Riddle of the Ice
Riddle of the Ice – Review
Arms becomes a brave attempt to combine two genres: travel narrative and current science. He should have eventually stuck with the science. He has a quantity of attractive material about Arctic sea ice formation and international ocean circulation, which is reasonably well presented, though I would have liked a little more detail. Interspersed with this is his story of a sailboat voyage to Greenland and Labrador, which had the potential for some big adventures, or at least some interesting or highly amusing historical and literary anecdotes. Unfortunately, far from approaching the level of Tristan Jones, Bruce Chatwin, or Tim Cahill, this section of the book resembles the account of a passenger on a Caribbean cruise ship, only colder. Arms’s stated purpose for effectively making the voyage was to raise understanding of the ecological changes that may be naturally occurring in the Arctic and their effects on international climate, but I can’t see how his trip gave at all — he originally performed no technical research (at least none was originally described), and there didn’t appear to be any unique challenge or risk included which might have drawn attention to him and his concerns. Arms does contain an general bibliography. Readers interested in either Arctic travel or science would be well-advised to consult some of the sources Arms reveals and skip his book.