment. I suspect that the author's manuscript was largely unfinished and this was finished by someone else, perhaps someone without his background in science, as it is much different from the short stories or "The Big Kerplop." I'd say it's 30% Brinley and 70% editors. Too much silliness and far too little science from Henry, Jeff, and the rest of the gang. The professor routinely says things that Dinky or Freddie would find ludicrous. The girls are not an ornament to their sex either.

I loved the first two MSC books-- collections of short stories, which are really classics-- but I didn't like "The Big Ker-plop!" because the boys in that story were too passive, and there wasn't enough action.

Now comes "The Big Chunk of Ice", which I do like much better than "The Big Ker-Plop!", though not as much as the short story collections. The good news is that it's fun and it's packed with action. Some reviewers on Amazon have complained that the boys don't do enough-- really? Relatively early in the book a couple of the boys are rappelling into a crevasse in the glacier, when an avalanche happens (caused by their enemies?), a teenage girl falls into their laps, and they're buried under the snow. That's not enough action for you? We also have a trip across the Atlantic in a blimp, a mysterious castle in the Alps, secret passages, suspicious characters, and possible ghosts. So, lots of action.

Also, the scientific techniques and equipment in the story are remarkably accurate and plausible-- in this case, mostly realistic descriptions of how to measure the dynamics of glacial flow.

But the bad news is that some characters are completely implausible-- fun maybe, but totally unrealistic as people. The biggest example is of course the cartoonish Prof. Stratavarious, who organizes the expedition to the glacier, and (as other reviewers have pointed out) who talks like a Sid Caesar character (fake accent from the imaginary country "Rumania"). In fact he IS a fun character, but totally unbelievable as a real scientist, or real person. He gives a speech about his version of the "scientific method", in which the main principle is: throw out the data points that don't fit your hypothesis! It's actually funny as hell-- I am a real scientist (due to the influence of the Mad Scientist's Club books) and one day I'll use that quote in one of my presentations!-- but even a very bad scientist would not actually talk like he does.

The problem is that he and a couple other joke characters in "Big Chunk" partially spoil the realistic style we're used to from the MSC books. So on the one hand, the reader gets the very plausible, scientifically accurate descriptions of scientific methods, while on the other hand the reader gets a few cartoonish joke characters who seem to have been beamed in from another book altogether.

Besides Prof. Statavarious, another completely implausible character is Axel, an ugly, strange dwarf who is the caretaker of a medieval castle-- he also doesn't fit the "realistic" MSC style; I didn't believe him for a minute.

The boys also meet a couple of teenage girl students of the Professor, who are a given the ridiculous names of Angela Angelino and Angelina Angelo-- which only underscores the author's problems with making them individuals. In fact, the two girls are not exactly identical. Despite what some reviewers have written, only Angelina (I think), not both of them, speaks in Beatnik slang. I don't find the Beatnik hep-cat slang to be "dated" as some reviewers say-- I found it kind of quaint, in a Dobie Gillis/Maynard G. Krebs kind of way. It also appears Angelina likes Charlie more.

Consider that Prof. Stratavarious takes the boys across the Atlantic ocean in a blimp. I have mixed feelings about that: the blimp ride is fun, but is it really believable? The author describes the blimp in detail to make it physically plausible-- but would a sane adult really take a bunch of children on a 3-day trip in such a dangerous vehicle?

The resolution of the final mystery is also a little bit of a let-down. Despite the flaws, I still give this book four stars because the parts that weren't plausible were fun anyway, the science was accurate enough, and it did make me laugh several times. If you are choosing between this and "The Big Ker-plop!", get this.