Novels set in Antarctica are few and far between, and so even the back cover’s mention of vampires did not dissuade me from reading Robert Masello’s romantic thriller, Blood And Ice. Unexpectedly, the paranormal element plays only a sporadic role in a book that centres on the ice-encased mystery of a nineteenth-century love story. Unfortunately, engaging though the premise and descriptions of everyday life on an Antarctic research station are, Blood And Ice mistakes research-heavy backstory for plot development. Unless armchair travel excites, the thrills may fail to materialise.
His girlfriend in a coma from which it is unlikely she will ever wake up, eco-travel journalist, Michael Wilde, eventually crawls out of depression to accept a four-week assignment in Antarctica. On his first dive he makes a sensational find that promises to transform his career: entombed in an underwater glacier is a perfectly preserved, chained couple.
Cut out of the ice and taken to a saltwater tank at the research station, the bodies are left to thaw in a controlled environment. But when Michael and some station workers return to check on them, the couple has disappeared. So have a sled and team of dogs. And that is when nightmarish incidents begin to haunt the station.
Is what has happened a miracle or a curse? After the horrors they have endured, Eleanor Ames and Sinclair Copley know only that even at the ends of the earth there is no safe haven for people like them. No one can be trusted – perhaps not even the person you love.
Labelled a thriller, Blood And Ice suffers from an enormous handicap: the back cover and prologue remove any surprise from the single twist on which the entire novel bases its mystery and suspense. As I moved on into the first chapter I reasoned that this element must be only a teaser to draw readers in, and that surely there would be so much more to the plot.
There is not.
Basically, Blood And Ice is a sleekly written travelogue that alternates with flashbacks to a nineteenth-century romance between a British nurse and a ne’er-do-well aristocrat-turned-officer, then remembers it is supposed to be a paranormal thriller and throws in a few random, lightning-brief episodes that hardly make a dent in the leisurely atmosphere but manage to blur the traditional distinction between vampires and zombies. There is no final climax, simply a predicament that quietly melts into a problem-free, mundane ending.
Now, I assiduously avoid horror and graphic crime fiction, so – coupled with the breathtakingly vivid scenery that is close to everything I could wish for from a novel set in the Antarctic – the low suspense factor and high romantic quotient in Blood And Ice should have been a welcome relief. Indeed, if you enjoy Agatha Christie mysteries, you have probably experienced chills similar to those I received from this book. Also, if you like Nicholas Sparks, the sadder aspects of the romantic elements may appeal to you. But if you require plot and dramatic tension from your mystery and expect emotion and conflict from your romance, you may be as disappointed as I was.
And yet it all started so well. The riveting, heart-breaking prologue convinced me I was in for an extraordinary adventure with tragic but compelling protagonists – Eleanor and Sinclair – I was prepared to follow anywhere. Then I read the following chapters and although I was still pleased with the catchy, cinematically visual writing style that makes the pages fly by, it was somewhat less emotionally gripping to learn how the modern protagonist, Michael, is given a clean bill of health by his doctor and his dentist, what his flight to the southernmost tip of Chile is like, and how the Antarctic Coast Guard cutter he then boards works. Scrupulously researched but often irrelevant details like these and flashbacks to a Sinclair who seems to differ from the initial impression I had of him consume the first one hundred pages of the book. But at least, I thought cheerily as I turned to chapter ten, Michael has finally arrived in Antarctica, so the plot can resume.
Wrong.
Nothing enriches setting like the texture added by meaningfully layered research. Robert Masello opts for a liberal interpretation of “meaningful”; my impression is that he could not bear to leave unused any information uncovered by his admirably dedicated research. Excise the extraneous facts which are never used for any story purpose such as the date when gaslight was introduced in a certain London district, the step-by-step building of a snow shelter, and the operation of a now defunct whaling station, and the novel probably shrinks by a hundred pages. But that is not even close to the two or three hundred pages of padding provided by backstory. (The full novel in my 2010 Bantam mass market paperback edition is 675 pages long.)
It is very nicely and often entertainingly written backstory, but as chapter after chapter went by, I began scratching my head, wondering when the plot would come out and play. Two hundred pages in, the ice block is salvaged, and the two separate timelines converge. Still no suspense. Another hundred pages later the next plot point sort of pulls the actual story into motion. Meanwhile, the flashbacks to the nineteenth century – which have provided the foundation for the mystery – continue intermittently, now no longer contributing anything but a meandering background tapestry. Any twists and surprises from this point onward have boiled down to a simple, will anyone die, and if so, who and when?
Moreover, since the pacing and mood continue as they have, placid and a little melancholy, the occasional insertions of action scenes are like blips on a blank screen. The story and plot structure exhibit not the slightest understanding of dramatic tension or build-up. The chills come not from scary suspense but from occasional paragraphs of gory descriptions presumably meant to highlight the callous cruelty of humans, or, in a few cases, to illustrate the look of a dead – or perhaps undead – person. These passages tend to be brief but graphic; the ones involving animals are undeniably affecting. However, since the incidents are not developed into any coherent theme or message about human interaction with nature, for example, they become merely additional ingredients thrown without method into an overstuffed, undercooked stew.
