Book excerpt: Twenty-three men and thirty-six sled dogs travel to Antarctica aboard a sailing ship converted to steamer in the year 1888, ostensibly to find the South Pole. During the trek across the frozen wastes they begin dying grisly deaths one by one at the hands on an apparent madman and when the goal of the quest appears to be other than the South Pole, conspiracy and mutiny are the dinner guests. In a hot-blooded and at times searing cold 19th Century voice, George Wier populates a historically accurate setting with flesh-and-blood desperate men in a deft and breathless yarn. In Neptune's Forge you can taste the whale blubber, smell the burning coal-oil and feel the biting cold. And like Antarctica itself, this one's not for the faint-of-heart.