This was a fun and interesting read! The story moves back and forth from Great Britain in the mid 1800’s to the present time in frigid Antarctica. At the earlier time, “the great bear Russia” had designs on Turkey; The Crimean war was heating up and Florence Nightingale was running her hospital for woman in England and would, soon, gain fame as “the lady with the lamp”. Young British officers were bold, fun loving, chauvinistic and confident that they could conquer anything. We meet Nurse, Eleanor Ames and Lieutenant Sinclair of the 17th Lancers of the Light Brigade both of whom experience the horrors and defeats of war (remember the poem of “The Charge Of The light Brigade”) and another, worse, horror that will change their lives forever.
At the frozen South pole, Journalist Michael Wilde has taken an assignment to take photos and write an article on a research station that does climate change studies. Except for the severe weather and cold it would be pretty routine but while making a dive under the ice to take pictures of underwater glaciers, he finds a strange, old bottle, a wooden chest and very near, encased in ice, the chained bodies of a man and a woman perfectly preserved. An amazing archeological find, a prize winning story? Who are they? How did they end up chained in a block of ice? The ice is allowed to melt very slowly at a controlled temperature but when it finally melts, the research station is faced with a new, terrifying situation. Mr. Masello put plenty of action and suspense in this thrilling novel.
