Book
Beyond the ice limit / Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child.
"That thing is growing again. We must destroy it. The time to act is now ... With these words begins Gideon Crew's latest, most dangerous, most high-stakes assignment yet. Failure will mean nothing short of the end of humankind on earth. Five years ago, the mysterious and inscrutable head of Effective Engineering Solutions, Eli Glinn, led a mission to recover a gigantic meteorite--the largest ever discovered--from a remote island off the coast of South America. The mission ended in disaster when their ship, the Rolvaag, foundered in a vicious storm in the Antarctic waters and broke apart, sinking-along with its unique cargo-to the ocean floor. One hundred and eight crew members perished, and Eli Glinn was left paralyzed. But his was not all. The tragedy revealed something truly terrifying: the meteorite they tried to retrieve was not, in fact, simply a rock. Instead, it was a complex organism from the deep reaches of space. Now, that organism has implanted itself in the sea bed two miles below the surface-and it is growing. If it is not destroyed, the planet will be doomed. There is only one hope: for Glinn and his team to annihilate it, a task which requires Gideon's expertise with nuclear weapons. But as Gideon and his colleagues soon discover, the "meteorite" has a mind of its own and it has no intention of going quietly..."--Provided by the publisher.
Record details
- ISBN: 9781455525867
- ISBN: 1455525863
- Physical Description: 375 pages ; 24 cm
- Edition: First edition: May 2016.
- Publisher: New York : Grand Central Publishing, 2016.
- Copyright: ©2016
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| Subject: | Human-alien encounters > Fiction. Antarctic Ocean > Fiction. |
| Genre: | Action and adventure fiction. Action and adventure fiction. Science fiction. Fiction. |
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Available copies
- 12 of 12 copies available at BC Interlibrary Connect. (Show)
- 2 of 2 copies available at Sechelt/Gibsons.
- 1 of 1 copy available at Sechelt Public Library. (Show preferred library)
Holds
- 1 current hold with 12 total copies.
Other Formats and Editions
Show Only Available Copies
| Location | Call Number / Copy Notes | Barcode | Shelving Location | Holdable? | Status | Due Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sechelt Public Library | LP F PRES (Text) | 3326000399317 | Large Print | Volume hold | Available | - |
| Gibsons Public Library | FIC PRES (Text) | 30886001020516 | Adult Fiction Hardcover | Volume hold | Available | - |
- Booklist Reviews : Booklist Monthly Selections - #2 May 2000
From this popular team comes another solid thriller. Billionaire Palmer Lloyd's hobby is buying up rare artifacts; the current object of his desire is the world's largest meteorite, buried on an island off the coast of Chile. Eli Glinn is the head of the high-tech engineering firm Palmer hires to figure out a way to bring the meteorite home to the U.S. Sam McFarlane is the down-and-out meteorite hunter, the expert whose own theory about the origins of the meteorite, if proven to be true, could spell disaster for everyone involved. It is no accident that this fits the description of a big-budget feature film. After all, Preston and Child have a history of writing novels that read like movies in prose form, with exciting stories, plenty of interesting characters (here we also have a boat captain who's a recovering alcoholic), and visually arresting set pieces. Most of the novel's action takes place either on Rolvaag, a huge tanker rebuilt to carry the enormous meteorite, or on Isla Desolacion, where Palmer's group tries to uncover, and move, the meteorite without losing too many lives in the process; both locations are perfect for the big screen. The characterizations here are rather deeper than those found in most of the team's previous thrillers--the players are more like people and less like stick figures--but, as always, the action is what keeps readers turning the pages. The authors' fans will appreciate their new novel, as will fans of such writers as Michael Crichton and Clive Cussler. ((Reviewed May 15, 2000)) Copyright 2000 Booklist Reviews - Booklist Reviews : Booklist Reviews 2016 May #2
