In the year 2000, authors Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child released a stand-alone thriller called THE ICE LIMIT. The plot was interesting and engaging from the get-go. Maniacal millionaire Palmer Lloyd wants the largest meteorite in the world for his museum. He finds it buried on an island off the Chilean coast and puts together a team that includes super engineer Eli Glinn and a renowned meteor hunter named Sam McFarlane.

Things do not go as planned, and the team ends up sinking the meteor --- which they find out to be of alien origin --- to the bottom of the ocean. Now, with just five years passing in fictional time, Glinn and his crew are back at it again. This time, they enlist the help of nuclear weapons expert Gideon Crew --- himself the main character in a recurring Preston & Child series.

"The novel pulls no punches, and the masterful guides to this deep sea adventure keep you glued to your seat right up to the stunning climax."

The plan this time is to destroy the meteorite. Glinn now believes it is not only of alien origin but may be some type of seed that hurtles onto different planets and eventually destroys all life on them. Many questions abound. Is this a chunk of meteoric rock, a pre-programmed robot or a sentient organic being? They require more research about it before they can finalize plans to have Gideon come up with the appropriate nuclear device to destroy it.

If you're not buckled in yet, get ready. Like every Preston & Child novel, readers will be subjected to non-stop thrills, intricate plotting and enough scientific reference points to keep things humming along at a high-tech pace. Whether writing in tandem or in solo efforts, no writers working today do a better job combining sci-fi and thriller elements.

The crew of the research vessel Batavia, a mix of members of the ill-fated first expedition and a new group of experts, have named the meteorite the Baobab. The ship is equipped with four high-tech submersibles, each named after the members of the Beatles: John, Paul, George and Ringo. Gideon gets a crash course in manning them before he is literally thrown into the depths above both the wreckage of the first ship and the Baobab.

Things do not go well. The Baobab makes short work of one of the submersibles --- carrying a female research member with whom Gideon had just started a physical relationship --- when the meteorite’s “mouth” engulfs the small graft and proceeds to spew out the mangled remains of both the submersible and its pilot. This makes Glinn and his team begin to think that the Baobab is a sentient being. There is even evidence in one of the dives of a dark region on it that might be the alien being's brain.

They don't have to fully understand what this creature is all about in order to kill it…but it most surely would help! One of the communications officers aboard the Batavia decodes an interesting message from the Baobab that apparently says “Kill me. Kill me.” Just prior to the book’s conclusion, an unexpected character arrives out of nowhere via helicopter --- Sam McFarlane from the first expedition. His help is welcomed by Glinn. He is immediately teamed with Gideon and comes up with a great suggestion, noting that a nuclear weapon would be ineffective if it did not destroy all of the Baobab, and they wouldn’t be able to identify this if they couldn’t get a scan of the ocean's bottom beneath the meteorite to ascertain how far its roots may stretch.

The final act of BEYOND THE ICE LIMIT is a wild ride that literally presents a race against time between the crews of the Batavia and the Baobab. Earth's fate is at hand, and the burden of solving this puzzle may be far too much for Gideon, Glinn, McFarlane and company to solve in time. The novel pulls no punches, and the masterful guides to this deep sea adventure keep you glued to your seat right up to the stunning climax.

Audiobook available, read by David W. Collins