Banks is back! In this mission, the squad head off to explore an old Antarctic base that was the site of a strange and secret Nazi project. The action is interspersed with substantial chunks of text from a journal found at the scene. So we learn the historical background (featuring Churchill and Carnacki) while the team are trying to cope with what they find. With that information it's no surprise (at least for the reader) that supernatural elements are involved.

Perhaps because of the split timeline, the pacing felt quite stop-start. As with the previous book, I didn't always remember which character was which. But still, a very readable adventure, and a nice-sized snack in between more substantial tomes.

This series is scratching my itch for ridiculous sci-fi adventure. This one has Nazi ice zombies and UFOs. Next, please. ( )

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 in future installments or turncoat team members, but that’s ok. Meikle has come up with a winning formula to devour between reading longer books. ( )

In this volume the British Special Forces unit led by Captain Banks is sent to Antarctica to investigate an Antarctic Nazi UFO base. It turns out that instead of using alien technology, the Nazis were creating this UFO using a demon they had captured using occult knowledge gleaned from a journal belonging to Carnacki the Ghost Finder that they had somehow acquired. This soon leads to frozen Nazi zombies running around killing people. It's all a bit silly, but fun. ( )