rachelmanija just posted an absolutely delightful book report on The Plants by Kenneth McKenney, which you should go read. (Her post, not the book. The book sounds terrible.)

While she was reading it, there were some emails passed back and forth which got me talking about The Ice Limit (Douglas Preston/Lincoln Child), a hilaribad thriller I read years ago. What reminded me of it is that the plants, at least early on, are not particularly dangerous and don't really do anything, they're just described with a looming sense of menace as if the scariest thing in the world is a tray of bean sprouts.

The Ice Limit also does this with its antagonist, which is ... a giant rock.

You are constantly told about the air of menace looming around the rock, the way everyone is afraid of it, etc. At one point it rolls and kills a guy because the characters have been digging underneath it and didn't shore it up properly. It is, however, still just a rock. It doesn't move on its own. It just LOOMS. Menacingly.

But THEN I went to look up The Ice Limit on Amazon and now I am DYING because ...

https://www.amazon.com/Ice-Limit-Douglas-Preston-ebook/dp/B001GXP7SK/

.... it has the wrong tag line.

National Book Award finalist Julie Anne Peters delivers a moving, classic love story with a coming out theme and a modern twist.

I hope no one buys this book expecting a moving coming-out story, because that most certainly is not this book, and Julie Anne Peters, whoever she is, did not write it.

But the rest of the blurb is actually about this book!

A frightening truth is about to unfold: The men and women of the Rolvaag are not taking this ancient, enigmatic object anywhere. It is taking them.

IT'S A ROCK. It's not a sentient rock. It's not a radioactive rock. It's just a big rock. It's only a danger to them because they spend the whole book trying to dig it up.

Speaking of which, I have GOT to tell you what happens in the thrilling and suspenseful climax, which I'll put under a cut just in case you decide to read it yourself and want to have the full impact of the characters' apocalyptic stupidity.


The giant rock is a meteorite which is unusually dense and heavy. The book is a Crichton-esque thriller about a group of scientists and fortune hunters trying to dig it up. Eventually, after much interpersonal drama, they DO dig it up and move it onto a container ship to haul it back to the US.

I BET YOU CAN'T EVEN GUESS WHAT HAPPENS TO THAT SHIP.

If you are currently thinking "The ship sinks" you're smarter than anyone in this book.

From what I remember, it's a genuinely exciting and suspenseful scene that would have been entirely avoidable if anyone in this book had 2 functional brain cells, and I laughed my way through it in appalled delight. It was dreadful but also the perfect payoff for a book in which the enemy is a giant rock.