At its core, Blood And Ice is a love story spiced up with a few paranormal elements, not the other way around. After the wonderful prologue, I eagerly looked forward to what I expected would be the equally vivid rendering of the events that had led Sinclair and Eleanor to that desperate point. After all, Eleanor works under Florence Nightingale and Sinclair belongs to the 17th Lancers, a cavalry regiment that participated in an infamous battle of the Crimean War. Instead, I received perhaps my biggest disappointment with the book: I honestly doubt their relationship and path to the purgatorial destiny awaiting them in the prologue could have been told in a more long-winded, pointless manner. Here is yet another author who could benefit from studying how current romances employ external and internal conflict to deliver an involving, book-length love story.
What I did appreciate very much is that both characters, as a matter of course, observe the then prevailing standards of decency for unmarried couples. Later on, various circumstances that conspire against them as well as the tone of the storytelling continue to ensure that there are no sensual scenes. In this respect the relationship is very innocent and noble.
Another refreshing aspect, one that sets Blood And Ice apart from the common crop of vampire stories and chiller-thrillers, is the absence of evil, whether supernatural or human. The author gives the various principal protagonists motivations that set them on an antagonistic course, but while each of them has flaws and weaknesses, none of them are genuine villains. The poignancy of this tense set-up was one of the most interesting parts of the story, and I wish the author would have allowed it a lot more scope to develop the character dynamics and explore the complexities of the choices and loyalties involved.
As matters stand, there is minimal character development. The solicitous Sinclair of the prologue seemed to me a very different person from the next glimpse given of him, as a self-centered gambler with little thought for anything but dissipation and glory until something Very Bad happens to him in the latter half of the book. The character growth I assumed would account for the discrepancy, never came. His personality remains static. An early attempt to show him in a better light rather more clearly underscores the anger that always seems to seethe close to his surface. His attachment to Eleanor is presented in the light of a conquest he can turn his back on with relative ease when his regiment leaves for Crimea. After a transformative event he is afraid to lose her, but mainly, it appears, judging by his conduct, because he does not want to be alone. Towards the end, my revised opinion of him softened, but I cannot say I ever truly cared deeply for him again.
The shy, modest Eleanor is a type rather than a character, the kind of female put into a story to give the male protagonists somebody young and beautiful to rescue and protect. She is kind and sweet and good but made wan and miserable by the wretchedness of her life. The loneliness that haunts her is filled with the sense of doom of someone who believes they have been shut out from God’s mercy. Although her character may not have been the most interesting I have encountered, it made sense – but only up to a point. Bewilderingly, considering her emotional frailty, the horrific things she survives induce no particular after-reaction in her. Neither she nor Sinclair suffer from insanity, temporary frenzy, desire for revenge, depression, phobias, or any other extreme effects.
While the concept of eco-tourism may be an oxymoron, the caring attitude it exemplifies is one of the things that attracted me to the character of Michael, the writer and photographer whose underwater discovery changes the lives of many. Sympathetic and easygoing, he is not difficult to like as he goes passionately about his work and tries to protect and help the vulnerable. Although the author attempts to give him depth by assigning him a traumatic background, the notice given to his supposed depression amounts to nothing more than lip service once he arrives at the Antarctic research station (fictional Point Adélie). His comatose girlfriend therefore serves questionable purpose in the story. The accident that landed her in that fatal situation, an accident at which Michael was present, appears to have effected no change in how Michael responds to risks and dangers. The silent parallel to the woman encased in the ice is something about which the story does not reflect much, other than perhaps indicating to the reader why Michael feels a need to act as her protector.
I am hesitant to comment on the science in the novel, other than that some of the assumptions challenge everything I thought I knew about how metal, fabric, and tissue react to long-term water-exposure and freezing temperatures. There is also a seemingly glaring inconsistency about how various individuals react to the, how shall I call it, infection. As for the quality of the research the author has poured into the historical sections, it varies. There is confusion about what constitutes period decorum and clothes, for example (to illustrate that Eleanor cannot afford to dress in the latest fashions, she is made to wear gigot sleeves – which had become completely outmoded around the time of her birth and which she would thus never have had any reason to wear in the first place), but historical events are described with both feeling and strikingly atmospheric detail.
It is harder to ignore implausibilities to do with character actions and reactions. I have mentioned some already, but there are several other things I cannot bring up without spoilers. Suffice to say that bureaucracy appears to be more of a concern to some characters than bloody rampages, and that the potential state of being undead causes less questioning in someone than the claim of having personally known someone famous. I was also taken aback when the very first adjective being used to give an introductory description of a prominent secondary character’s looks was “black” when no character is described in terms of her or his whiteness (or any other skin colour, the sick or wind-burned excepted). It is a common lapse, but I would think novelists would possess the imagination to portray everybody’s appearance in smarter terms where the race of the person concerned is irrelevant to the situation.
Suprisingly, perhaps, I do not feel I wasted my time reading this novel. Yes, an intriguing premise that promises adventure, excitement, suspense, tragedy, and drama galore is undercut by the sketchiest of underdeveloped plots and an almost complete lack of suspense. Yet I truly enjoyed several of the things Robert Masello does in Blood And Ice. The setting made me feel the Antarctic freeze in my bones and visualise the locations as if I was there. The writing is energetic and flows effortlessly, carrying me along even when I was less than impressed with the story itself. At no time did I consider not finishing the book: I was too curious about the outcome for the various protagonists. Masello is not preachy about nature or the depredations wrought by humans, but a melancholy, tender undertone reverberates through the story and gives it unexpected heart. Despite major shortcomings, Blood And Ice has its moments.
