Benjamin E. Miller

This type of story is the horror/science fictional version of the old dark house stories where a group of people are stranded (Sorry folks, the bridge is out, you’ll have to spend the night here) in some spooky mansion with a mysterious masked killer lurking behind the curtains or in a secret passage. Here the usual suspects are stuck on a big iceberg headed toward Hawaii. A team is sent in to investigate and they start disappearing. There are a lot of lovingly graphic descriptions of virtually the entire cast being killed off—eaten alive, torn apart, etc. It is all quite repetitive. I quickly learned that as soon as a character wandered off alone you could start skipping until you got past his/her inevitable demise (What’s that noise behind me, ahead of me, what’s that bad smell—exitus). The people are pretty much the usual stock characters going through their paces: military, scientists, the predictable businessman villain (not a spoiler, you’ll spot him from the get go). In fact, the word predictable sums the book up quite well.… (mere)