Miller's second novel (after Zero Hour
) starts with a fascinating premise—in Antarctic waters, a giant iceberg has been detected, moving against the stream and heading straight for Hawaii. Marines and biologists are dispatched to land on the leviathan, where they discover a young boy and his infant sister, the only survivors of a shipwreck. The boy talks nervously of the ghosts on the floe, and soon after, members of the landing party begin to meet with gruesome ends provided by mollusk-like creatures called cephids, byproducts of evolution taking a nasty turn. At this point, the story switches from military procedural to horror story, with members of the landing crew dispatched one by one and the survivors pulling together for a final showdown with the enemy; think Night of the Living Dead
on an iceberg. Miller is not afraid to pile on the gore ("His viscera spilled onto the floor in a steaming heap"), which gets tiresome before long. The characters are thin and there are unresolved issues at story's end, but the story works on a gut level, thanks to a chilling monster and brisk pacing, even if it doesn't live up to the potential of its imaginative and promising setup. (Mar.)
