Oldies But Goodies {Put This One on Your TBR List}
Review for Alex Hunter Series by Greig Beck
by Karen S. Wiesner
In 2011, I was looking for supernatural horror books to read that took place in Antarctica (a trio of categories that were and are favorites of mine). Beneath the Dark Ice by Greig Beck came up during my search. In this series, a superhuman takes on supermonsters in life-threatening settings. I absolutely devoured it and the next and the next. I followed it for the next several years as more and more books featuring Captain Alex Hunter aka The Arcadian were released. The first two books were published by St. Martin's Press in very affordable mass market paperbacks. After that, another company took over the series and eventually republished all the books in trade paperback and electronic formats. After Book 5, I found the books far too expensive (in part because they were all so large) to continue purchasing. I bought the prequel, Book #5.5 and #6 as ebooks, but even those were surprisingly expensive (that can happen when publishers don't seem to understand that intangible ebooks which don't take up physical space should be priced lower). I haven't been able to find any of Greig Beck's books on my library apps in any format, other than the first two which were originally published by a mainstream (aka, not small press) publisher. As Beck is an Australia author, I'm sure that's part of why I haven't been able to locate them through libraries.
Below is a list of the publication
order (along with reading order) for what's currently available in the series:
.5 Arcadian Genesis, a prequel
(2012)
#1 Beneath the Dark Ice (2009)
#2 Dark Rising (2010)
#3 This Green Hell (2011)
#4 Black Mountain (2012)
#5 Gorgon (2014)
#5.5 Hammer of God (2015)
#6 Kraken Rising (2015)
#7 The Void (2018)
#8 From Hell (2019)
#9 The Dark Side (2021)
#10 The Well of Hell (2022)
#11 The Silurian Bridge (2024)
As I said, the gist of the Alex Hunter Series is that a soldier sustains an injury that should have killed him, yet it, impossibly, made him a super-soldier, unstoppable, a danger to monsters, loved ones, and himself instead. This is a little bit unrealistic, but not outside the realm of believability. Because of his all but inhuman abilities, he and his team are always the ones called in for highest-possible-risk, one-way missions that no one else could survive. They do, time and time again. While the exact situations, settings, and hellish monsters are vastly different, they're all thoroughly researched and unquestionably plausible. This author writes as though he knows about all these things firsthand. Every book in this series that I've read has this basic scenario, yet they're all so unique and flawlessly compelling.
While Greig Beck is still an author I follow, I've gotten behind with this series. Additionally, because I continue to follow him, I discovered several years after I could no longer afford his books that he started a spinoff series with a character from the first (and 10th) Alex Hunter book: Matt Kerns, the linguist, archaeologist and wary explorer. There are four books available in the Matt Kerns Adventures, the first having been published in 2013 so maybe (but I'm not sure) this new series might take place during Alex Hunter #4 and #5. I also swear that Cate Granger first appeared in one of the Alex Hunter books, and now she has her own series (Cate Granger, currently three novels available, the first published in 2018). I'll have to reread the Alex Hunter books again to find out for sure so don't quote me. It's so frustrating when authors don't include connections between their series titles on their own website, if nowhere else. This kind of thing sells books!
The ebooks have now come down in price considerably, so I do plan to someday purchase the ones I haven't read yet, and I'd also like to read the spinoffs. Pretty much every one of Beck's offerings sounds fantastic, right up my alley, and I've found him to be a very reliable author, so I go into every purchase certain I'll like what I get. You can find out more about them on his website https://greigbeck.com/. If you're looking for nail-biting horror with a supernatural twist, you'll find Alex Hunter Books all but impossible to pass up, let alone put down once you've started them.
Karen Wiesner is an
award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.
Visit her website and blog here:
https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/
and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog
Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/
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