“Terminal Freeze” is another Lincoln Child book about a monster on the loose. I might sound like I’m bored with the idea, but actually Child’s books are like comfort food to me, and “Terminal Freeze” is pretty tasty.
Child always takes a reader to an interesting part of the world (here it’s the barren glaciers of Alaska), there’s always a character who will certainly get torn apart by the monster (a documentary filmmaker who doesn’t know when to quit), there’s always a bit of social commentary (global warming) and mysticism (Native American spirits), and there’s always a monster.
Plus, Child writes death scenes that will either make you laugh or gape, depending on how twisted your mind is. For example, he compares the monster’s devouring of one of his victims to a hungry person mowing through a cob of corn. I wonder if Child takes delight in writing scenes like that; he’s certainly knows how to paint a gory picture.
“Terminal Freeze” is basically a “Scooby Doo” episode (scientists dig a monster out of the ice and thaw it) expanded into an adventure novel. This is completely in Child’s wheelhouse; he’s not trying to do anything new, like his writing partner Douglas Preston did last year with his nonfiction piece on an Italian serial killer.
I recall that Child’s “Utopia” and “Deep Storm” provided more hard science to chew on. It seems like “Terminal Freeze” was pulled out of a stack of old manuscripts; there are shades of the Preston-Child collaborations “Relic” (the Callisto Effect — the theory that a creature is introduced by nature to cull an overpopulated area) and “Still Life with Crows” (the somewhat childlike behavior of the vicious creature).
Still, check out “Terminal Freeze.” It’ll make a nice appetizer as you’re waiting for Preston and Child’s “Cemetery Dance” to become available at the library.
Check out prestonchild.com to explore the authors’ catalogue.