W Magazine, by Sue Wannan:

This is 'Indiana Jones goes to Antarctica'. A fearless American Marine takes on aliens, French commandos, killer whales, half the British SAS and even traitors on his own side - and all within three hours. And it gets sillier, but it'd spoil the plot to tell you. But suspend disbelief and Ice Station is a ripping read. The book starts when scientists at Wilkes Ice Station drilling deep in ice 100 million years old hit something extremely odd...metal. The story tears along, fast and inventive, with lots of action, and is obviously backed by good research about weaponry, science and international jealousies. Very readable and entertaining. Author Matthew Reilly is just 24 years old. This is his second book.

nsett Panorama Magazine, by Donyale Harrison:

Woo Hoo! When they make a movie out of this novel, they shout definitely get Guns 'n' Roses to do the music. An American research station in Antarctica has stumbled across what could be a spaceship. Now they are under attack from within and without. Lt Shane Schofield and his band of US Marines are their only hope. It's a non-stop, shoot-em-up, exploding, heroic, treacherous, good-guys-vs-bad-guys riot from beginning to end. Perfect for a rainy weekend.

alph Magazine, by Boris Mihailovic:

It would seem that author Matthew Reilly is wonder boy. His publisher compares him to Grisham and Crichton, but I reckon the 23-year-old is a cut above. I first thought it was a rehash of The Thing - where scientists find a spaceship that's been wedged under ice for a billion years - but it's not, it's better. This time the ancient metal object under a 100-million-year-old chunk of ice is going to take a lot more than a few flame throwers and a steely Kurt Russell to sort out.Even the dangerously tough US Marines who arrive post-haste are in for a right old workout.

he Bulletin, by Diana Simmonds: Note; Contains Spoilers.

Great Balls of Tosh

Imagine the excitement in the 18th floor Sydney offices of publisher Pan Macmillan when they unwrapped the manuscript of Ice Station by Matthew Reilly. (Or more accurately these days, when they slipped the disk into the slot and called it up on the screen.) First they discovered he was just 23, then they realised he had not only been studying the works of Michael Crichton but also was a very quick study. Finally, after 540 pages of preposterous derring-do, they deduced that he has the hilarious disregard for plausibility which is essential if Bruce Willis is to be remotely interested in the screen adaptation.

Before you could say silver-embossed cover, it was sold to Britain and the United States; Hollywood is interested and Pan Mac is shipping CHEP-loads of the satisfyingly overweight $22.95 book.

So, why all the fuss? Well, it's got "Bestselling Contemporary Action Potboiler" written all over it. The writing is eye-wateringly rudimentary - despite the blurb, Reilly is not a new John Grisham - but that rarely troubles the sales of airport novels. It appears to have been only lightly touched by the editorial hand, even though a bit of spit and polish could have done wonders for the creaky incongruities and infelicities scattered throughout. But, hey, what the hell, that's not what it's all about. The function is to keep a reader strapped into his or her seat for approximately one transcontinental flight's worth of rollercoaster mayhem.

The plot concerns a US research station in Antarctica and the incredible (as I defying credibility) goings-on there. It mostly happens to Lt Shane Schofield, a US Marine whose ability to keep a cool head and (most of) his crack team alive while being repeatedly shot at, grenaded, stabbed, punched, kicked, betrayed, tortured, almost decapitated by a killer whale and outnumbered by other forces - and all the while being nice to small children and tame seals - make Die Hard I & II look like A Room With a View.

In terms of international movie sales, the author has been even-handed in allotting bad-guy roles. They include the French, the Brits, the Australians, a wicked stepmother, renegade US military personnel and, um, mutant elephant seals. And then, just when you think, "OK, enough, he isn't going to just happen to be able to operate yet another high-tech weapon that accidentally floats by as he swims 70 more laps of the Southern Ocean in winter", our hero does it again. Yup, he manages to work out how to fly an experimental, top-secret, plutonium-powered, invisible attack aircraft that has been frozen in a subterranean ice cavern for 30 years.

