After several weeks at sea, the Captain tells them that they are looking for a "temperate archipelago covered by trees of fantastic colors that grew from the heat of the earth rather than the sun--a lush Garden of Eden in the heart of the Arctic." This is not happy news for men who have been fantasizing legendary gold mines. The voyage continues through the most hostile environment imaginable. The men are always cold, wet, hungry, and at the mercy of the capricious movement of icebergs--it is a bleak, horrific life aboard ship, unrelieved throughout the entire book. Jones's writing is starkly beautiful, filled with authentic details about ships, the Arctic reaches, navigation, ship handling, weather and exposure. There are echoes here of Cold Mountain and The Navigator of New York.

The descent into madness of Dr. Architeuthis, an obsessive taker of measurements; Aziz, the three-handed Muslim boiler-tender who tells Brendan the awful story of rope-eaters; the vagaries of the rest of the crew--these all add color and welcome texture to the gray-white sameness of being surrounded by icebergs. Readers who revel in the hardships and exploits of Ernest Shackleton, William Laird McKinlay, or Robert Falcon Scott will enjoy this story of men against nature in its most relentlessly unforgiving aspects. --Valerie Ryan