Book Review: Beneath the Dark Ice by Greig Beck

Beneath the Dark Ice by Greig Beck
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

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, you 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. I always enjoy playing, "guess who dies next" in these sorts of novels.

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. Nothing wrong with the story, or the style, just that whilst I enjoyed the story, the style just didn't do it for me.

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.

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*tighter - this is reviewer talk for "I have no idea how to write a book but writers seem to get better at it somehow, I'm assuming magic".