WOW and WOW: Preview of a great fantasy and Sci-fi mix: The Ice Lion by Kathleen O'Neal Gear

There are books that cost you a night sleep. Simply because you cannot stop reading them. This is such a book.

I benefited greatly from the fact that I had downloaded it on my phone to leave it dormant for a few weeks and thus forgetting the cover or the sales blurp. Because of that I discovered the world of glaciers one page at the time with the characters instead of having been clued in. I would strongly advice the publisher to alter that synopsis.

I started reading and thought at first I was reading a story set in pre-Columbus America with native Americans hunting bison who all had the name of an animal and where 46 is old and 16 is the age to marry. With Ice Giants being snow capped mountains. But then one of the guys was described as having a heavy brow ridge and a sloping forehead and the word Neanderthals flashed in my mind. So even further back in time? But hooo... enemies who sail rusting ships with motors?????? Green slime or something on the oceans? The Ice Giants glaciers? Fast forwarding centuries. . Gods called Jemen.-.G-men? Jemen who sail the sky.

All this forms a mystery for the readers but also for young dreamer Lynx who loses his wife at the beginning of the novel and his best friend Quiller a tall readhead who is as capable as the male hunters. When Lynx is forced to go on a dangerous trip Quiller who has been in love with him for ages follows him to save him. But who is that old man they meet?

After finishing the novel I was wide awake and trying to piece together the pieces of the puzzle. 

The worldbuilding is done very well and the personal development also.

This novel will be published on 15 Jul 2021

 

 

 
 

 

 

 ---SPOILER ALERT -----

I think that modern men in the future became older than we do but the prehistoric recreations just 40 years or so. As  Arakie was a seasoned mountaineer who conquered even Everest he was quite equipped for the new Ice Age world that was formed after a disastrous attempt to fight global warming. Others however just gave up or went mad when they lost hope they could reverse the Ice Age. He however thought that recreating prehistoric people and the animals of those days would give mankind a last chance to survive and start over again. Does Quiller have modern genes? Did people have a connection to certain animal before the end of the world and is that now the case with Lynx and the wolf and Arakie and the lion?