Book Review: Ice Station by Matthew Reilly

Ice Station by Matthew Reilly 
Release Date: 15th September 2000

Publisher: Pan Macmillan Australia
Format: Paperback 
Pages: 611
Rating: 4.0/5.0

Summary 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 deep beneath the ice..."

Review: 

One of my best friends recommended this book to me because she absolutely loves the author, and I hadn't read any of his books. She told me that it only took her 3 days to read, so I had high hopes for this book. Unfortunately, the book fell a little short for me. As it turns out, this type of book just isn't to my liking. It's a real action packed story, with lots of mystery (which I did enjoy in parts), but this is definitely more aimed towards a male audience. That's not to say that girls won't enjoy this - if you're into anything to do with action, mystery, political espionage and lots of kinda gory fighting, then I'm sure this book would interest you.

For me, I think that when it comes down to it, it isn't so much the story or the characters or anything like that that put me off this book, I think it was more the writing style. Every single paragraph ends with some sort of cliff hanger. Sure, in the beginning this is an effective writing tool - it keeps with glued to the book, forces you to turn to the next page instead of closing the book, and at certain parts a cliffhanger is justified - but after a while it just gets annoying. Honestly, you don't need to end a paragraph with a cliff hanger like, "and then he found it", only to find out in the next paragraph that what he actually found was just some scuba diving equipment; its just annoying. 

Overall, I did enjoy this book somewhat - parts of the story really did interest me, and some of the action sequences had me reading up late into the night. But, when it comes down to it, I don't think I'll be reading another Matthew Reilly book any time soon.