Beneath the Dark Ice – Not bad, I think I will continue with the series

Beneath the Dark Ice (Alex Hunter #1) by Greig Beck
My rating: 6 out of 10 stars

When a plane crashes into the Antarctic ice in a violent storm, exposing a massive cave beneath, a rescue and research team is dispatched. Twenty-four hours later, all contact is lost.

 

Captain Alex Hunter and his crack team of highly trained commandos are fast-tracked there to find out what went wrong, accompanied by an assortment of researchers, including petrobiologist Aimee Weir. Within the caves lies an unidentified – and unnatural seeming – substance. If it proves to be an energy source, every country in the world will want to know about it – some even kill for it.

Not bad at all. Alex Hunter, badass marine (or HAWC as they are referred to in the book) with an interesting twist making him a bit more than an “ordinary” commando solder. This caught my interest fairly early on in the book.

They are sent on a rescue mission deep under the Antarctic ice where they discover…well you have to read the book to learn what they discovered but I found it quite a good read and not exactly what I had expected. The team consists not only of Alex’s fellow commandos but also of a bunch of researchers out of which one of them is the typical tiresome asshole that you just hope will get “disposed of”. Preferably as painfully as possible.

Just to complicate things further the author throws in a competing Russian commando team lead by a sadistic psychopath with a grudge against Alex. Actually I felt this was a bit over the top. The rest of the story was good enough to keep my interest.

The basic story is a fairly classical one of team-goes-into-confined-area-not-all-of-them-comes-out. As a matter of fact, quite a few of them does not come out. The story is well written though and has enough interesting elements to not give you a yet-another-one-of-those feelings when reading it.

I am fairly sure that I will give, at least, the next one in the series a go as well.