Don’t go into that cave… Fine, ignore me then.
Synopsis
Estranged friends Dean and Bethan meet after five years apart when they are drawn to a network of caves on a remote Arctic island. Bethan and her friends are environmental activists, determined to protect the land. But Dean’s group’s exploitation of rare earth minerals deep in the caves unleashes an horrific contagion that has rested frozen and undisturbed for many millennia. Fleeing the terrors emerging from the caves, Dean and Bethan and their rival teams undertake a perilous journey on foot across an unpredictable and volatile landscape. The ex-friends must learn to work together again if they’re to survive… and more importantly, stop the horror from spreading to the wider world.
Review
A bunch of Arctic explorers uncover a terrifying new aggressive organism trapped underground and must stop it from escaping to civilisation while trying to work out who is infected. Yes, it’s a bold play by NYT bestseller Tim Lebbon to riff on The Thing so heavily, but he’s done what all canny authors do when reinventing an IP; he’s kept the core of what makes this kind of story brilliant (“Who’s infected?! That is gross! Massive explosion! I regret reading this over my lunch!” etc) while injecting a wholly new original idea into the mix.
The original idea here is climate change. The discoverers of this new nasty organism – and it is genuinely nasty, its idea of dispersal gross, the fungal nature of it disturbingly plausible (I won’t say more, but you won’t be taking a breath for a while, so I hope your lung capacity is excellent) – find it in an Arctic environment that is changing all around them. Climate change is wreaking havoc here; ice is melting and new plants and growths are popping up as the landscape collapses and transforms. This part is all true, and it’s this disturbing plausibility that lends a whole new sheen to the classic “Thing” trope. This is the Earth coming back to bite us, and it could really happen. Probably. I don’t know, I’m not a scientist, but I’ll be making faster progress on my apocalypse shelter, you can be sure of that.
Another edge this action horror has is that there is A LOT of action, making this a whirlwind from start to finish. From the moment the team of illegal profiteers seeking rare earth materials come across something very bad in the cave – forcing them to flee across the Arctic back to civilisation while attempting to work out who’s infected, all the while rubbing up against some environmental activists who would rather they never got back at all if that’s what it takes – it is set piece after set piece, never slowing down, never stopping. The combination of this whiplash narrative with the genuinely fascinating biology of the creature – I won’t give anything away but it is an organism just as terrifyingly effective as it is effectively terrifying – means that you are never bored as you juggle the mystery of what they are facing with a series of bombastic, increasingly large-scale action set pieces.
Character wise, it’s slightly less successful; the key relationship is an estranged friendship between one of the activists and one of the profiteers, and it’s a really nice idea to make this an entirely platonic one and focus on the nature of friendship and forgiveness, but it never quite worked for me, feeling a little lifeless and less interesting than all the biological puzzles and identity conundrums and things blowing up. But this slight disappointment is partly made up for by an enormously fun character in the shape of a grizzled, old, seemingly indestructible activist who comes across like if an aging and more enlightened James Bond joined Greenpeace.
Overall, this book is what you’d get if a fungal-obsessed Greta Thunberg directed The Thing. It’s a breakneck action horror that will keep you guessing as you reach for your Covid mask, and given its shortish length you have no choice but to remain in your armchair until you find out who is human and who is not. Great fun.
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