Ice, Ice Baby (Icebound - Dean Koontz)

Name: Ophelia

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Product:	Icebound - Dean Koontz
Date:	27/06/03 (127 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good premise

Disadvantages: Lack of characterisation, not scary

A frozen wasteland, a group of scientists, a psychopath and a lot of explosives ? could these be a recipe for excitement and tension?

THE PLOT

A group of scientists are working in the Arctic laying explosives, which will detonate at midnight and break off one section of the icy plateau. Unfortunately they are hit by a subterranean tidal wave, which breaks off the edge of the ice and sets the scientists adrift on an iceberg, together with the explosives, which have started their countdown to detonation.

As if this was not enough to give the team something to occupy their minds, they discover that there is a psychopath in their midst, who is hell bent on murder.

A nearby Russian surveillance submarine tries to make a daring rescue, but can they do it before midnight and before the scientists are murdered by one of their own?

CHARACTERISATION

The plot does sound exciting and you would have thought that the pages would be packed with suspense and tension. However, I felt no real affinity with the characters and, as a result, I didn?t really care what happened to them and, therefore, no suspense!

This is one of Koontz?s shorter novels and this combined with the fact that there are approximately seven major characters may have lead to the lack of in depth character analysis. Whatever the reason, at the end of the day I did not empathise with our heroes and really wasn?t particularly bothered whether they were blown to bits or ended up with an ice pick in the back of their heads.

I was not enamoured with even those characters that Koontz made a special effort with. One scientist named Rita suffers from a terrible ice phobia, which only begs the question why does she chose to work in the Arctic? We are supposed to believe that she is a strong woman determined to prove to herself that she can overcome her fear. That may be the case but that doesn?t mean that she has to surround herself with nothi
ng but ice and snow for months of the year! Surely not shrieking at the site of a glass of whisky on the rocks would have been a start.

WHAT A TEASE

Koontz uses a technique designed to have the reader sitting on the edge of their seat, desperate to know further information. He frequently starts to tell a story from a character?s past, as they begin to drift off into reminiscence. Then their sentence is ended with several dots as they are interrupted and mentally brought back to the present.

What he is trying to do is so obvious and unsubtle. I felt like shouting, ?I don?t CARE ? just get on with the story!? Such a blatant tactic only resulted in antagonising me and did not make me more interested in the characters.

COUNTDOWN

The last few chapters of the book should obviously be the most exciting. The scientists are making a desperate attempt to reach the submarine before the explosives go off. Koontz tells us the time to explosion at the start of every chapter and these reminders of the time become more and more frequent as we approach zero hour.

However, even this nail-biting crescendo is ruined as Koontz chooses this moment to enlighten us as to those earlier interrupted reminiscences of the characters. Surely this isn?t the moment? Had we been told earlier in the novel we might have been better equipped to empathise with the characters but at this stage in the game all that was achieved was that the pace and momentum of the story was broken and the tension released.

MURDEROUS INTENT

Being set in such a desolate icy landscape the fact that a psychopath is in your midst should result in heightened fear as there is nowhere to run, no sign of help and you are dependent upon each other for survival.

Once again Koontz misses an opportunity. While he is good at emphasising the fatal capabilities of the cold and ice, he does not detail the cold fearful isolation of the landscape
and what should have been an intensely claustrophobic and terrifying atmosphere fell far short of this. The fact that there was a killer on the loose seemed of little significance and seemed to be more of a problem that would be looked at later, rather than another impending threat that was making an already hazardous situation worse.

DUSTBIN BOUND

The book was an easy read. However, there was so little characterisation that I felt little urge to pick up the book, as I was not interested enough to find out what was going to happen next.

With such a promising premise Koontz could surely have produced a better quality, more exciting and highly charged novel than this.



OTHER INFO
Publisher: Bantam Books, Broadway, New York
Price: £5.99
ISBN: 0-553-58290-9

Summary: