From Kirkus Reviews:
Soviet and American forces slug it out over strategic materials in the frozen South, where a dormant volcano is waking up in a terrible mood. Harrison (Storming Intrepid, 1989) shrewdly leaves the desert fighting to the real armies, taking his fighting forces to Antarctica, where a joint Soviet-American scientific project has dug up core samples rich in rubidium--an element essential to America's hypersecret new strategic defense gadget, an invisible shield that evaporates incoming missiles. Of course, no hypersecret is safe these days. The Soviets know all about the space shield, and they know that if the Americans get control of the rubidium, it is the last nail in the coffin of the Evil Empire. Cold war gets new life then as the Russians launch a sudden, fast, multiforce attack on the scientific study base in Antarctica, where the Americans are digging as fast as they can to reach the mother lode of rubidium. The Russians catch everybody except pretty volcano-scientist and former nurse Dana Harrow, who is off checking her seismographs. America doesn't take this lying down, of course, Despite the world's stupidest president, the US puts together its own multiforce counterattack, and Ms. Harrow becomes the core of the resistance movement when she teams up with a squad of sharpshooting, snow-suited, ski- borne American paratroopers. Armies, navies, and air forces collide, and everybody gets very, very cold. Living, breathing humans and fresh scenery make this a better-than-average technobattle. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
From Publishers Weekly:
In the near-future of this techno-thriller, American scientists have developed a new superweapon. The "graser," or ground laser, provides the destruction of a nuclear blast without the fallout. But the graser requires a rare element, and the only sizable deposit is in Antarctica. Trouble begins when a reorganized Soviet Confederation sends an elite strike force, including the supercarrier Tbilisi , to the South Pole. The U.S. seems on the verge of a low-cost, high-tech victory when Soviet cruise-missile torpedoes drastically change the balance of forces and Mount Erebus, a long-dormant Antarctic volcano, comes to life. Harrison ( Storming Intrepid ) supplies a plausible motive for renewed Soviet-American conflict. His technologies are convincingly extrapolated from existing weapons systems. And Harrison effectively marshalls a large cast of characters, among them Dana Harrow, the female geologist who discovers Erebus's secret; and Marine general Myron Tharp and Navy pilot Blackjack Pershing, both interesting variations on familiar stereotypes. Yet Thunder of Erebus succeeds above all as an action novel. Harrison's depiction of clandestine operations under Antarctic conditions and his narrations of the U.S. air attack on the Tbilisi and the Russian undersea riposte are masterpieces of combat fiction. No fan of the genre can afford to overlook this bombshell. 100,000 first printing; $100,000 ad/promo; Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club selections; author tour.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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