Beyond the Ice Limit (Gideon Crew Series #4)

by Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child, David W. Collins (Read by)

Overview

BEYOND THE ICE LIMIT
That thing is growing again. We must destroy it. The time to act is now...
With these words begins Gideon Crew's latest, most dangerous, most high-stakes assignment yet. Failure will mean nothing short of the end of humankind on earth.
Five years ago, the mysterious and inscrutable head of Effective Engineering Solutions, Eli Glinn, led a mission to recover a gigantic meteorite—the largest ever discovered—from a remote island off the coast of South America. The mission ended in disaster when their ship, the Rolvaag, foundered in a vicious storm in the Antarctic waters and broke apart, sinking-along with its unique cargo-to the ocean floor. One hundred and eight crew members perished, and Eli Glinn was left paralyzed.
But this was not all. The tragedy revealed something truly terrifying: the meteorite they tried to retrieve was not, in fact, simply a rock. Instead, it was a complex organism from the deep reaches of space.
Now, that organism has implanted itself in the sea bed two miles below the surface-and it is growing. If it is not destroyed, the planet will be doomed. There is only one hope: for Glinn and his team to annihilate it, a task which requires Gideon's expertise with nuclear weapons. But as Gideon and his colleagues soon discover, the "meteorite" has a mind of its own-and it has no intention of going quietly...

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781478940562
Publisher:	Hachette Audio
Publication date:	12/27/2016
Series:	Gideon Crew Series , #4
Edition description:	Unabridged
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 5.80(h) x 5.00(d)

About the Author

The thrillers of Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child "stand head and shoulders above their rivals" (Publishers Weekly). Preston and Child's Relic and The Cabinet of Curiosities were chosen by readers in a National Public Radio poll as being among the one hundred greatest thrillers ever written, and Relic was made into a number-one box office hit movie. They are coauthors of the famed Pendergast series and their recent novels include Fever Dream, Cold Vengeance, Two Graves, and Gideon's Corpse. In addition to his novels, Preston writes about archaeology for the New Yorker and Smithsonian magazines. Lincoln Child is a former book editor who has published five novels of his own, including the huge bestseller Deep Storm.
Readers can sign up for The Pendergast File, a monthly "strangely entertaining note" from the authors, at their website, www.PrestonChild.com. The authors welcome visitors to their alarmingly active Facebook page, where they post regularly.

Place of Birth:

Cambridge, Massachusetts

Education:

B.A., Pomona College, 1978

Website:

http://www.prestonchild.com

Editorial Reviews

04/25/2016
Preston and Child's exciting fourth Gideon Crew novel (after 2014's The Lost Island) satisfactorily resolves the cliffhanger with which they ended their 2000 thriller, The Ice Limit. Previously, eccentric billionaire Palmer Lloyd learned that the largest meteorite ever known had been found on an uninhabited island at the very tip of South America. The expedition he funded to retrieve it, under the leadership of Eli Glinn of Effective Engineering Solutions, ended with the sinking of the ship meant to bring the highly unusual meteorite back to New York City. Most of the expedition members perished, and the meteorite sank to the ocean floor. Six years later, Crew, who has been diagnosed with terminal cancer, agrees to accompany a second mission with the objective of destroying the thing with a nuke. That challenge is heightened when evidence emerges that it's actually a sentient alien. The bestselling authors maintain suspense throughout, and they throw in some original ideas that offset some familiar action tropes. Agent: Eric Simonoff, WME. (May)

Publishers Weekly

"Preston & Child take all of the various elements from classic horror and sci-fi films and novels and spin them together to write what begins as an action adventure, but soon delves into paranoid terror ... scary good fun."—Associated Press

"The always sensational duo is back with a work that is as exciting and intriguing as it is fast-paced."—Suspense Magazine

"Relentless mayhem ... [a] thrill-a-minute read. Science fiction as action adventure, the sort of book primed for screen treatment."
—Kirkus Reviews

"Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child are no strangers to breaking new ground, but the shovel they use for the beautifully conceived BEYOND THE ICE LIMIT is tipped with gold. Forget thrill on every page - this book seems to have one in every paragraph, starting with "That thing is growing again. We must destroy it."....BEYOND THE ICE LIMIT is pure fun, its wildly imaginative premise and take-no-prisoners plotting making this reading entertainment of the highest order."—Providence Sunday Journal

"The Lost Island, the third novel to feature master thief and brilliant scientist Gideon Crew, is another clever and compelling tale from Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child....The stellar writing that readers expect from Preston and Child is still in abundance, and they balance the line between page-turning suspense and ancient history."—Associated Press on The Lost Island

