Technothriller gun-porn for people who like ancient monsters.

Does it sound like it's up your alley? Then good, this one's pretty decent at what it does. Plenty of action, some political commentary, but what it really has a lot of is super-competence and/or super-powers for its main character.

Alex is a freak of nature thanks to that bullet in his brain. Woo!

Now let's keep him in charge of his team of crack commandos and watch as the scientists they're protecting die in horrible ways deep in the ice. Woo!

Like I said, if this is your cup of tea, it's pretty decent.

If you like more ideas in your SF or you want more magic in your gun-fantasy or if you want sheer terror in your horror, you might want to look a little further afield. This book covers a lot of rather a lot of familiar territory. Even the main characters fit the mold perfectly. There's not a lot of surprises to behold. At all.

But it's Gun-Porn! Woo! It's all about setting the right expectations. :) ( )

A little like Andy McDermott and Matthew Reilly. Fun read. ( )

Just what I was looking for. Escape literature.

Just think jurassic park meets arctic under ice monsters. Not sure how to score. Well done for what it is. ( )

Beneath the Dark Ice was on my Amazon recommendations list for ages. Clearly it ticked a lot of boxes for my likes and being written by a fellow Aussie was another big tick. Needless to say, when I was in a bookstore that hadn't been swallowed by a bank, I bought a copy.

For anyone who has read James Rollins' Subterranean, or drowned themselves in HP Lovecraft at any stage in their life, will see some similar ideas in this techno-thriller. Mix a super soldier and his team, his long time enemy, a band of scientists and a world beneath ours and you have the makings of a fine thriller.

So why only 3 stars? Well, I'm not a fan of exposition. Sorry, let me rephrase: you know how everyone loved Steig Larson's Girl With the Dragon Tattoo? Well I hated it; because I didn't need the first 50 pages of the book to describe flowers, home renovations and nautical exploits. Greig's book is fast paced and doesn't flounder in blocks of boring detail like Larson, but he does use a style of exposition in his writing that I don't enjoy.

This was Greig's first book, so I expect his work will be tighter in the subsequent books (which are rated higher on goodreads). His super soldier, Alex Hunter, is definitely setup for another adventure. How Greig will top the story in this novel I don't know though. ( )

This review is written with a GPL 3.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at Bookstooge.booklikes.blogspot. wordpress.leafmarks.com & Bookstooge's Reviews on the Road Facebook Group by Bookstooge's Exalted Permission.
Title: Beneath the Dark Ice
Series: Alex Hunter
Author: Greig Beck
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Action/Adventure
Pages: 321
Format: Kindle Digital Editions











Synopsis: A plane full of rich folk crash into Antarctica. Rescue teams of medical and military groups have all disappeared without a trace. So the United States sends in a team of scientists guarded by an elite of the elite military team. Potential oil reserves are involved so the Russians gets involved. Mainly with mercenaries who have a grudge against one of the Elite of the elite. There is also a monster and a whole "pre-historic" world under the ice. Almost everybody dies and a lot get eaten. We also learn who Alex Hunter is and that maybe Amygdala [from the Batman comics] isn't so out of the realm of possibility. My Thoughts: Passionate about Books recommended this to me and I am glad she did. This was a lot of fun with a great amount of people getting eaten by a monster. I just love it when people get eaten in stories. Dinosaurs are my favorite way but monsters will do in a pinch. The titular hero, Alex Hunter, while the main character, is not a dominating main character. The whole story was about him and the scientist chick. The side characters, while fodder, felt as much a part of the necessary story as those two. We get a brief shotgun blast of info about Hunter and why he is pretty much superhuman now. Having read some Batman comics, I am aware of the amygdalia so Beck's discussion wasn't news to me. I did roll my eyes however. Come on, getting shot in the head turns you into a superhuman? I think I'd take my chances with outerspace radiation [Fantastic 4], nuclear spiders [Spiderman] or even a gamma bomb [the Hulk]. My only other eye roll quibble was how fast the linguistics scientist decoded the picturegrams that were 10K years old. So if you can deal with those two issues, everything else is just fine. The writing was a little unpolished but not in a "I'm an indie and I don't give 2 ***** because I'm an AUTHOR" way. I think this might have been Beck's first book? If so, that would certainly explain it. I'm definitely hooked and will be reading more of this series as I can. " ( )