For years, diehard Poyer fans searched used bookstores for the few surviving tattered copies of WHITE CONTINENT. This sprawling first novel reads like a remix of ATLAS SHRUGGED and THE DOGS OF WAR, as retold by Robert Heinlein with Alistair Maclean. It follows a team of adventurers, mercenaries, outcasts, and entrepreneurs in a daring coup to take over the last undeveloped and unclaimed land on earth – the terrifyingly hostile continent of Antarctica. Using advanced technology to survive, they build a Utopian society, both communal and fiercely individualistic, unlike any elsewhere on earth.Jaded Parisian expat turned Antarctic pioneer Edouard Roudensky is the narrator, forced to drive his pencil over a damp legal pad at the point of a rifle. But dozens of other sharply-drawn characters populate these pages too. International legal expert Fumiko Kasuhara; whaler and ice-captain Adrian Larsson; tight-fisted oil billionaire Dorothea Lindahl; icy, sardonic mercenary Robert Blakeley. And many others, united under their red, green, and white flag . . . who then, unexpectedly, find they must fight for their new country, against those who want to take it from them.The geopolitical scene has changed, but the book is prescient in its foreshadowing of today's conflicting claims and impending resource wars in places like the Arctic and the China Sea. Fans of Poyer's later books will notice themes he's still exploring, such as the search for authentic authority, conflicted heroes, and deeply-layered, multidimensional characters who ponder as well as act. The ambition and epic sweep of WHITE CONTINENT, as well as Poyer's evocation of the horrific grandeur of the most hostile setting on earth, marked the appearance of a blazing new talent. He would go on to craft nearly fifty exciting novels of action, adventure, and history . . . always chronicling the struggles of heroic men and women to achieve, endure, and prevail.
