Ice Station

The first thing you need to know about a Matthew Reilly novel is that there's a lot of BS going on. Our protagonist in "Ice Station," Captain Shane Michael Schofield, callsign Scarecrow, withstands more than anyone possibly could. And some of the action is ridiculously over-the-top and wholly unbelievable.

So why 5 stars?

Cause Matthew Reilly books are so damn fun to read! Think of the classic Stallone/Schwarzenegger/Willis action movies and put them in novel form. If you can put believably aside and just go along for the ride, you'll be breathless at the end of nearly ever section.

In the book, scientists studying at Wilkes Ice Station in Antarctica discover what they believe to be a spaceship hidden deep in a cavern accessible far below show more the surface and the station. Unfortunately, the divers are attacked and presumed lost.
However, the radio announcement they made back to the station was intercepted and when the top-side scientists call for help, friend and foe alike show up. Thus starts a thousand-mile-a-minute race between good guys and baddies, complete with cool weapons, near-misses, and very gruesome deaths.

If you go into the book with the right mind-set, you'll be addicted. If you keep in mind that this is not literature, you'll have a ball. show less

Wow! What a great read! Why didn't I read it before, did I let it gather dust on my shelves?

It must have been the looks and the over the top recommendations. Mostly too much praise makes me wairy. But... This book deserves all the stars there are to give.
Don't get me wrong: this is not literature. But, in its genre it is one of the very best I've ever read.

From the very first page it took me by the hand, swiftly put me in one of the wagons, just in time to sit down before the roller coaster took of.

Relentless action, never a dull moment, very graphic at times, just my kind of book.

Will look for other books by Reilly now :-)

I think to enjoy this I would have needed to unhook my higher brain functions first. Of course, that might have made reading impossible. If you look at the reviews for the book, the word used the most, even in the positive reviews, is "over the top." It's as if Reilly took every single cliche to ever grace a Steven Segal film then shook it up and poured.

This is primarily set in and around an American Ice Station in Antarctica. One of the harshest, most fascinating settings on earth, and Reilly, except for reeling off a factoid or two you could pick up on Wiki, does nothing to evoke the continent's dangers or beauty. He does plunk down a 400 million year-old spacecraft on it though so that American, French and British special forces can show more spend hundreds of pages shooting each other or exploding things (the French using crossbows no less) over the extraterrestrial tech. It takes a true paranoid to come up with that scenario--or maybe just an Australian such as Reilly who doesn't much like any of the above.

One of the blurbs refers to the book's "blood-splattering, ultraviolent play" and that's what it offers. What it doesn't offer is strong prose, clever plotting or characters with dimensions more third-dimensional than onion-skin paper. Also, four words: Giant Killer Mutant Seals. show less

From Amazon:

Anarctica is the last unconquered continent, a murderous expanse of howling winds, blinding whiteouts and deadly crevasses. On one edge of Antarctica is Wilkes Station. Beneath Wilkes Station is the gate to hell itself. A team of U.S. divers, exploring three thousand feet beneath the ice shelf has vanished. Sending out an SOS, Wilkes draws a rapid deployment team of Marines-and someone else...

First comes a horrific firefight. Then comes a plunge into a drowning pool filled with killer whales. Next comes the hard part, as a handful of survivors begin an electrifying, red-hot, non-stop battle of survival across the continent and against wave after wave of elite military assassins-who've all come for one thing: a secret buried show more deep beneath the ice.

My Thoughts:

I am amazed at how much action this author can write about in one book! It makes you feel that you have run a marathon after reading it. Matthew Reilly is the kind of author you wish wrote the screenplays for action movies. Ice Station was a tremendous amount of fun to read. It has a conceivable plot twist, cliff-hanger surprises, stomach-churning thrills and spills... death-defying stunts and "risk everything" maneuvers. Our hero and his allies...which is yet another twist... definitely get put through the wringer. This is the stuff comic books and movie serials used to be made of! This is Saturday Afternoon at the Movies.... but in a book. I don't know if the "mag-hook" is real or a "Sc-Fi" invention, but I think I'll ask for one for Christmas...never mind...I'd just shoot my eye out:) show less

Review by Jeremy Taylor

Matthew Reilly is becoming internationally known as the author of intense thrillers that are nearly impossible to put down. His books are plagued with shallow characters, lame dialog, and consistently unbelievable settings. But with lightning-fast action sequences and high-stakes plot lines, he has managed to carve out quite a nice-sized niche for himself in today’s thriller market.

