Customer Reviews

Black Ice

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

 

 

Some of what others here have written is true, but I quite vehemently disagree with the person who typified the book as "too sexist for belief." That couldn't be more wrong. Lauren, the FEMALE protagonist, is the proverbial Rock that kept the entire station together through any and all amounts of adversity. She was The Leader from beginning to end! Yes, she made one particularly frustrating decision, but not ALL the men are perfect either -- many are weak, shallow and, considering Fitzgerald, the MALE antagonist, much worse.

I found Dickinson's book to be engrossing and quite realistic. He clearly has the Cold Adventure Chops to write about this kind of thing, considering his 1996 venture up Mt. Everest which resulted in his 2000 book "The Other Side Of Everest" -- already well reviewed here at Amazon. In fact, I just ordered his non-fiction book whilst writing this review. And no, I'm not a Dickinson Shill. I simply purchase what pleases me and what looks good.

I'll not be a Plot Spoiler here; simply suffice to say that, if you're looking for a realistic portrayal of Antarctic adventure, this is your book. The book isn't sexist or racist or ageist or iceist or any other kind of "ist" you can imagine.

Someone had an agenda in that review and, for whatever reason, a good read wasn't on it.

Bottom line? You can't beat an excellent adventure like this for $6.99.

Just a HAIR dissatisfying? Fitzgerald's future. On the other hand, one could say that Dickinson took the superior stance and avoided going for the obvious in terms of retribution and revenge.

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.

I've always had this esoteric, quasi-romantic idea that visiting or seeing Antarctica would be a real thrill...but after reading BLACK ICE, those notions are quickly overshadowed by the fierce brutality of the South Pole. Explorer/author Matt Dickinson has created a pretty realistic novel, although it certainly has its share of adventurous implausibilities, but overall a very good read.
The plot focuses on professional explorer Julian Fitzpatrick and his novice comrade, Carl Norlund, who have been attempting to be the first explorers to cross the entire continent of Antarctica, only to fail and need help seriously. When a rescue plane crashes in an attempt to rescue them, a nearby scientific team is called upon to help rescue them. This team is led by Dr. Lauren Burgess, who is about to make a shocking discovery in an underground lake and who doesn't really want to abandon her quest. But humane morality intercedes and she and her crew are off to save them.
Of course, Julian Fitzpatrick is the consummate self-inflated villain who doesn't want the world to know his own dark secrets about the failure, and soon his maniacal acts leaves the science crew to fend for themselves when he blows up their complex.
Dickinson weaves a pretty good tale but I wasn't totally happy with the book's resolution; I would have liked for Julian's exposition to be part of the narrative; although his fate is ironic, it didn't give me a complete feeling of closure.

The set up of this story is great and has all the makings of a good read but somehow falls short in the creative writing department. Characters are shallow and not developed, the wording repeats itself over and over - the text just begs for something really interesting to bite into. Good idea for a story but lacks in literary development and interest. After treking along with these characters for the entire book, the last chapter just ends with no explanation - it just stops and the book is over.

good locale for a story but the author's insistence on making out the women to be too emotionally fragile to play any significant role in tackling the bad guy finally got a little too annoying. after about the second or third time that he had the lead scientist (gutsy enough to work in antarctica but not gutsy enough to defend her station) wimping out, apparently simply because she was a woman or just a foil to the macho hero mechanic, i got disgusted and quit reading. the characters were too unbelievable.