As the title implies, Ice is a post-apocalyptic novel set many, many years after a great ice age. It's like the City of Ember or The Matrix, just the ice age version. At the onset of the great ice age, the ancestors built and retreated to massive enclaves hewn into the heart of mountains. These enclaves held civilization for hundreds of years, during which people forgot anything other than their enclave. Despite being inside a mountain, their technology allowed them to create an artificial sun, starts, ecosystem, and everything needed to simulate life outside the enclave. This technology is a strange mix of extreme sci-fi and steampunk styles, as they have some crazy advanced gadgets and devices, but they still plow their fields with an ox, albeit mechanically-enhanced cyborg oxen that run on pistons...
One such mox (for mechanical ox) was driven by Kell. Kell, the main character, is a teenaged boy living within the enclave of Perth. His whole life he has lived within its bounds (which nobody knows where they are by the way), and believes that he will always will, thanks to the All Mother. The enclave is governed by the All Mother, a sort of omnipotent overseer of Perth. The All Mother is the defacto goddess of Perth which everybody thinks of as such. She controls everthing from the seasons to an individual's very physical state. As she is the overseer of the enclave, her creators made her job to keep her residents safe and within the enclave, but, even after the ice age has passed, she still maintains her grip on the people, who for the most part are happy to oblige.
Kell on the other hand, is not. He dreams of freedom, of the outside world, of the Beyond. Everybody he meets tells him that he's crazy, especially since they have everthing they could ever want in the enclave. Unlike the City of Ember, where supplies are dwindling and power is unreliable, the enclaves still have everthing needed to sustain life, and always will be a paradise. However, the inhabitants of Perth know that there is a greater world out there, but that is cold and frozen. Despite this, and in fact actually because of this, Kell wants to go there. The mystery and forbiddenness of the Beyond merely heightens the intrigue and drive for Kell to escape. Above all this, the fact that everybody dissuades him, including his best friend Shamra, makes him want to explore even more. Regardless of his dreams, he has little hope of them actually coming to fruition. But, as you may have relized from the fact that I am writing a blog post about it, they do in fact come to fruition.
His hopes are rekindled when, one evening after he plowed a field, he heard a small band of people higher in the hills and decided to follow them. They kept going higher and higher until he couldn't stand the cold with just his tunic anymore, and so he turned back before he would freeze, and likely be caught. Later he convinces Shamra to come with him to find these people. With Shamra's abilities as an "in-looker" (effectively mind-reading) they found them fairly easily. The leader of the five rebels, Kano, tells them that they have found a potential way to exit the enclave, but to do it, they must relinquish their ties to the All Mother. This is not as easy as a decision though. As the all mother has near total control over the enclave, rebelling against her is dangerous. Each inhabitant of Perth has a glass disk which serves as a multipurpose device for many tasks throughout the day, but also serves as a means of tracking and controlling the owner. By smashing their glasses, Kell and Shamra can be free of the All Mother's power, but this would not make the All Mother happy. In fact, this "disspossesion" can be so harsh as to scar and disfigure your face, as was the case to one of the five rebels. I won't give away too much of the story, but let's just say there are some epic shenanigans that take place.
Similarl to Strange Exit, Ice by Stephen Bowkett explores ideas of existence, environment, and reality. I already did a light philosophical analasys of these ideas in the post on Strange Exit, so I did not feel the need to talk about them here. In conclusion, if you tend to enjoy the pseudo-dystopian (still not sure whether it is a distopia or a eutopia) and sci-fi genres, you might want to give this book a read. If you can find it that is. They don't have it at any local libraries. I got it from a used bookstore because I couldn't find anything else...
This sounds like a really interesting book, and I liked how you compared it to similar books such as the City of Ember and The Matrix. Furthermore, I also believe lot of comparisons can be made between this book and the real world. Especially the relations between the All-Mother and certain aspects of corrupt governments in history. To add on, labeling this book as dystopian or utopia is quite difficult but from what I know based off how you described the book, I believe this is a dystopian book. This book seems like utopian/perfect world at first glance, but I think that this book portrays a misleading definition of "perfection." The imperfections of this world are sort of masked by the idea that they are getting this "perfect" life when in reality, the inhabitants aren't completely aware that they are being controlled to think this way. This is just an observation though so don't take my word for it. Good job!
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