Ice Station takes place in Antarctica, at an actual (though obsolete and out-of-use) base called Wilkes Ice Station. When the team of scientists working at the station send out a distress call, Shane “Scarecrow” Schofield and his team of special-forces U.S. Marines come to the rescue. At the station, they find that the scientists show more have made a remarkable discovery—what appears to be a spaceship is buried deep in the 100-million-year-old ice shelf. And the team of divers sent down to have a look have been mysteriously and brutally slaughtered.

The story unfolds very rapidly as military personnel from a number of governments show up one at a time to try to take custody of the spaceship. Schofield and crew deal with each one in turn, with varying degrees of success. Reilly’s evident disdain for the French, British, and U.S. governments comes through loud and clear in the underhanded tactics each takes in attempting to wrest control of the ice station away from Schofield. Finally, with the help of a controversial journalist back in the states, Schofield realizes exactly what the stakes are and that he can’t trust anyone—even the members of his own team—if he is going to survive.

Ice Station is certainly a quick read, though the author would have done well to learn about pacing before diving in. Many of the action scenes, though intense and exciting, actually begin to drag after a while because they’re way too long. The plot relies too much on fictional and unrealistic technology, including a remarkable device called a “maghook” that seems to have come right out of the pages of a Batman comic, and a nifty nitrogen pill that allows divers to zip down to fantastic depths and back up again without any fear of narcosis.

Violence in the book is gruesome and over-the-top, which tends to detract from the effectiveness of the action scenes. Major and minor characters alike meet gory deaths by various means, including torture, accident, and attack by a variety of sea monsters. There’s no sexual content, and foul language, while present, seems reasonably in character for the kinds of soldiers speaking it. The really offensive content in Ice Station is the unrealistic nature of much of the action.

Ice Station is an exciting and reasonably entertaining read for those readers who are able to get into the spirit of the nonstop action and forgive the book’s unbelievability. Readers looking for an educational thriller about Antarctica or international politics had best look elsewhere.

(http://www.cerebralexchange.com/books/reviews.asp?book=268&host=1) show less

Reseña de Fantasía Mágica

Debo confesar que no hubiera leído este libro tan pronto si no fuera por el Reto Continental. Me lo hubiera perdido, así que ¡hurra! por el desafío que me hizo leer algo diferente :)

El prólogo es breve pero interesante desde las primeras palabras.
Comenzamos con una disertación sobre la Antártida, sus características climáticas, una breve referencia a los intentos con resultados dudosos de construir laboratorios ahí y la misteriosa desaparición de un hombre de gran importancia para el gobierno noteamericano.
El continente tiene voluntad propia, y la raza humana no es nada contra él.
Esta introducción fue suficiente para atraparme por completo. Y el resto del libro no me defraudó.

Ahora pónganse show more ropa abrigada: nos vamos a la Antártida. Y lean la sinopsis que está bien resumido lo que ocurre en el libro, no tiene caso que vuelva a contar exactamente lo que ya está dicho.

Cuando Shane 'Espantapájaros' Schofield llega a la base antártica, comenzará el libro con más acción que leí en mi vida. No les exagero. Durante páginas y páginas habrá una cantidad de acción increíble, y muy bien narrada. Realmente se siente la emoción, la tensión y la adrenalina de los personajes.
Siempre leí batallas medievales. En este libro veremos muchas situadas en la actualidad y narradas con lujo de detalle. Es lo mismo en cierta forma, pero con más tecnología y nombres de armamento que muchas veces no se si existen realmente o no.

La misión de los marines es proteger la base antártica de los diversos enemigos (enviados por varios gobiernos) que irán llegando para tomar posesión de ella. Pero además de cuidar la edificación y lo que ello oculta en una cueva subterránea, deberán también proteger al grupo de científicos que ahora se encuentra atrapado en la base, y que está en tanto peligro de muerte como ellos: lo que sea el secreto que fue descubierto, no deben quedar sobrevivientes que puedan divulgarlo.
Algo que me pareció un toque maestro, maquiavélico y sádico es que entre los civiles se incluye una niñita que por diversas razones siempre estará en peligro de muerte.
Pero si los soldados altamente entrenados que vienen a matarlos no es suficiente, en el fondo de la base hay un tanque con orcas ambrientas (que van y vienen) y para terminar de sumarle problemas, porque no tenían suficientes, en una de las habitaciones está encerrado un asesino loco y despiadado que mató a uno de sus colegas.