"Sparkling...Gideon refreshingly doesn't fit the superhero mold, and the enigmatic Amy is more than his equal in daring and intelligence."—Publishers Weekly on The Lost Island

"The ever-reliable Doug Preston and Lincoln Child are back with typical aplomb in the splendid The Lost Island. Preston and Child have been in the business of keeping secrets for years now and simply no one's better at knowing just how long to keep them... wildly entertaining and lightening paced... impossible to put down."—Providence Sunday Journal on The Lost Island

"When it comes to novels by this famous duo, the things all readers can expect are excitement, intrigue, and a story that will not soon be forgotten...The 'Crew' stories move at a super-fast pace and never leave the reader wanting...[This is] yet another perfectly unforgettable Preston & Child creation."—Suspense Magazine on The Lost Island

"The action zigzags like an out-of-control rocket toward a double-deceptive conclusion."—Kirkus Reviews on Gideon's Corpse

"Gideon, an engaging fellow from the get-go, lives up to his initial promise, demonstrating an intelligence and resourcefulness that should endear him to adventure fans."—Booklist on Gideon's Corpse

"Like Michael Crichton, Preston and Child weave their stories at a thrilling pace...Preston and Child never fail to entertain. And Gideon's Corpse is a thriller that ranks high among their many co-authored offerings to date."—BookReporter.com

"A rollicking tour-de-force. The eponymous Gideon Crew would be equally comfortable smack in a Ludlum tempest or striding onto the set of the Ocean's Eleven franchise. Preston and Child have crafted an electrifying, riveting thriller on which I could continue to heap praise, but instead I will just offer this: Read the book! And we can all look forward to the next appearance of Mr. Gideon Crew in the not-so-distant future."—David Baldacci on Gideon's Sword

"Fast-paced and action-packed, Gideon's Sword is a clever, high velocity read."—Kathy Reichs

From the Publisher

12/01/2015
Preston and Child take a break from their "Agent Pendergast" series to offer the fourth title featuring Gideon Crew. Featuring some of the characters that appeared in The Ice Limit, a stand-alone that the publisher will redistribute with a teaser chapter from the current book; with a 200,000-copy first printing.

Library Journal

David W. Collins narrates this thriller featuring quirky characters, mutiny, and undersea tragedy. Scientists on a mission off the coast of South America with series hero Gideon Crew believe that an alien organism has implanted itself two miles below the seabed—and it’s growing. The only hope to annihilate the creature depends on Gideon's expertise with nuclear weapons. Collins voices the story dramatically, employing a softly inflected tone that shifts as the crew of the ship fights to comprehend the alien life form—even as it invades individuals. Listeners will feel like they’re there, drawn into the intriguing plot. S.C.A. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine

MAY 2016 - AudioFile

2016-03-31
Effective Engineering Solutions' chief honcho, Eli Glinn, is out of his wheelchair, walking and ready for revenge after his agent Gideon Crew discovered a "restorative, health-giving lotus" on his last adventure (The Lost Island, 2014, etc.). Years ago, Glinn was nearly killed (thus the wheelchair) when his ship, the Rolvaag, sank two miles below the sea in the Hesperides Deep near the South Pole ice limit. The Rolvaag was transporting a 25,000 ton meteorite—"the largest meteorite in the world"—that EES had been paid to remove from nearby Isla Desolación by billionaire Palmer Lloyd. Now Glinn has learned the sunken meteorite has begun to grow into a treelike form, nicknamed "the Baobab" because of its shape. Glinn believes it's an extraterrestrial life form, an alien seed that will destroy the Earth. He wants Crew to destroy it with a nuclear device. Thus begins relentless mayhem, another thrill-a-minute read. Piloting a Deep Submergence Vehicle, Crew snips a piece of Baobab. Aboard ship, the segment mutates into wormlike creatures that drill through the nasal passages and into the brains of sleeping crew, who thereafter run amok at Baobab's bidding. Series readers will see a new side of the enigmatic Glinn. Crew remains the standard angst-driven hero. There's the requisite slovenly, boorish, yet brilliant computer genius and a less memorable supporting cast. New readers will struggle with minimal references to EES's raison d'être and its fabled Quantitative Behavior Analysis. There's diving lore, a précis on assembling a nuke, and a short, dense dissection of "endoplasmic reticulum" and "Golgi bodies" to conjecture a "carbon-hydrogen-silicon-oxygen form of life" that seems to have no purpose other than the biological imperative. Science fiction as action adventure, the sort of book primed for screen treatment if a producer can find a sufficient F/X budget.

Kirkus Reviews