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Meltdown [Hardcover]

James Powlik (Author)
3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)


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Book Description

November 28, 2000
In his spellbinding new novel, oceanographer James Powlik combines cutting-edge science with a storyteller's gift for drama. A heart-pounding action thriller, races across the frozen expanse of the Arctic Ocean as a team of scientists fights to stop a radioactive plague--and a deadly mystery beneath the sea.

Dr. Carol Harmon has taken her environmental research vessel, the, deep into one of the most forbidding places in the world, the ceaselessly shifting Arctic ice scape. When two of her crew are ravaged by what appears to be radiation poisoning, Carol needs help fast--so she calls on the person she trusts most.

Brock Garner is an oceanographer, a former Naval officer, and a man who has never quite stopped loving his ex-wife, Carol. Answering her call from across the globe, Brock flies from one ice-bound pole to the other. But by the time Garner arrives, a frightening scenario is taking shape: Deep beneath the ice, something is leaking deadly radiation. Worse yet, the greatest danger the global seas have ever faced may be only part of a bigger cataclysm. A disaster of untold proportions is looming--the world's first man-made Ice Age. A life-and-death battle is about to be unleashed...not just for the Arctic, but for the very future of Earth.

Brilliantly imagined, unfailingly gripping, is a taut, action-packed adventure infused with real-life science. A novel that crackles with spine-tingling authenticity, it is a thrilling, rollicking roller coaster of a read.

The clouds parted and the black surface of the Arctic Ocean came into view.

Before the plane stretched the long corridor of water opened by the vessels, flanked on either side by fractured pieces of floating ice.

"What the hell is?" one of the flight engineers suddenly said. He pointed toward the sea roughly half the distance to the horizon.

Then the others saw it: a distortion in the surface. Seconds later, the sea itself rose up, flicking along its length like a carpet being shaken. The ocean rolled and exploded upward, flinging huge chunks of ice aside. For a moment, the water seemed suddenly to be speeding up at them, then just as suddenly it passed below, streaking to the east and falling away behind the bombers.

The captain thought he knew what he had seen, but could not fully com-prehend it. Then he thought of the ships below them and wondered if they could see the massive wall of water rising up from the ocean.

In the time it took him to reach for his radio, the damage was already done....

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Dr. Carol Harmon is a bio-acoustic scientist and CEO of the Nolan Group, a worldwide consortium of consulting agencies founded by her second husband, now deceased. She has taken her research vessel, the Phoenix, deep into the Arctic Ocean to track and monitor marine mammals and to study the effects of shipping on the larger members of that group, most specifically blue whales.

What she finds is both distressing and exhilarating for a researcher: five huge blues frozen fast to the underside of an ice floe. What happens after two divers return from an exploratory foray beneath the ice is flat-out horrifying. Severe radiation sickness reduces the men to wriggling, blood-spewing wrecks in a matter of hours. The fact is that the entire region is radioactive to the point of being cooked, and as the arctic spring turns to summer, that hot ice will start to flow and likely bring about the first man-made ice age unless it's checked.

Fortunately for Carol, Dr. Brock Garner, Carol's first ex and a world-class oceanographer in his own right, is but a radio call away. Nolan Group jets are dispatched and in short order Brock and his massive Ukrainian research assistant, Sergei Zubov, are on the Phoenix and on the case. Meltdown is James Powlik's second race-against-time-to-stop-global- environmental-disaster eco-technothriller. And as in 1999's Sea Change, the partnership works handily.

With scientific and environmental technospeak galore (a drop too much, actually) and enough back-stabbing, political dirty-dealing, and military intrigue both foreign and domestic to fill a book twice its size, Meltdown will please Powlik's growing number of followers, Tom Clancy fans, and most anyone with a taste for fast-paced, fact-laced excitement. --Michael Hudson

