The Ice Limit (Hardcover)

~ (Author), Lincoln Child (Author)

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Amazon.com Review

Billionaire Palmer Lloyd is accustomed to getting what he wants--and what he wants for his new museum is the largest meteorite on earth. Unfortunately for Lloyd, it's buried on an inhospitable Chilean island just north of the Ice Limit in the most brutal, unforgiving seas in the world.

Fortunately for Lloyd, he knows people--people like Eli Glinn, the hyper-focused president of Effective Engineering Solutions, Inc.; Glinn's nonconformist, genius of a mathematician, Rachel Amira; and the uncannily able construction engineer, Manuel Garza. Lloyd's also tapped the brilliant but disgraced meteorite hunter, Sam McFarlane, and the exceptional supertanker captain, Sally Britton, whose career was unshipped by intemperance and a reef. Of course, such a team has a hefty price tag:

Lloyd's broad features narrowed. "And that is... "

"One hundred and fifty million dollars. Including chartering the transport vessel. FOB the Lloyd Museum."

Lloyd's face went pale. "My God. One hundred and fifty million... " His chin sank onto his hands. "For a ten-thousand-ton rock. That's... "

"Seven dollars and fifty cents a pound," said Glinn.

EES's plan is to obtain mining rights to the island, secure the allegiance of various Chilean functionaries via blinding sums of money, disguise a state-of- the-art supertanker as a decrepit ore rig, mine the rock, slip it into the ship, and zip back to New York to thunderous notoriety. Unforeseen, however, are a rogue Chilean naval captain, seas to make Sebastian Junger boot, and a blood-red meteorite of undetermined pedigree and a habit of discharging billions of volts of electricity for no apparent reason.

Like Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child's earlier collaborations (Relic, Thunderhead, and others), The Ice Limit tools along swiftly, blending nicely drawn characters (excepting, regrettably, the book's true protagonist, the meteorite), a reasonably exciting narrative, and enough graspable science and plausible-seeming theories to bring readers happily up to speed and keep them climax-bound. Not the authors' best effort, certainly, but a fine diversion nonetheless. --Michael Hudson

From Publishers Weekly

The summer-beach reader has few better friends than Preston and Child, who, beginning with Relic (1995), have produced one (generally) smart and suspenseful thriller after another, most recently Thunderhead. Their new novelDwhich, like its predecessors, skirts the edge of science fictionDis their most expertly executed (though not most imaginative) entertainment yet. Its concept is high and simple: a scientific expedition plans to dig out and transport to New York harbor the mother of all meteorites from its resting spot on an icy island offshore Chile. The mission is nearly impossible: not only will the meteorite be the heaviest object ever moved by humanity, but the Chileans, if they learn of the mission, may decimate it in order to keep the meteorite. Six strong if broadly drawn characters propel the premise into action. There's bullheaded billionaire Palmer Lloyd, who funds the expedition, and three (of the many) people he hires to get the rock: world-class meteorite-hunter Sam McFarlane, disgraced for his obsession about possible interstellar meteorites; Captain Britton, disgraced alcoholic skipper hired to ferry the meteorite to the U.S.; and Eli Glinn, cold-blooded mastermind of an engineering firm dedicated to getting incredible jobs doneDthis one at the price of $300 million. There's Commandante Vallenar, a Chilean naval officer exiled to his nation's southern wastes, who will stop at nothing to defend Chile's honor and property. Finally, there's the meteoriteDblood red, impossibly dense, possessed of strange and dangerous properties. Like the premise, the plot is simple, traversing a near-linear narrative that sustains serious tension as the expedition travels to Chile, digs out the meteorite and heads homewardDonly to face both Vallenar and a ferocious storm. What the novel lacks in sophistication, it makes up for in athleticism: this is a big-boned thriller, one that will make a terrific summer movie as well as a memorable hot-day read. (July)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 464 pages
• Publisher: Grand Central Publishing (July 18, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0446525871
• ISBN-13: 978-0446525879
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.1 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (168 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #525,955 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

46 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Non-stop suspense, July 4, 2000

By	Lynn Harnett (Marathon, FL USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Lots of ice and plenty of farfetched suspense make for perfect summer escapism with Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child's latest adventure thriller.

The book opens with a bang as a lone scientist on a desolate island just north of Antarctica makes the discovery of a lifetime, which promptly incinerates him. Cut to the seventh richest man in the world, American businessman Palmer Lloyd, who throws his financial weight around at a Christie's auction, much to the humbled participants' disgust and admiration, then flies off to the Kalahari to buy a prominent meteorite hunter.

