Invasion

Ice Hammer, Book 1

By: Basil Sands

Narrated by: Basil Sands

Length: 12 hrs

Publisher's summary

It only took an instant for the world to come crashing down.

The bombs came first, and the troops were close behind. Life in the dream that was America ceased when a deadly new alliance of communist states from Russia, China, and their allies invaded from the North.

The invasion splits Brad Stone's family apart. His wife, Youngmi, is captured and exploited by Alaska's new communist warlord. Brad and his sons narrowly avoid massacre and retreat into the icy wilderness. Brad, a former Marine, finds himself thrust to the front as the warrior they call "Ice Hammer" - a leader, a legend, and the most wanted man in occupied Alaska.

Brad, Youngmi, and their sons Ben and Ian must find their way through the horrors of war. They may not live to see victory, but they will not live as slaves. They have already learned a brutal truth:

The age of peace has ended. The age of the Ice Hammer has begun.

©2017 Basil Sands (P)2017 Basil Sands

a range of emotions -  anger, sadness, laughter...

An invasion of the US orchestrated by China, Russia and their allies bring the US to its knees.  Invasion: Ice Hammer is focused on Alaska only, a very small part of the invasion but still riveting!  Brad becomes the Ice Hammer without realizing it; his sons are on the move with a boy scout troop now being led by a military leader; and Brad’s wife, believed to be dead is actually the prisoner of the Chinese General.

The invasion was completed in an imaginative way.  One that I found fascinating; not one of the usual boring dropping of bombs or suicide bombers.  I thought he did an excellent job of creating a very sneaky invasion and one that was total!

There are a lot of moving parts to this story but Basil Sands does a wonderful job of keeping them moving, bringing them together and creating twists and turns that keep the audience in suspense.  One note – one of my favorite characters from Faithful Warrior makes an appearance as the Hairy One!

While the characters are faced with grueling conditions, starving, traumatized beyond belief, there are still some very humorous parts that will leave you with tears in your eyes.  One is an older Korean woman who keeps the Hairy One on his toes by slapping his face after each kiss – this is so he gets the thorns with the flower!

Well-developed the plot moves at a good steady pace; the character development is well thought out and executed building the characters and their actions in conjunction with one another.  Nothing seems out-of-place other than with the exception of Brad being lax in trying to recover his boys.  A man such as Brad infused with his family, I would have expected him to take off immediately to find his boys but he doesn’t.  This was the only part that disappointed me in the book.

Sands keeps his audience on their toes with a range of emotions -  anger, sadness, laughter, and suspense.  I enjoyed this book immensely and can’t wait for the second in the series.

Basil Sands also narrated the story.  He performed the audiobook as a talented professional – I loved the voice Kadji (The Hairy One).  His voices and accents were well done.  I enjoy authors who read their own books – they inject the enthusiasm, suspense and other emotions that they had when writing their book thus giving their audience a true representation of their book.

There were no issues with the production quality of this book.

Audiobook was provided for review by the author.

Please find this complete review and many others at my review blog

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The Age of Ice Hammer Has Begun

4.5 out of 5 stars

Sometimes I try and write a good synopsis to start my posts, and other times the author provides a great one that’s better than anything I could attempt to write. I’m going to steal Sands’ intro here since there’s no better way to explain the premise of this book. “The bombs came first, and the troops were close behind. Life in the dream that was America ceased when a deadly new alliance of Communist states from Russia, China, and their allies invaded from the North… The age of peace has ended. The age of the Ice Hammer has begun.”

This was my first book by Basil Sands (both written and/or narrated), but I’ve had my eye on his stuff for a while. I’m glad that I took the dive with Invasion and boy what a book it was.

The start of the book was full of getting to know Brad and his family (along with his boys and some other Scouts). I thought it was really well paced and was needed. I had to laugh a few times because I’m facebook friends with Basil and some of the stuff that Sands wrote about seemed to be partially based on his life. I know that most readers won’t know that but I found it to make the book even more enjoyable.

Brad was an IT professional but was always prepared. When the bomb(s) dropped and the attack began he had his bugout bag ready and was on the move before anyone could find him. Following his trek and his struggle with certain situations was emotional. I thought that Invasion was written in a way that was both enjoyable but emotional. I felt for Brad numerous times (I won’t explain why it’ll ruin some parts of the book). After “doing what he had to do” Brad get’s a pretty awesome nickname by the NK’s that are looking for him.

