MarzAat

In the depths of last winter, I read this one on the heels of Infestation.

Review: Operation Antarctica, William Meikle, 2017.

I liked this S-Squad novel better than Infestation, and for almost exactly the opposite reasons.

The squad, with an all Scottish contingent this time, gets sent in to Norway’s slice of the Antarctic to see why there are signs of activity around an old Nazi base there.

What that they find, as you might guess from the cover, is Nazi ice zombies and a flying saucer. And a menace first encountered by occult detective Thomas Carnacki. (I have no idea if Meikle worked in a free standing Carnacki tale of his since I’ve never read any of his Carnacki pastiches or any of the original Carnacki stories by William Hope Hodgson.)

I thought the setting a bit less atmospheric than the Arctic wastes of Infestation, but I liked the squad’s supernatural enemy here more than the giant bugs of the earlier novel. Bullets prove a lot less use than magic.

It’s 138 pages of straightforward action. I suppose I shouldn’t expect any treacherous S-Squad superiors or turncoat team members in future installments, but that’s ok. Meikle has come up with a winning formula to devour between reading longer books.

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