MWSA Review

Basil Sands’ Ice Hammer: Insurgent picks up where Ice Hammer: Invasion leaves off and is full of solid characters, gritty action, and patriots doing their best at the impossible.

Over a year ago, the combined forces of the Chinese and the Russians invaded the United States, including Alaska, home to former Force Recon Marine Brad Stone. The entire world seems turned upside down, and while fleeing to the Alaskan interior, Brad becomes famous when he kills two Chinese soldiers with an ice hammer. When the incident was caught on a drone, his reputation went viral, and now he is the face of the Alaskan resistance, like it or not.

Book two finds Brad bogged down with trying to keep his ever-growing group of refugees safe and not starving, while his sons, on a Boy Scout camping trip the day the war began, have formed their own resistance group and are learning the rigors of combat at a young age. Brad’s wife, thought dead, is actually leading a very prominent life among the enemy, and at all times seems to be a collaborator, an angel of mercy, and a spy.

 That’s a lot of elements for one book, but Sands pulls it off admirably. The action is raw, the dialogue and characters believable, and the twists and turns entertaining. I especially liked how the characters of Karzai and Gunnar get further developed, and also the tie in with Marcus Johnson, another former Marine, from the author’s book 65 Below. If you liked either Ice Hammer: Invasion or 65 Below, then you will love this installment. Sands’ writing, especially when describing combat, is as real as Dale Brown, the great Tom Clancy, or Jeff Edwards.

Review by Rob Ballister (April 2019)

MWSA's evaluation of this book found a number of technical problems—including some combination of misspellings, grammar, punctuation, or capitalization errors—which indicate that further editing would lead to a much-improved final product.

Author's Synopsis

 Following the invasion of a year earlier Brad Stone has become the figure head of the Alaska resistance movement, and head of the largest militia in the former state, including the Chiknik Rangers, making him enemy number one to the Chinese leadership based in Anchorage. At the same time his sons, Ben and Ian find themselves waging a bloody guerilla operation against Russian troops in the east. Unknown to any of them, Youngmi, whose mangled, dead body haunts Brad’s dreams, has become the mistress of General Zhang, head of the Chinese forces in Alaska…and a major player in the resistance movement, passing on information that could mean her real death if she is caught.

ISBN/ASIN: 978-1682616925
Book Format(s): Soft cover, Kindle, ePub/iBook, Audiobook
Review Genre: Fiction—Mystery/Thriller
Number of Pages: 340