This book ended up on my radar when I had a sudden random hankering for horror novels taking place in the arctic or antarctic. I wouldn't call this horror, rather, it is an adventure novel with elements of mystery.

The plot itself is not complicated and boils down to: good guys trying to get treasure, bad guys try to stop them. We've seen this plot line in many other books, from Treasure Island to the Da Vinci Code. In this novel, the treasure is a meteorite that has a bit of a mystery surrounding it. Additionally, there's also the token bad guy, who, indeed serves his role but does nothing more. I suppose this segues us into character.

No, no, no we cannot start with character in a review for this book. So let's go with plot first. Without spoilers, I'll just say it's a decent plot and has a few cool and exciting moments. I was never bored reading this book, but I also don't think it did anything particularly unique. It was entertainment, nothing more (albeit good entertainment). That being said, it truly did try to dig a bit deeper. However that didn't happen in plot, but in character development.

So with this segue, are we ready to review character? This time yes. First, let me point out that I don't expect much in the way of character development in these sorts of adventure novels. And unfortunately in this case, the character development did more harm than good. The author(s) tried to give several characters growth arcs, specifically MacFarlane (growth from a lone wolf to a team player -- this was the best character growth in the novel), Captain Britton, Rachel Amira, and Glinn. I really need to address the latter two. Rachel Amira had so. much. potential as a character. She was a mathematics genius and she wasn't afraid to show her skills until....she became a love interest. Suddenly she was a damsel in distress, needing a man to save her and her titanic intellect was put aside for most of the rest of the novel. Do I really need to go into why this is a little bit problematic? (Also side note - the Macfarlane - Amira romance was so unnecessary. It did literally nothing in the way of plot development).

And Glinn. Ugh Glinn. He had just as much potential as Amira. I found his character to be extremely compelling as someone who is extremely confident in his control of every variable in every situation, and how he reacts when faced with the unexpected. But again, why did he have to have a love interest? It made no sense for his character: as someone whose personality revolves around logic and risk assessment suddenly there's emotions and feelings, and love for another character? Admittedly he didn't really know how to handle these emotions, but the entire thing felt out of place and did nothing at all for the development of the plot.

The writing itself is good, not needlessly wordy or too sparse. No complaints here.

I'm forgetting what other categories I should review because it's been so long (and I'm so tired -- it's January 2021 and the world is falling apart).

So I'll just end this review with the following point: I would have given this book four stars if there had been less character development. As it stands now, 3 stars (I'd give it like 3.25 if I could, but I can't - so voila).