Por estar frente a un grupo altísimamente entrenado de marines (que yo siempre creí que eran lo mismo que los seals, pero no lo son), Espantapájaros tiene bajo su mando a un equipo -formado en su mayoría por hombres- que cumplirá sus órdenes y se arriesgará en las situaciones más peligrosas.
No se si en realidad los marines usarán tanto los apodos, pero en este libro cada personaje tiene el suyo y es un gran acierto. Son muchas personas presentadas juntas, y sólo con el nombre o apellido sería confuso y muy dificil de recordar. En cambio con los sobrenombres se vuelve sencillo identificarlos rápidamente, algo similar a lo que hace George Martin con los personajes secundarios.

Toda la acción del libro (salvo el prólogo y el epílogo) ocurrirá en un mismo día, muy poéticamente expresado en un diálogo: "—¿Por qué no terminará este día de una puta vez? —dijo Schofield."
Cada tanto en el cambio capítulo vamos con la acción a Estados Unidos, primero a una reunión de la OTAN y después pasamos a una pareja de periodistas en busca de su siguiente gran historia.
Pero son muy breves estos fragmentos, la acción principal es en la Antártida.
No faltarán las teorías conspirativas, ni la acción (¿lo dije ya?), ni las muertes, ni la emoción, ni el peligro... pero si creen que éste es un libro de "yankis buenos, mundo malo" no se dejen engañar. No todo es lo que parece.

Hubo, sí, una partecita que se me hizo un poquito larga de tantos tiros que iban y venían. De todos modos cuando esa parte termina (aunque no la enorme cantidad de acción) la historia se vuelve emocionante y muy atrapante.
Hay mucho diálogo breve y preciso que suena muy militar (no se si será parecido con la realidad, pero se oye bien). Sin embargo cuando hay conversaciones coloquiales los diálogos son muy buenos. Atrapantes y reales.
No hay un gran desarrollo de personajes, pero sí se nos cuenta lo suficiente como para conocerlos un poco, identificarlos y por qué no, quererlos. Espantapájaros es el personaje más patea-culos que he visto, por lejos; sólo seguido de cerca por Madre, una mujerzota tamaño ropero que tiene una escena ente medio de las orcas con la que no parpadeé durante varios párrafos.

Pero quien se roba la historia es Wendy.
Wendy es una foca.

El final me encantó, muy acorde a todo el libro. Es como ver una película de acción narrada, realmente excelente (si les gusta el género).
Lo recomiendo, mucho mucho. show less

Looking for thrills, chills and surprises? Looking for action, adventure and pure, non-stop mayhem? Looking for a story that throws punch after punch without stopping to rest? Look no further than Matthew Reilly’s Ice Station: a smart, pacy confined-space thriller with a dash of well-timed humour. This book has no chapter numbers – they’d just get in the way of the excitement, which all takes place over a twenty-four hour period. The characters are well constructed, (albeit a little stereotypical,) and help to drive the plot along. Their introductions are cleverly timed – Reilly realises that readers can’t absorb the names of twelve Marines all at once, so he introduces them one and two at a time. His habit of dispatching show more characters without hesitation also makes remembering names much easier.

The sad thing is that Ice Station will probably find itself on the receiving end of much literary snobbery: “Oh, I’m not going to read that. That’s airport fiction, a cheap thrill written for a quick buck. I’m going to go read some Tolkien – something worthwhile.” It is pointless to judge Ice Station using the same criteria that The Lord of the Rings might be judged against. Ice Station excels because it rises above the competition in its own genre.

For starters, it flows like the Nile. A thriller of this sort needs to be easy to read – Ice Station practically jumps off the page and reads itself to you. Secondly, it is brimming with research about weaponry, diplomatic relationships and polar geography. I’m no expert on guns and grenades, but I was still very impressed by this novel – Reilly has obviously done his homework and clearly knows what he’s talking about, which adds quality to the book. This in turn helps Ice Station to have far fewer clichés than you would expect from this kind of thriller. Instead of killer sharks, Reilly uses killer whales; instead of a car chase, there is a hovercraft chase. Fresh new ideas such as these are used to eliminate the clichés, while retaining the tried-and-true excitement.

It may be a little farfetched at times, and it may not win prestigious literary awards, but those who read Ice Station with a ‘why not’ attitude will enjoy themselves immensely. Call me blasphemous, but I think I’d take Reilly over Tolkien any day. show less