Eli Glinn, head of Effective Engineering Solutions, has planned to destroy a meteorite that he lost in a disastrous fashion off the coast of South America. Now the extraterrestrial rock, dubbed the Baobab, lies at the bottom of the oceanânot a meteorite but a strange organism growing to gigantic proportion. Glinn enlists the help of Gideon Crew, a nuclear scientist and sometimes thief, to examine and destroy the Baobab before its growth affects the planet. What begins as an undersea technothriller evolves into a terrifying, action-packed, and gory deep-sea nightmare as Crew and others attempt to thwart a life-form that may be alien, machine, or a hybrid of both. Preston and Child set up the backstory effectively as Gideon questions survivors from the original disaster; and as expected, the authors treat readers with a cornucopia of real science, including exobiology, allelopathy, and panspermia theory. Fans have been clamoring for a sequel to the Ice Limit (2000) for quite some time, and incorporating the popular Gideon Crew to the mix will only add to patron demand. Copyright 2014 Booklist Reviews. - Kirkus Reviews : Kirkus Reviews 2016 April #2
Effective Engineering Solutions' chief honcho, Eli Glinn, is out of his wheelchair, walking and ready for revenge after his agent Gideon Crew discovered a "restorative, health-giving lotus" on his last adventure (The Lost Island, 2014, etc.). Years ago, Glinn was nearly killed (thus the wheelchair) when his ship, the Rolvaag, sank two miles below the sea in the Hesperides Deep near the South Pole ice limit. The Rolvaag was transporting a 25,000 ton meteoriteâ"the largest meteorite in the world"âthat EES had been paid to remove from nearby Isla Desolación by billionaire Palmer Lloyd. Now Glinn has learned the sunken meteorite has begun to grow into a treelike form, nicknamed "the Baobab" because of its shape. Glinn believes it's an extraterrestrial life form, an alien seed that will destroy the Earth. He wants Crew to destroy it with a nuclear device. Thus begins relentless mayhem, another thrill-a-minute read. Piloting a Deep Submergence Vehicle, Crew snips a piece of Baobab. Aboard ship, the segment mutates into wormlike creatures that drill through the nasal passages and into the brains of sleeping crew, who thereafter run amok at Baobab's bidding. Series readers will see a new side of the enigmatic Glinn. Crew remains the standard angst-driven hero. There's the requisite slovenly, boorish, yet brilliant computer genius and a less memorable supporting cast. New readers will struggle with minimal references to EES's raison d'être and its fabled Quantitative Behavior Analysis. There's diving lore, a précis on assembling a nuke, and a short, dense dissection of "endoplasmic reticulum" and "Golgi bodies" to conjecture a "carbon-hydrogen-silicon-oxygen form of life" that seems to have no purpose other than the biological imperative. Science fiction as action adventure, the sort of book primed for screen treatment if a producer can find a sufficient F/X budget. Copyright Kirkus 2016 Kirkus/BPI Communications. All rights reserved. - Library Journal Reviews : LJ Reviews 2000 March #1
Inexplicable things start to happen as scientists try to move a massive meteorite discovered in Chile, and soon their ship is being pushed by a storm toward the "ice limit" of Antarctica. Another Relic? Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information. - Library Journal Reviews : LJ Reviews 2000 July #1
The scene: a ship near Cape Horn off the Chilean coast. The cast: a well-paid but dedicated and courageous staff of technicians, including a female skipper and a scientistóeach with a questionable past. The problem in this adventure by best-selling coauthors Preston and Child (Riptide): how to transport the biggest meteorite ever to a New York museum without attracting the attention of the Chilean authorities and the press? Add the further complication that the meteorite derives from a strange, unfamiliar element. At one point, the vessel is attacked and trapped by a Chilean ship. As the suspense builds, the various strands of the plot come together. Will the ship survive? What happens to the meteoriteóif, indeed, it is a meteorite? The book is recommended with one reservation: if you donÃt enjoy necessary technical passages, you may be bored. On the other hand, if you enjoy Clive Cussler, youÃll probably enjoy this novel. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 3/1/00.]óFred M. Gervat, Concordia Coll. Lib., Bronxville, NY Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information. - Library Journal Reviews : LJ Reviews 2015 December #1
Preston and Child take a break from their "Agent Pendergast" series to offer the fourth title featuring Gideon Crew. Featuring some of the characters that appeared in The Ice Limit, a stand-alone that the publisher will redistribute with a teaser chapter from the current book; with a 200,000-copy first printing.
