TERMINAL FREEZE
Lincoln Child
Anchor Books
Thriller
Hardcover: 9780385515511
Paperback: 9781400095483
Terminal freeze, or flash freezing, is a phenomenon whereby, in the case presented in this novel, a biological sample subjected to temperatures well below water's melting/freezing point will freeze so fast that large ice crystals cannot form and damage the sample. TERMINAL FREEZE is the title of bestselling author Lincoln Child’s latest thriller, and it reads like a cross between one of his earliest works, THE RELIC (co-authored with Douglas Preston), and John W. Campbell’s classic WHO GOES THERE? (the basis for the film The Thing).
The novel opens with a prologue featuring a group of Tunits, a small Native American tribe and branch of the ancient Inuits. The shaman and tribal leader Usuguk notices a strange color pattern in the sky that is different from the typical Northern Lights. It is distinctly red, and Usuguk recognizes it as a sign that the natural order was out of balance and one of their gods --- Kuuk’juag the Hunter --- has been angered. Usuguk has seen this happen before and realizes it can only mean that disaster will befall those who have broken the ancient rules.
North of the Arctic Circle in Alaska, paleoecologist Evan Marshall is leading an expedition of fellow scientists who are studying the effects of global warming on sub-arctic environments, particularly glaciers. Their home base during this time is Fear Base, originally an early warning station designed to guard against a preemptive Russian nuclear attack that was decommissioned in the late 1950s. While conducting research on a glacier near Fear Base, Marshall and his team come upon a staggering discovery --- two eyeballs peeking out at them from the icy encasement of one of the glacier’s volcanic caves. Could this specimen be a frozen beast that perished thousands of years earlier?
Fear Base is manned year-round by a skeleton crew of U.S. military personnel. Once word of Marshall’s find is received by the medial conglomerate that is funding and sponsoring the research expedition, things take a surprising turn. Fear Base is almost immediately infiltrated by a large group made of both corporate executives and a full documentary film crew. Their intervention, much to the surprise of Marshall and his team, involves a plan to bring the ice-encased animal specimen to the Base and thaw it out on live television. Marshall and company are obviously concerned about this from a scientific standpoint but are bullied into submission by their corporate sponsors.
Leading the film team is award-winning documentary filmmaker Emilio Conti (a character who reminded me of real-life documentarian Werner Herzog in his recent film, Encounters at the End of the World). Conti and his team will stop at nothing to document this historic scientific event and interject themselves rudely into the process by claiming rights to all the scientific research Marshall’s crew has uncovered. Since this is a Lincoln Child thriller, the reader just knows something will go tragically wrong.
Prior to the film team arriving, the residents of Fear Base were visited by a small group of Tunits led by Usuguk. They warn that the ancient gods have been angered and that the wrath of the beast known as Kurrshuq, the Devourer of Souls, will be put upon them unless they leave immediately. The old shaman further warns them with the incantation, “Their wrath paints the sky with blood. The heaven cries out with the pain.” The team and military personnel do not know what to make of this, and they watch the Tunit group leave in haste. Could Usuguk’s warning have been an explanation for the strange, red spectral patterns that have been filling the Northern sky at night?
No one is able to make any connection to the Tunit warning and the discovery except for one individual, Jeremy Logan, who arrived with the semi-truck that brought the film crew’s equipment and trailer. Logan is much more than an “ice trucker,” revealing himself to be a professor of medieval history at Yale. Dr. Logan has done some research on Fear Base and tells Marshall’s team about a report filed away by a former base commander about a scientific team that died abruptly over a two-day period in April 1958. Only one person from that ill-fated group was said to have made it out alive, and Logan has plans to find the truth behind that expedition.
As expected, the live telecast of the specimen’s thawing never happens because it has suddenly disappeared. Conti and his corporate sponsors immediately feel that this was an act of sabotage and turn their suspicion to the scientific team. Their suspicions are soon thwarted as members of the Fear Base group begin to disappear themselves --- only to have their bloody remains found by others. Their worst fears have not been realized, as the specimen is somehow alive and hunting them. The beast is of unknown origin and a two-ton killing machine with horrific features and razor-sharp mandibles. Marshall heads out to the Tunit camp to find Usuguk and bring him back to Fear Base in an attempt to help them understand and stop this ancient beast from killing everyone.
It is at this point that the novel becomes a non-stop thrill ride as the group’s number is reduced one by one by this seemingly unstoppable beast. Lincoln Child, on his own and as co-author with Douglas Preston, has consistently turned out engaging thrillers that are well-researched and grounded in some scientific or historical premise. I found TERMINAL FREEZE to be a little less intensive than some of his previous work and, despite the title, felt it was a quick read better suited as a “beach book.” In any event, the novel does not fail to entertain and hopefully will be given the Hollywood film treatment like his first bestseller, THE RELIC.
--- Reviewed by Ray Palen
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