THE SOUND OF SEAS

Final part of the X-Files–ish trilogy (A Dream of Ice, 2015, etc.) about contact with an ancient civilization now buried under the Antarctic ice.

The civilization of Galderkhaan destroyed itself in a power struggle between Priests and Technologists. But some of them survived by becoming spirits, sort of; still others fled and persisted into the present, of which a group, known as the Group, plan to do—well, something—by means of the stone tiles which are both computers and power sources. Previously, child psychologist Caitlin O’Hara discovered supernatural links between seemingly unrelated global weird events and, somehow, acquired strange new abilities. Meanwhile, archaeologist Mikel Jasso, a field agent for the Group, found an entire city buried beneath the Antarctic ice and collected some of the mysterious tiles. In the past, meanwhile, where Caitlin finds herself in another body, the Priests and Technologists are battling over a power source known as, you guessed it, the Source. Mikel, still in Antarctica, learns that the Group has been taken over by Casey Skett, who’s not averse to burning a few people to death in order to learn how to control the tiles. Plenty of classic X-Files plot ingredients, then, but nobody to stand in for Mulder the believer and Scully the skeptic and do some real investigating. Despite the hardworking narrative, even dedicated trilogy fans might not be happy with the obvious padding and tepid plot. And the resolution neither satisfies nor adds up.

Ideas that looked thin for a single book stretched beyond all reasonable elasticity.