[Page 70]. (c) Copyright 2016 Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. - PW Annex Reviews : Publishers Weekly Annex Reviews
Preston and Child's exciting fourth Gideon Crew novel (after 2014's The Lost Island) satisfactorily resolves the cliffhanger with which they ended their 2000 thriller, The Ice Limit. Previously, eccentric billionaire Palmer Lloyd learned that the largest meteorite ever known had been found on an uninhabited island at the very tip of South America. The expedition he funded to retrieve it, under the leadership of Eli Glinn of Effective Engineering Solutions, ended with the sinking of the ship meant to bring the highly unusual meteorite back to New York City. Most of the expedition members perished, and the meteorite sank to the ocean floor. Six years later, Crew, who has been diagnosed with terminal cancer, agrees to accompany a second mission with the objective of destroying the thing with a nuke. That challenge is heightened when evidence emerges that it's actually a sentient alien. The bestselling authors maintain suspense throughout, and they throw in some original ideas that offset some familiar action tropes. Agent: Eric Simonoff, WME. (May)
[Page ]. Copyright 2016 PWxyz LLC - School Library Journal Reviews : SLJ Reviews 2000 November
YA-Hired to locate a meteorite and transfer it to a billionaire collector's new museum, Sam McFarlane uses high technology and groups of experts to find, dig up, and begin shipping the gigantic rock. However, Commandante Vallenar of the Chilean Navy doesn't want it removed from his country. Action on the tanker reaches an intense strain as the crew and members of the recovery team struggle with both the meteorite and a killer storm, a panteonero, which threatens to overwhelm the ship. Gunfire from Vallenar's ship initiates a life-and-death chase as both vessels sail into the frigid waters off Tierra del Fuego. The meteorite, full of unknown properties and prone to sudden bursts of electrical charges, offers the biggest surprise of all, as the ocean stands ready to claim everyone and everything. This is a tempestuous adventure of high seas, high stakes, and high excitement. As characters enter the story, their personalities expand along with the intricate plot, taking on more intensity and power. The extreme hostility of the environment eventually proves to be the deciding factor. Like Sebastian Junger's The Perfect Storm (Norton, 1997), this natural thriller is not to be missed.-Pam Johnson, Fairfax County Public Library, VA Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information. - School Library Journal Reviews : SLJ Reviews 2000 June
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 novel which, like its predecessors, skirts the edge of science fiction is 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 done this 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 meteorite blood 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 homeward only 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 Cahners Business Information. - Voice of Youth Advocates Reviews : VOYA Reviews 2000 December
When meteorite fanatic Sam McFarlane first encounters billionaire Lloyd Palmer, Palmer dashes his hopes of locating a long-sought-after meteorite in the Kalahari desert. Palmer offers McFarlane the chance to find and retrieve an even more specialone-the largest meteorite in the world-that McFarlane's friend and ex-partner died trying to find. Palmer, who sweetens the deal with nearly a million dollars, wants the four-thousand-ton meteorite for his museum of rare and unusual (and costly)items. He engages the services of Eli Glinn's premier engineering firm, Effective Engineering Solutions. EES must figure out how to uncover and extract the huge meteorite from the Chilean island near the edge of Antarctica and to transport itsuccessfully back to Palmer's New York museum. Further complicating the task is the secrecy in which it must be shrouded. Chile's government does not know of the existence of the meteorite, and Palmer wants the government to stay in ignorance, whichtakes the full efforts of McFarlane, Glinn, and the band of EES specialists. When the meteorite is located, the group becomes aware of its strange behavior-unlike any other meteorite ever found before. Preston and Child, coauthors of many previous thrillers, including Riptide (Warner, 1998/VOYA December 1998) and Thunderhead (Warner, 1999/VOYAClueless? list, December 1999), again have produced a solid, suspenseful page-turner filled withunexpected twists and unusual characters. The dramatic end will prompt readers to thumb back through pages they just read. Teens who have enjoyed this writing team's earlier work or who relish Clive Cussler's adventure novels will love finding TheIce Limit.-Joanna Morrison. Copyright 2000 Voya Reviews
