Icefire - Robert C. Wilson: review

In a way, this book was a `mis buy`.  Let me explain this.  When I went to the day before closure of a local bookstore, I was picking up anything related sci-fi or fantasy for peanuts and grabbed this novel as well.

However, I just look at covers, rarely reading the back of books... and if judging the cover I would expect something with wizards.

This turns out not to be the case, it`s a thriller / horror tale of a mental patients prison set in the american Northern Territories. 

Numbering 300 pages, the story is told in two seperate pieces.  The first I personally thought was great, it details the life in the prison, how some of them came to be there, and how an ambitious psychiatrist tries to unravel the mental state of the biggest criminal in there by cutting him down from the medication that keeps him doused.

Unfortunatly, his theories on how Reuker Stilkes became the monster he was is completely missing the ball, and the chain of events of him regaining his mind leads to the start of a prison revolt.  the inmates take over and fatalities follow, but some manage to escape into the cold outside and try to escape the pursuing lunatics.

So far so good, but then `book 2` starts and here the book for me unravels and looses the ability to grab the reader`s attention.  There are to many loose ends, to many `stupid deaths` and the story at times becomes to rushed. 

And this all ends in a glorious anticlimax, as the main villain dies because... he is daydreaming and walks of a mountain.  What a total, total BUMMER.

So while I did enjoy the first 250 pages and read through them as a hot knife goes through butter, the second part was more of a struggle to finish, and sorry to say I was actually glad I finished the book during the past holiday and can now cast it aside.  A missed chance in my opinion, for if the second part would be as captivating as the first, this would have been a real `to recommend` work.  Now, it`s just a so-so novel.