And so, as the flight attendant ask you to return you sat to the upright position, the brave and bloody few - minus the horribly mangled corpses scattered across the garbage dump that once was Antarctica - live happily ever after.

over to Cover, by Richard Hogan, Angus & Robertson, Warriewood

Book of the Month: Non-Stop Action

It is with much excitement that we present this book of the month. Ice Station is the second book by young Willoughby author Matthew Reilly. Matthew, 23 years old, self-published his first book and virtually hand sold it by going into bookshops. Ice Station is the action adventure of the decade, a combination of Die Hard and the SAS in action. Never have I read a book with such action from the beginning to the end. If, like myself, you try to wait for a lull before putting the book down for the night, you are bound to lose a lot of sleep. The scenario and the ending are a bit far fetched, but this takes nothing away from the overall package.

We say that if you do not like this book bring it back and we will give you another. Read and enjoy.

he Manly Daily:

The hype for this book is really big: "More explosive than Die Hard and faster than Speed" and, though they were great movies, such a comparison would not usually tempt me to pick up such a book. However this is a local author and we were curious so we took and advance reading copy just to see.

The first staff member to read it did so all but overnight, so I did pick it up. Or rather it picked me up on page one and didn't let go until I emerged, wrung out, some 540 pages later.

Matthew Reilly, a law graduate, has created a hero to rival James Bond and Jack Ryan. Lieutenant Shane "Scarecrow" Schofield is the leader of a team of crack US Marines sent in to investigate a distress signal from a remote US ice station in Antarctica. They have found something buried deep within the coastal ice shelf. Something trapped inside a 100-million-year-old layer of ice. Something made of metal which men of all nations would kill for. This is a ripper of a read.

Rating: 5 stars out of 5.

he West Australian, by Andy Bull:

Mayhem Flows Red at Antarctic Outpost

At the Wilkes Ice Station, America's most remote Antarctic outpost, scientists drilling through the ice strike something deep below the surface. Something metal. In a layer of ice 400 million years old.When divers from the station enter the ice cavern housing the mystery what they see makes their blood run cold. Shortly afterwards they are dead.Two things that become apparent early in this book are an abundance of italics and a very high body count.Pretty soon Lieutenant Shane Schofield - known as The Scarecrow - and his elite team of US Marines are racing toward the station by hovercraft.

Their mission is to investigate and to secure the mysterious object - which turns out to be a spaceship - for the US government.Within hours they are facing attack by French commandos, treachery from a secret cell within their own ranks, killer whales, extreme weather conditions, a communications blackout. And then things get worse. At a guess, there is at least one death for each of the book's 544 pages. Half the station staff are wiped out in the first chapter alone.

I don't think I'm giving too much of the plot away when I reveal that Lt Schofield is among the very few survivors at the end.There are plenty of plot surprises, too, including the scientist who murdered his colleague and is barricaded in his room.And Wendy the seal who instinctively recognises what a good guy Schofield is.And the 12-year-old daughter of one of the scientists who just happens to be spending a holiday at the Wilkes Ice Station and understands the Fibonacci numbers which are crucial to cracking a code. Did I mention the mutant elephant seals that bite people's heads off?

Characterisation is pretty much limited to explaining how the Marines got their jaunty nicknames and not many relationships involve anything more complicated than shooting at each other (although there is a bit of a love interest to keep us amused while they reload).But you don't read a novel like Ice Station for its insights into the human condition. You read a novel like Ice Station for good guys triumphing against almost insurmountable odds. For lots of lethal violence involving high-tech weaponry. For thrilling escapes from the jaws of death. For cliffhanging suspense on just about every page. For hand-to-hand combat with far-reaching geopolitical implications. Ice Station delivers the action-thriller goods with all the explosive firepower of an MP-5 machine pistol.The narrative sweeps along at a furious pace, leaving any doubts about plausibility swirling like snow flurries in its wake. And considering the extremely limited life expectancy of most of the characters, there's not much point in digging into their psyches.

The publishers are promoting young Sydney author Matthew Reilly as a new world-class thriller writer. In the jacket photo he looks even younger than his 23 years. Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if the whole thing was written by an imaginative 15-year-old with a thesaurus and an encyclopedia. But there is enough technological wizardry, military know-how, plot convolution and sheer non-stop mayhem to place it in the premier league of international bestsellers (a marketing plus in this regard is that absolutely nothing marks it as an Australian novel). The publishers also suggest that a major Hollywood film deal is on the cards and, given that it reads like one long Bruce Willis type action sequence, they're probably right. Ice Station is top-class tosh, and I look forward to the sequel.

	Back   : :   Home

Website © Xiphos