Kevin Krajick

This is a good adventure book. "Barren Lands" and "Fire into Ice" cover the same individual and tell the same story, but through two different authors.
Fire into Ice dwells a little more on geology and geochemistry of the search for diamonds. "Barren Lands" deals a little more with the driven nature and the character flaws of the same lead character. "Barren Lands" restricts coverage to just the Canadian search for diamonds while "Fire into Ice" is more a biography, covering not only segments of the main character, Chuck Fipke's youth, but also his more diversified previous and later exploring for both other mineral deposits and other diamond sources.

The greater focus in "Barren Lands" on just the Canadian diamond search does provide more detail about the competition and complex financing of the Canadian search. But this is at the expense of the lead character's work on numerous diamond deposits throughout the world and his previous dealings and sampling of the South African DeBeers diamond mines which "Fire into Ice" covers well, and Fipke's love of the stone-age people of New Guinea where his explorations began.l.
"Fire and Ice" has a more thorough coverage of Fipke's later exploration in other countries, especially Yemen and King Solomon's gold mines.
Still this book, Barren Lands" is an exciting read, with many suspenseful and interesting events and details.

Both books are exciting and worth reading… (meer)