Greig Beck Reviews.
BENEATH THE DARK ICE.
BUCKLE UP... This is going to be a hell of a ride! Jonathan Maberry - Bram Stoker Award winning author of The Wolfman (now a major motion picture).
Beneath the Dark Ice has all the ingredients of a late night page-turner: a remote and dangerous setting, a rugged hero with an Achilles heel, a vicious and deadly villain, geopolitical intrigue and cutting-edge science. Throw in a feisty heroine and a band of elite soldiers, put them in the ruins of an ancient civilization and pit them against a mythological creature, and it’s a recipe for compulsive reading.
Beneath the Dark Ice plays with legends like the Kraken and Atlantis, and draws on elements of Mayan and Olmec archaeology. But how much is real, and how much is invention? What if there once had been a great civilization living in Antarctica? What if the thing that destroyed it was still there thousands of years later? And what if there were other deadly enemies as well? All these questions keep you turning the pages.
Beneath the Dark Ice leaves you gasping for more, but like the best thriller writers, Greig Beck leaves a few questions unresolved at the end. Just as well he’s working on the sequel.
Lachlan Jobbins, Good Reading Magazine
http://www.goodreadingmagazine.com.au/index.cfm?page=55
Beneath the Dark Ice is a fast paced, fun and fantastic debut from a great new talent. Perfect escapism.
Paperchain Books.
It's good to meet a new writer, especially a new Australian writer, who is so fluently inventive. Beneath the Dark Ice - In a word: GRIPPING. Malcolm Tattersall, Townsville BULLETIN.
Beneath the dark Ice is an exciting read! A successful mix of spy thriller, psychological drama, and scientific primeval action novel - with just a touch of the Jules Verne. Anne Dickson, Rodney Libraries.
FIRST GERMAN REVIEW - An action thriller with Jurassic Park-like atmosphere – exciting from beginning to end. Rated 4/5 Stars - Lesevergnügen (Reading Pleasure). Eva Hüppen - Lesser-Welt, Das Literaturportal.
RETURN OF THE PROPHET / DARK RISING (USA).
RETURN OF THE PROPHET - It starts with a Bang!
Last year I discovered Australian author Greig Beck and his first book Beneath the Dark Ice. So it was with interest that I awaited the second adventure of Alex Hunter. It landed on my desk on Friday night.
Return of the Prophet starts with a BANG! And it is a big one. We are talking Black Hole intensity. From there we are taken on a journey at break neck speed that meant I hardly put the book down all weekend. This book is set in the Middle East so you can envision the trigger happy warring nations, religious fanatics and competition to locate the technology that made such a bang. Throw in some science (which even I could follow), mythology and a touch of Dr Who (time travel, alternate universe, monsters) for an enthralling read. The characters, including the new ones, remain well drawn so that the conclusion is satisfying.
It can be hard to back up such an excellent debut and in the past I have often been disappointed by the second book. This is certainly not the case here. In fact I think expectations have been exceeded.
Anne Dickson, Rodney Libraries.
RETURN OF THE PROPHET has all the right stuff.It starts with gamma radiation in Persepolis, progresses through the threat of nuclear war, an ancient curse and winds up with monsters from the dawn of time. What more could anyone want? IAN NICHOLS, The West Australian
RETURN OF THE PROPHET The pace is breakneck! 4 Stars (highly recommended). Lachlan Jobbins. Good Reading Magazine.
RETURN OF THE PROPHET - One of the best proponents of the (Military SF) sub-genre is relative newcomer Greig Beck, whose beneath the dark ice we reviewed in TISF #15. Dark ice contained quite a few nice SF tropes and in beck’s latest –
Return of the prophet, the SF element is amped up even more. As demonstrated in Dark Ice, Beck has a strong grasp of the action genre. His work is exciting, fast-paced and cinematic in feel. He’s also good at appropriating from the real world and extrapolating into the very near future. So prophet takes Beck’s protagonist, super soldier Alex Hunter code-named the Arcadian, into a rogue Iranian state where an Islamic extremist prime minister is funding outlawed nuclear experimentation and twists that together with the widely reported and recent fears that CERN’s large Hadron Collider may create black holes capable of swallowing the earth.
The Iranian’s in Return of the Prophet stumble on more than nuclear fission. They manage to create an event that opens a channel through to another dimension, a doorway that allows things that shouldn’t exist to come to our world, and a means for already fanatical prime minister to hasten the end of the world as foretold in the Koran. Alex hunter and his crack team of HAWC special forces, armed with the type of advanced military materiel that would make James Bond’s ‘Q’ green with envy are dispatched to take out the threat. The action is beautifully choreographed, and the characters are well rounded - in particular Alex Hunter himself. Hunter’s powers are still growing in ways that not even his own commanding officer is entirely comfortable with and this adds an extra element of complexity to an already engaging character. Beck continues to provide strong female characters in this second Alex Hunter outing with MOSAD captain Adira Senesh who is more than a match for Hunter’s HAWCs. And he’s not bad at monsters either. The descriptions of the ‘thing’ that emerges from that other dimension are particularly effective, creating visual and auditory images of the creature that will stay with me for a long time.
Return of the Prophet is a lot of fun and clearly there’s more work for hunter to do. That is if his enemies or his own side don’t kill him first. He’s been under the Antarctic ice and in the Iranian desert. My bet is next outing he’ll be in outer space. Perhaps the international space station is under attack. But whatever it is, I’ll be alongside him for the ride. Four stars.
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Keith Stevenson
Writer, publisher, editor
www.keithstevenson.com
Read coeur de lion books — www.coeurdelion.com.au. Listen to the terra incognita podcast – www.tisf.com.au and on itunes