The end of the book wasn’t as much of an ending as I thought it would be (I should have known with the name that it was going to be a “book 1”) but I still thought it was well done and well written. The story doesn’t have a traditional “ending” per say but was still enough of an ending to keep me happy.

Sands is a great author and narrator. I read other reviews that talked about people skipping books that were narrated by the author but I’ve found that a lot of the time the author can give certain scenes the proper amount of drama since they wrote the book. I also know that Sands is a narrator for other authors – so it’s not like he narrated his book to save money, he professionally does this and did a great job narrating Invasion.

Overall, I thought the Invasion was an action-packed “holy crap” type of book that numerous times I found myself thinking that this really happened or could happen. It felt that real and I love books like that.

I received a free copy of this book and this has not affected my review in any way. If you enjoyed it, please vote for it! If you'd like to see more like this review you can check out BriansBookBlog DOT com.

fun Alaskan story!

I really enjoyed all of the references to the Anchorage area! Great narration as well.

high speed low drag

Basil does it again. a rich exciting story laced with intense reality and a character with a bizarre sense of humor needed to keep his fellow travelers sane. overall a treatise on survival against intense adversarial conditions.

Invasion Ice Hammer

Despite the definite conservative christian leanings,I enjoyed this book.I could explain to the author that Christmas was first a pagan holiday that the church reallocated for their purposes....but I won't. I was a bit tired of the praying and comments about liberals.A boy scout group is on a campout when the Chinese invade by helicopter and on land.They kill everyone in their path, but take one Korean born woman into their 'care'.She is assumed to be the concubine of the general.It seems that the wilds of Alaska hold a lot of cabins and hide aways for peppers and the Scout leaders and fathers on the trip knew what to do.They train up the Boy Scouts and civilians to fight the good fight.I was provided this book by the author/narrator to the publisher.

Great part of the series.

Great books and I will listen to it again after I finish the series. Looking forward to the last one of the series

The SHTF !

action-adventure, Alaska, testosterone-fest, war-is-hell, SHTF, family, fanatics, firearms, friendship, teamwork, violence

It's the SHTF! Without warning the US is unilaterally invaded by multiple hostile forces from around the globe, and this narrative focuses on several people who live in Alaska and their active responses. All characters are well drawn and believable whether the good guys, bad guys, or family/friends/others. Highly charged and very graphic, I had to take a break from the action at times, but definitely returned. Despite all the violence, one of the leaders doesn't lose his spirituality. Really good read!
The audio is performed by the author! Excellent!

Red Dawn in Alaska

Disclosure; I was given the audiobook in exchange for an honest review.
I love this book for so many reasons and can not wait to dive into the rest of the trilogy. Non stop action throughout, and you could feel every emotion from each character, even from from the “bad guys”. This would make an incredible action movie and I feel like I have already watched it as Basil Sands creates the background without giving overly long winded descriptions. You really travel with Brad and his companions as he treks across the Alaskan wilderness. This is how I would hope to live if such an event happened on American soil. As a Boy Scout leader and with Scouts playing a role in the book I would like to think my troop would be able to fare as well as this group has. I plan on recommending this book to a few of my older scouts and some of the other leaders. Having no military experience I just enjoy what is being described as accurate and possible and, none the less, it makes for a fun story with fighting, shooting, and blowing things up.

You had me at "Invasion" :)

I'm already a huge fan of Basil's narration from The Undead World by Peter Meredith, but I had not before this read or listened to any of his own books - sooo glad to read/listen to some of his own written words!! He's a great author!

Wow! This is a very intense Alaskan thriller! I LOVED IT. Well written, intense, meaningful, action-packed. Basil Sands is amazing! Please give this book a listen, it's amazing. I'm not one to post long summaries, mostly because it's already done. But I highly suggest anyone who sees this goes out and grabs this series, it's sooooo good!

Excellent job! :) On to the next one! :)

I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.
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Good to have an Alaskan Story

So many landmarks to relate to & made the story really interesting. Good job!
Story was really good. I am a Alaskan Wildcrafter... so hearing the herbs, etc. being picked processed & used for food & medicine was a really good addition to the story.