Freezing Point by Karen Dionne is an ecological thriller that reads like a disaster movie.
Ben is a former environmental activist who “sold out to the man” thinking he could better serve the Earth by using his engineering skills at a major corporation. His big plan is to use microwaves to safely melt a massive iceberg and deliver the fresh water to people in need. Zo is a researcher at a small research station in the Arctic. She is secretly passing along info to Ben so that he and his company can be first to know when the ice shelf breaks away into an iceberg. Along the way, there is a mysterious, speedy virus killing off researchers; madness; hordes of man-eating rats; explosions; fires; tidal waves; an executive with a murderous lust for money and power; and eco-terrorists.
Despite all of this, the book is slow to get into. I was easily halfway through the novel before I finally got involved. Part of this is because there is not a single likeable character in the book. Ben is a holier-than-thou hypocritical do-gooder (he punishes his daughter for taking an 11-minute shower during a drought, then turns around and waters his lawn). Zo is whiney, and even though she has been chosen for this prestigious research trip to Antarctica, she still comes across as having average intelligence and barely competent. The eco-terrorist, Rebecca, who is mentioned prominently on the back flap, appears for maybe three pages, and she is nowhere near as militant as most eco-terrorists (she wants to blow a hole in the tanker that is carrying back the iceberg water, but doesn’t want to kill anyone or cause any major damage to the boat). The sad part is that there weren’t any characters I enjoyed hating. They were all too boring and bland to care one way or another.
Once all the characters have been laid out and you get into the action, things pick up. It is balls-out chaos when Zo’s camp starts dying off due to a mystery virus. Ben is determined to save them by commissioning a helicopter to fly to the site, only to have the chopper crash, the pilot die, more people succumb to the virus, man-eating rats devouring other researchers alive, a fire sweeping through the research center, and a tidal wave crashing over the tundra just as rescue arrives. Roland Emmerich, are you listening? Scoop this one up!
Overall, it was an easy read and the last 100 pages or so make the beginning of the book worth the struggle.
Article comments