From Publishers Weekly

A lethal slick of radioactive waste threatens to cause a modern-day Ice Age, and only Dr. Carol Harmon and her ex-husband, Brock Garner, the marine scientist heroes of Powlik's debut novel, Sea Change, can stop it. Young Inuit father Victor Tablinivik's teeth are falling out and, like many in his small Arctic village, his wife and young son are slowly dying from leukemia. Making his way across the thawing ice floe as he returns from a late spring hunting trip, Victor discovers entire flocks of dying shorebirds and a dead polar bear. Meanwhile, Harmon, a marine bioacoustic expert, stumbles across five dead blue whales trapped in the ice; they turn out to be highly radioactive. Suspecting a clandestine dumping of radioactive waste in the remote Arctic waters, Harmon sends out a call for help to her celebrated marine biologist ex-husband. Embers of old love flame anew as the couple battle evil agents of covert foreign nuclear powers, discover high-level coverups and indulge in a surfeit of high-tech histrionics. Building on his earlier novel, Powlik delivers another exciting read for environmental enthusiasts, Tom Clancy aficionados and others not intimidated by extensive techno-speakDand the novel seems ripe for the plucking for TV or even film production. (Dec.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 352 pages
  • Publisher: Delacorte Press; First edition (November 28, 2000)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0385334001
  • ISBN-13: 978-0385334006
  • Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6 x 1.4 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
  • Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,083,189 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

19 Reviews
5 star:
 (7)
4 star:
 (2)
3 star:
 (5)
2 star:
 (4)
1 star:
 (1)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
3.5 out of 5 stars (19 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars 4 1/2 stars, December 16, 2000
By 
Konrad Kern (OFallon, MO United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Meltdown (Hardcover)
See storyline above.

This is definitely a scientific thriller. The research and knowledge possessed by Mr. Powlik shows up in abundance in this tale of adventure. You'll learn a little bit about everything from Bacterial sciences to nuclear physics, tidbits of Chernobyl to the species balaenoptera. An adventure in the Artic should bring vivid pictures to the mind, and it does. Although there is more science than adventure in this novel, I liked it because I like science.

Recommended for science lovers who like adventure.

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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Ice-bound thriller with a lot of heart, December 14, 2000
By A Customer
This review is from: Meltdown (Hardcover)
Despite its setting in the high Arctic, "Meltdown" is a warm and exciting tale of adventure, romance and mystery rolled into one without any of the threads becoming tangled or worn. I raced through this one in two days, rapt with interest in how the thrills and spills would come out -- as in Powlik's previous work, the reader is left hanging on for dear life until the final chapter. I agree with Publisher's Weekly - this would make an excellent movie.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting but shallow, December 21, 2001
By A Customer
This review is from: Meltdown (Audio Cassette)
I suppose I was spoiled for this genre of science/fiction when I first read Jurassic Park, but I am still always looking for another good story with lots of "true" facts to entertain and challenge me. Can not say that Meltdown (the audio version) did this, although it certainly has all the necessary ingredients. I could go along with the plot for most of the story, but found it thinning as it went on. I did think that the underlying ecological and political messages were interesting and relevant. Do not understand, however, why these female scientist-types always have to be of the attractive/blond/obcessed-with-work variety, but then I don't work for a publishing company. I had a problem with the editing of the book itself. It was obviously abridged, and not just because I had read the book (because I didn't). Nevertheless, I thought the narration (by Bob Loza) was good - a smooth, even reading; a bit understated, but I tend to like that style in audiobooks, as opposed to what I would want in an actual audio production with multiple actors. Good clean recording.
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First Sentence:
Below her, the ice was breathing. Read the first page
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
radioactive slick, trigger console, containment pen, rad levels, containment booms, cratering charges, containment operation, gamma spectrometers, water bombers, winch operator, radiation suits, communications van, comm link, base pad, exposure suit, main lab, containment area, wet samples, radioactive debris
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Nolan Group, Thebes Deep, Foxe Basin, Arctic Ocean, North Sea, Melville Peninsula, Coast Guard, Devil's Finger, Gulf of Boothia, Sea Sprite, North Atlantic, Baffin Island, Cape Dorset, Sverdrup Explorer, Canadian Forces, Southern Ocean, Des Groseilliers, Weddell Sea, Carol Harmon, Committee Bay, Scott Krail, Brock Garner, Global Oil, Hall Beach, Roland Alvarez
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