ICEBOUND
Icebound, by Dean Koontz, is a story about a group of international scientists stationed in the Arctic who are conducting a feasibility experiment. Their assignment is to plant a dozen high explosives in such a manner as to break off a portion of the ice cap and then have it towed, with the aide of prevailing ocean currents, to a location where it can be melted and the fresh water used to irrigate arid regions of the earth. However, a subterranean earthquake and resulting tsunami breaks off a larger chunk than expected, which includes the entire team of researchers, the already implanted bombs set to explode at midnight, and sets then adrift. A severe storm also hits the crew. How can they survive when they don’t have enough fuel to keep them warm until midnight or enough time to disarm all the bombs? It is a race against time for their lives.
The group includes a young adventurer whose uncle was a former American President who had been assassinated and whose family had experienced other terrible tragedies, a woman with a phobic fear of ice, an East Asian with an extreme hatred of all things Communist, and, to complicate things, a psychotic murderer within their ranks and a Russian spy submarine coming to their rescue. Not everyone survives.
A well written, suspense filled novel which makes me glad I live in Florida. ( )

Not what I expected from Koontz, but not too bad over all. Too many characters with too many “issues” to create an artificial feeling of suspense where it wasn’t needed. Let the story speak for itself. Anyway, wasn’t the best thing I’ve ever read, but wasn’t the worst either. ( )

If you like authors such as Dan Brown and James Patterson, you will probably enjoy Dean Koontz. This book was a suspenseful thriller and an easy read. I enjoyed it, but found it to be very one-dimensional. ( )

So I found this book on my shelf and I don't remember it at all. I either DNFed this thing or just erased the memory from my head because it was awful. At times I kept getting a case of deja vu, though now I realize it's because I was mis-remembering this book along with Dan Brown's "Deception Point." That's another terrible book that I don't even want to get into right now.

Look this is going to be short (for me). This book was awful. Heck I think even Koontz acknowledges how bad it was. He wrote it under another name and once he got all successful it was published under his own name. Sometimes it is better to just leave things alone.

"Icebound" has a team of UN scientists who are stationed in the Arctic to research ice fields. The team is supposed to be setting up explosives to break off a piece of ice to study it. No, I don't think that sounds smart either. Prior to detonation though a tsunami somehow occurs and breaks off the ice the team is currently stationed on. Yes, I do agree this sounds similar in a bad way to Armageddon. If that's not enough, we find out a killer is among the group after one character is attacked and another is found dead Cause killers go to the Arctic.

The characters we are supposed to be rooting for are husband and wife team Doctors Harry and Rita Carpenter. I can't even recall the names of the other people. Call them plot points 1 (Rita's ex lover and seriously why is he there?) through 6 or maybe it's 7. I can't even tell you people's names at this point. It was too much information coming at me every five minutes.

We also get a point of view of a submarine rescue mission of the scientists and no I had no idea why that was included. It read so weird to me.

The writing wasn't there and doesn't read like Koontz. A few times I wondered if he heard people speaking in sentences before because I thought the "voices" and flow of the narration was poor. Also seriously a killer is among them. There's already enough going on with them being afloat on a broken off piece of ice.

The setting of the ice float did nothing for me. I mean you read about how cold it is, how characters cannot see anything, etc.

The ending was hilariously bad. I got nothing else. ( )

This novel didn’t read like a Koontz novel at all. At times I found it to be stupefyingly dull. The ending finally had my interest, for a little while. I didn’t really care who the killer was by the end, and it never made any sense. Nothing about the killer and why he did what he did was explained either. I think I just read this novel to finally say I’ve read it.

2.5 stars, and not really recommended to anyone. ( )