Lloyd is building the world's greatest natural history museum and the meteorite hunter, Sam McFarlane, is going to help him acquire his centerpiece - the world's largest meteorite - found by Sam's former partner on that Chilean Antarctic island. Lloyd also acquires an engineer to plan the expedition, a humorless perfectionist who prides himself on his flawless success record. Eli Glinn plans for every contingency, human nature included. The party sets out on a state-of-the-art tanker, disguised as a rustbucket on an ore mining job. Like Glinn and McFarlane, its dignified female captain has been made wiser by a career-blighting error.

The expedition attracts the attention of a bitter and suspicious Chilean destroyer captain, whose powerlessness is matched by his tenacity. And then Glinn, who thinks of everything, allows Sam to bury his former partner's body without inspecting it. Uh oh. But the initial digging of the meteorite goes off without a hitch. Palmer Lloyd jumps down on the surprisingly red rock and presses his cheek to it without ill effect.

Still, the thing is strange. Its rich, ruby color is mesmerizing, its weight is mind-boggling and it's so hard it burns out a big diamondhead drill without giving up a fragment of itself. Its origins and properties stir up Sam's old obsession - interstellar meteorites. All previous meteorites have come from our own solar system and the possibility of an interstellar rock is a statistical impossibility, or so the scientists say.

And soon the problems begin. Though Glinn plans for everything, the rock (the heaviest object ever moved by humans) seems to have ideas of its own.

With increasing momentum, several suplots, budding romances, raging storms and sinsiter mysteries clash, collide and hurtle towards an explosive climax among the deadly ice islands of the Ice Limit surrounding Antarctica. The characters are more fleshed out than in previous books and the settings - the high-tech tanker, the forbidding island, the stormy sea - are well done. There are a few holes in the plot (no ship would be racing full speed through 100-foot seas, for one) but who cares? Mystery and suspense are what we are looking for and Preston and Childs ("Riptide," "The Relic," "Thunderhead") deliver.

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Hunt for Red Meteorite, April 29, 2002

By	Cory D. Slipman (Rockville Centre, N.Y.) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Ice Limit (Mass Market Paperback)

Palmer Lloyd, eccentric billionaire and 7th richest man in the world is an obsessed collector of all sorts of museum quality specimens. He is presently building his own museum to overshadow all of the most famous museum collections. He learns of the discovery of what could be the largest meteorite ever found. He naturally will go to any expense to obtain this spectacular prize.

He assembles a team of experts to not only excavate but retrieve and transport what will be the heaviest load ever moved (5 times the weight of the Eiffel Tower). Unfortunately the location of the meteorite is the frigid, icy, inhospitable Isla Desolacion in the Cape Horn islands south of Tierra del Fuego. The price tag is 300 million dollars. Eli Glinn, head of Effective Engineering Solutions, a Mission Impossible like team of engineers, scientists and mercenaries heads the project. He is ably assisted by oil tanker captain Sally Britton and meteorite hunter and planetary geologist Sam MacFarlane. Together they endeavor to overcome incredulous physical obstacles along with a relentless commendante of a Chilean naval destroyer who is determined to thwart their efforts.

The novel is well thought out and extremely suspenseful but is spoiled by a very disappointing ending. The last page diminshed what was 400+ pages of an excellent story.

23 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Formulaic, but a tried and true formula, July 28, 2000

By	Tung Yin (Portland, OR) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

At this point, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child have refined their formula for writing bestsellers: (1) an sometimes eccentric, usually obsessive person (2) wants to achieve some goal (3) which requires that a team of highly skilled professionals (4) equipped with super high-tech toys (5) and brimming with (over)confidence (6) go into the wild and face Mother Nature, one another, and Big Science, (7) and although every contingency should be planned for, (8) things go wrong.

"Mount Dragon" was about microbiologists dealing with a killer virus, "Riptide" was about treasure hunters, "Thunderhead" was about archeaologists, and "The Ice Limit" is about engineers and a geologist on a meteor hunting expedition.

Preston and Child actually care enough about the characters to imbue them with more characterization than usual for thrillers, although the breakdown in one of the central characters isn't hard to predict. There's some science of meteorites, a naval skirmish, something of a love affair, and a lot about engineering. The gore level is relatively low, although there are a number of deaths. Like "Riptide," there is a mystery buried within the adventure story, and the reader is kept guessing to the last page.

Among their books, I would rate "The Ice Limit" on a par with "Riptide," just below "Mount Dragon," and above "Thunderhead" and "Reliquary."