When the world is running low on safe, drinkable water, big business starts scurrying to find ways to tap the iceberg's resources. And where can they find the ultimate in iceberg resources but Antarctica? Soldyne Corporation has plans to use microwaves to melt the ice and transport the water back to the United States to sell it. However, they have to wait until a part of the ice shelf breaks off before they can begin their efforts.

Meanwhile, scientists are living and studying in Antarctica. They have a variety of scientific studies going on, and these scientists are advocates for the environment. However, the scientists aren't the only creatures in Antarctica. The icy region is also inhabited by rats.

When a large section of the ice shelf "conveniently" breaks away, Soldyne races to beat Australian scientists to the newly formed iceberg. The Australian scientists initially win that race but almost immediately relinquish their rights to Soldyne. Then all the real action starts to take place.

I was immediately hooked because of the ties to the environment and environmental issues.

The novel is very fast paced. I moved through the book quite quickly, despite the fact that I'm squeamish about rats. I was worried at times that I would end up with nightmares about rats.

What was gripping about the book was the concept of the world not having enough drinking water. So, I was definitely intrigued to see how that element would play out. But, I have to say, for the most part, I wasn't really connecting with too many of the characters. The character that pulled me in the most was only present at the beginning of the novel: Derek MacCallister, an iceberg "cowboy." The concept for the microwaves to melt the 'berg came from MacCallister.

The beginning of the novel illustrates the fearlessness of MacCallister when he ties himself to the bow of his boat when an iceberg is forcing the boat to capsize. The boat literally turns 360 degrees and then rights itself. MacCallister is still out on the bow of the boat, grinning like a goof and giving the thumbs up sign! I was completely hooked on him at that moment. He's fearless; he's crazy; he's funny. He's also incredibly smart. He sold his plans to Soldyne for two million dollars, and then THEY were left with the "hard part". He walked away with the cash, never to be seen again. That was disappointing to me.

I think Dionne's intention was for the novel to be more plot driven than character driven, but character development is key for me in a great novel. Zo - short for Amazon - is a scientist at the station in Antarctica, who also happens to be pregnant. I thought the pregnancy was probably more on the fluff side. It didn't really play into anything that was vital to the plot. Ben works for Soldyne and he's in Antarctica to follow up on some problems that are occurring with their process. Both characters are likable, but neither really "stuck" with me.

The plot is very strong in this novel, however. I admired how Dionne portrayed both ends of the environmental extremes as detrimental to society. And I have to say that I was riveted by her ideas of what could potentially happen.

The novel also portrays the greed-factor. This is absolutely repulsive to me and Dionne doesn't harp on it, but presents just enough of it to make you angry. I cannot imagine anyone reading this book and feeling any compassion for Donald Gillette. Gillette is Ben's boss who is also disgruntled because Soldyne is using Ben's microwave science as opposed to Gillette's proposed approach. Dionne definitely did a great job of making me hate the antagonist.

Overall, if you enjoy scientific thrillers, you will most likely enjoy this novel - unless of course you have real issues with rats.

I’m not entirely sure how this book came to be in reading stack, as I’ve not heard of this Author before now. This is a different type of book insomuch as it is not only fiction but includes a lot of aspects of real world concerns within its pages. If you like a book that will make you think and question things, then you might like to pick this up. This is also a debut novel for this Author.

As much as I liked this book, I felt I could not rate it any higher than I did due to a number of things, one of these being the vast number of characters that appear in it. Some just pop in then drop from sight; others are continued throughout the book. Because of this it is hard to identify one main protagonist as each of the cast has an important role to play in the telling of this story. Despite the difficulty in keeping track of this ‘cast of thousands’ if the reader manages to make it to the end their roles in what has been read before all comes together.

Another reason for the lower rating than it might have been given was all the extra details that the Author included in their novel. These had a tendency to really slow the storyline down, and in order to keep the book moving along I felt that the development of the character was given a very low priority. Combine these with too many clichés and some obvious, and not so obvious, research errors and what could have being an outstanding, well crafted and captivating thriller turned into just another, well just another book really. I felt with the use of a really good editor this book could have been so much more.

I am going to recommend this book purely because of the fact that it makes the reader think and reassess the world they live in.


Originally reviewed on: http://catesbooknuthut.com/2014/02/26/review-freezing-point-karen-dionne/



This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Not bad ... Premise was good but many things left undone.

This book, is bad. Like really really bad. I started it in 2017 and put it down after a few chapters and forgot about it, until recently when I was going through my Currently Reading shelve on Goodreads. So I decided to read it to get it off my shelve. But I wasn’t going to write about it. I was going to let this one go into the donate pile to be forgotten about. But yesterday me and my Boyfriend started talking about this book, and now I have to comment on it. This book is about a water company that wants to melt icebergs using microwave technology. So they plant a bomb on an iceberg in Antarctica, and then they go down there and begin to start melting the berg. There’s a group of scientists on the other side of Antarctica and they are just doing research when all of a sudden everyone starts getting super sick. The story just gets more convoluted as there are man eating mutated rats that are trying to kill everyone, but the rat poop has the cure for diabetes but that’s also why everyone is getting sick and dying because they are drinking the contaminated water. Its the most confusing and insane story I have ever read. But of all the things I read, I had to know if there were mutated rats on Antarctica, because that made the most sense to me. Spoiler: there are no rats on Antarctica. But this was such a source of contention with my boyfriend that I even looked it up. In my defense, it seemed plausible that rats could have come over on explorers ships and mutated into carnivores (eating penguins when humans weren’t around). More logical than controlled microwaves melting icebergs anyway.

Don’t read this book. The plot is nonsense, the characters are forgettable, and the story is confusing. I gave it a 2/5 stars but I was being generous because of the discussion it sparked with my boyfriend (who is now getting my copy of this book so he can read it).

I write more reviews here: https://gothiccornilabooks.wordpress.com

The setting was mastered beautifully. Such detail, and the action was spot on. Enjoyed the plot, and especially the thrills. Enjoyed questioning the motives of each of the characters. Felt Zo's character got a little inconsistent at one point, but it came around nicely. I liked it well enough to read the next book, and that's a big point.

Week 43 of the 2017 Reading Challenge: A book with a chilling atmosphere (scary, unsettling, cold).