Judith & Garfield Reeves-Stevens: Icefire

Judith & Garfield Reeves-Stevens

Icefire

Monika says:

"Icefire" is a hellish scenario a clever Soviet scientist came up with during the Cold War to hit the Western world where it hurts the most. But he never believed that somebody would actually be foolish enough to go through with it. One grey November evening, however, somebody does. It’s an insidious plan: six nuclear warheads break the Ross Shelf free from the Antarctic and cause it to drop into the Pacific, setting free powers that resemble the impact of a big asteroid. The result is a soliton racing across the Pacific and threatening to crush everything it hits on the way north. The coastlines of New Zealand, Australia, Southeast Asia, China, Japan, Hawaii, and finally California are in danger. Other than a tsunami that is caused by an earthquake a soliton loses little energy as it moves on. The markets of the industrial nations threaten to crash with the destruction of Tokyo and the major cities along the Californian coast. But there is one way to stop the soliton, and a race against time commences.

ICEFIRE is a novel that gets you hooked and won’t let you go till you finished it. But don’t expect the "big bang" on the first ten pages. The authors take their own sweet time to develop their scenario and create a certain atmosphere. On 700 pages they introduce characters and build suspense before the dramatic if slightly predictable showdown takes place. Before they get there there are plenty of surprising twists, new characters pop up and known ones change their faces.

Although the setting is almost exclusively military, not all the leading characters are men. Still, some stereotypes can be found, like the tough upright guy serving his country in the military versus the woman who wants to save not only her country but also the whole planet by joining an organization similar to Greenpeace whose methods not always meet the approval of the government. Mitch Webber and Corazon Rey, lovers way back and now seemingly fierce opponents who somewhere along the line realize they are on the same team but prefer different means are the main characters of the novel. It’s questionable whether the love story really added something to the plot. I thought not, especially since it made it easier to guess the ending. But the authors obviously couldn’t do without the "battle between the sexes". Anyway, it’s just a secondary plotline that shouldn’t be given too much attention.

ICEFIRE is a novel packed with suspense and especially fascinating because the depicted events are not too fantastic to become reality tomorrow.