Ice Station introduces Shane "Scarecrow" Schofield, Marine Recon Officer and unstoppable badass and Reilly spends the entire book trying to come up with jawdropping ways to try and kill him and equally astonishing ways for Scarecrow to claw his way out of death's icy grasp.
The set up is simple: US scientists in the Antarctic find something embedded in the ice. Schofield and his team show up to protect them and the new discovery only to find that some of America's allies are not so friendly when it comes to exploitable discoveries. The Scarecrow and his team find themselves battling hostile commandos, more hostile commandos who are nothing to do with the first lot, hungry wildlife and, rather alarmingly, threats within their own ranks.
Matthew Reilly books work by blasting you with so much action that you fail to notice any holes in the plot. Description is the bare minimum needed to advance the story to the next outbreak of mayhem, characters are sketched in and inner monologues are rarely more involved than "How the hell do I get out of this?" Everything is geared to the story and the action, and the accelerator is kept down hard at all times.
While Reilly does not win any prizes for his prose, he has a definite flair for coming up with unhinged set pieces and here he does not disappoint. I think the first time my jaw dropped was when a firefight between US marines and French special forces was abruptly ended by everybody concerned being dropped into a pool full of killer whales.
Does that last sentence tell you everything you need to know?
It's that kind of a book.
Matthew Reilly will never ever write the book that changes your life but he has spent the last few years trying to write the ultimate action thriller and while he may not have succeeded just yet, Ice Station is daft, escapist fun and well worth a few hours of my time.
No comments:
Post a Comment