Cold War is the second installment of Jonathan Maberry’s Military SF/Horror saga, NecroTek. Set a couple of centuries into the future, a space station near Jupiter is sent across the universe when an experimental warp drive malfunctions. What this group of survivors discover is that the Elder Gods and Old Ones, creatures of H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu stories are real and have been at war with each other for eons, only for humanity to be thrust in the middle of it.
Maberry immediately sets this story apart by shifting some of the focus (what amounts to about half of the narrative) to people on Earth about a year prior to the events of the first novel. But not just any group of people, a group of scientists digging into Antarctica discover a long-buried, ancient space ship. One might say it would be madness to try to plumb the depths of a mountain in the frozen continent of Antarctica. While the alien’s humanity fights in the first novel are out of Lovecraft’s stories (the characters acknowledge this and Maberry does a fun job of justifying Lovecraft’s fiction as fact), the part of the novel which takes place on Earth may be the most Lovecraftian fiction Maberry has penned. This is a complement, of course.
The war against the Shoggoth army is still ongoing at the other side of the universe where Asphodel station was transported. Continuing with these characters allows for a familiarity with them, which naturally allows for more depth and development, and for their relationships to blossom.
The horrors and thrills are laced through both narratives, with the horror of the unknown dominating the archaeological dig in Antarctica. Ancient aliens mirroring some of the horrors of ancient pulp are the known horrors in the new “home space” of Asphodel station. Some of those monsters are at least a little familiar to some of the characters (Lady Death and the philosopher Loren).
Leaning into the Lovecraftian horrors is where I found most enjoyment of the story. While good ol’ Howard Philip was a detestable human being in many regards, the horrors his mind created (or according to the NecroTek novels, the horrors his imagination connected with and shared with the world) were fascinating. Maberry does a magnificent job of framing these aliens in a way that doesn’t require readers to intimately know the Cthulhu / Lovecraftian mythos, while working very well for those readers as well. I appreciated the scientific approach Maberry, through his characters, applies to these nasties.
There seems to be a groundswell of space-based / science fiction horror over the past few years. Really, going back to Alien and the whole franchise of movies that sprung from that landmark film, but I feel as if I’m seeing more of that in printed form in recent years. Maberry’s NecroTek novels capture the essence of those two branches of speculative fiction coming together very nicely, one of the most entertaining blends of Horror and Science Fiction I’ve encountered in any medium.
Cold War: A NecroTek Novel is a fantastic second book in the trilogy. The pacing may not be quite as breakneck as the first novel, but it manages to move the story along quite nicely while adding new elements and characters to the mix.
I’d also say the NecroTek novels can be seen as “cousins” to Maberry’s Kagen the Damned novels. Both take the Lovecraftian mythos, one superimposes that mythos into Epic Fantasy, the other into Space Opera/Military Fantasy.
Recommended.
© 2025 Rob H. Bedford
Hardcover | October 2025
566 Pages | Blackstone Publishing
https://www.jonathanmaberry.com/lp-book-nekrotek.cfm
https://www.weirdtales.com/
Review copy courtesy of the publisher, Blackstone Publishing
