Thunder of Erebus

Thunder of Erebus may just be the technothrillerest technothriller that ever technothrilled. I’ll probably eat those words, but I don’t say this lightly either. And it’s not a bad thing.

Who and What

The book features a Soviet-American battle in Antarctica over a rare element. When reading it, I checked all the technothriller boxes. Land battle! Air Battle! Sea Battle! Soviets who only really win anything with their zombie sorceress superweapons! Viewpoint characters galore!

But more importantly, this was the clearest kind of technothriller that really emphasized the “techno-” part. Technology is both the goal and the process, be it real platforms or the ASBM-torpedo dispensers. By being so blatant, it cleared up a very blurry genre.

And the prose is-interesting. There’s a lot of flowery descriptions that made me smile, starting with  someone being “So thin that his polyester uniform seemed to be draped on a coat hanger instead of a human frame”, and only getting ‘better’ from there. Despite (or because of) this, it flowed well, which is good because…

DEEP HISTORY OF TEM

Not only does the “technothriller trope bingo” extend to infodumps, this book also has an infodump that states that an infantry division with the word “light” in its name is, in fact, a light infantry division. Yes.

Zombie Sorceresses

There’s every contrivance needed to have a giant battle take place in Antarctica.

Tank Booms

There are M1 tanks booming in Antarctica, and boomer submarines booming, and aircraft booming. The “maximum technothriller” and “flowery prose” apply to the battles as well.

The Only Score That Really Matters

This is it. A 1991 (year of the USSR’s collapse) maximum technothriller. Everything technothrillery in one package. I didn’t find the cliches grating-I found them, and the book, entertaining.