empressbrooke
Written on Mar 8, 2009
After impressing me with [b:Deep Storm|1420345|Deep Storm|Lincoln Child|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1183457980s/1420345.jpg|1410754] last year, Lincoln Child sort of missed the boat with Terminal Freeze. While there was nothing bad about it, it suffered from being a retread of [b:Relic|67035|Relic (A Pendergast Novel)|Douglas Preston|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170665293s/67035.jpg|23046], Child's thriller debut with Douglas Preston. He even seems to recognize this when he refers to Frock and his Callisto Effect theory. Swap out Relic's natural history museum for a military base in Alaska, change some character names and throw in a documentary team from a television channel, and you've got Terminal Freeze.
Creativity isn't terribly high on my list of requirements for a good book, so this isn't the whole of my complaints. As long as a book is well-written and has interesting characters, I tend to overlook the fact that it doesn't bring anything new to the table. Terminal Freeze, however, lacks the punch and pizazz that Relic and other Preston/Child books have. It is completely without any element of surprise. I heartily recommend not reading any synopsis, including the book jacket's inside flap, because it lays out the entire plot. There aren't any game-changers, no moments of "Ah ha, gotcha!" After Child did such a good job taking Deep Storm in an unforeseen direction several times, I'm really disappointed he didn't do that here.
The next Preston/Child collaboration is out in two months, and I'm hoping that it's more interesting than this one was.
Creativity isn't terribly high on my list of requirements for a good book, so this isn't the whole of my complaints. As long as a book is well-written and has interesting characters, I tend to overlook the fact that it doesn't bring anything new to the table. Terminal Freeze, however, lacks the punch and pizazz that Relic and other Preston/Child books have. It is completely without any element of surprise. I heartily recommend not reading any synopsis, including the book jacket's inside flap, because it lays out the entire plot. There aren't any game-changers, no moments of "Ah ha, gotcha!" After Child did such a good job taking Deep Storm in an unforeseen direction several times, I'm really disappointed he didn't do that here.
The next Preston/Child collaboration is out in two months, and I'm hoping that it's more interesting than this one was.