Kenyon, Kay: Maximum Ice
Maximum Ice (2002)
Written by: Kay Kenyon
Genre: Science Fiction
Pages: 418 (Mass Market Paperback)
Earlier this year, the SF bug bit me REALLY hard. And I've been eyeing Kay Kenyon's backlist for a while. Maximum Ice was one of those titles I coveted every time I saw it on my list, and when I finally broke down and ordered a handful of SF-written-by-women titles, I added this to the cart. I felt kind of bad for doing so, let alone reading it now, when I haven't finished her The Entire and the Rose cycle (I've read two of the four books), but I really, really wanted to read this, so I did.
The premise: ganked from BN.com: Zoya Kundara has lived on the space vessel Star Road for two hundred fifty years. As its Ship Mother, kept alive in a state of pseudoimmortality, she has provided wisdom and counsel to succeeding generations of its crew, self-exiled survivors of earth’s great plague.
But now, to escape the ravages of space radiation, the giant starship has returned to earth, only to discover a world on the verge of extinction, its barren surface blanketed in a crystalline substance that resembles ice and that is slowly, inexorably encapsulating the planet. Zoya is chosen as emissary to this strange new earth, and now she must approach its denizens and find a suitable home for her desperate crew among the shrinking lands.
But what she finds shakes Zoya to her core: groups of humans huddled like moles in underground techno-warrens called preserves, and a pseudospiritual order known as the Ice Nuns, who seek control of the physics-defying crystals and enslave their disciples in their crazed quest for truth. For on this once green land, Ice and the science behind it are now the only God--and mastering this grand ecology of information the only higher calling. Allies are few and far between, but somehow Zoya must uncover the secrets of Ice and halt its expansion.
That is, if the snow witches don’t get her first...
Review style: There's things I liked and things I didn't, so I want to talk through the story and discuss the things that worked and things that refused to stick with me, and how that left my overall impression of the book somewhat ambivalent. No spoilers, because I finished this over a week ago and have no need to get into nitty-gritty details. Still, if you're paranoid? Jump to "My Rating."
The book started off so promising. Gypsies in space. How can that not be awesome! There was a certain rhythm to the prose too that pulled me along, a cross between storytelling and singsong, all in a good way. I was fascinated by the situation on the ship and why they were returning to Earth, and I looked forward to seeing what we would learn.
Even getting to Earth was promising. The Ice that pretty much covers the planet is a mystery in and of itself, and there's the question of whether or not these gypsies, whose last option is survival on Earth, can survive here or not. Zoya is an sympathetic character in that she cares for other people and really wants to help. Her outlook on life too feels, not unique, but individual, and you can't help but warm up to her.
But things start getting . . . odd.
One of the problems I had was that all of the characters seemed to have the same moral weight for most of the book. I got the impression that I was supposed to see certain characters as more heroic than others, but some of that distinction was arbitrary. If you didn't care for the fact the Ice Nuns were, well, nuns that had no religious or spiritual association, then it'd be easy to paint them as villains Zoya does. But I was more interested in the juxtaposition, despite the harsh way they treated each other, and the whole child slavery scene was glossed over in such a way I didn't realize it was actual child slavery until the end of the book. I thought kids were chosen to go with the nuns, not bought to do so, which made Zoya's reaction to the thing a little extreme from my POV. I'm not sure if this misreading is my fault, the author's, or a little bit of both, but it happened.
Of all the characters, the one I had no trouble latching on to was Kellian. Here's a sympathetic, non-white heroine who's smart and confident and willing to do what she can to get what she wants, but she's not the kind of person you want to kick in the tail for being perfect. She's not. She's the anchor that held the book together for me, even when motivations became suspect on the part of other characters.
For example: wasn't the nuns ENTIRE PURPOSE was to find a way to talk to Ice? When Kellian found a way to do it, why did Mother Superior ignore her? Politics? Please. If someone told me they'd found a way to talk to Ice, I wouldn't dismiss them outright if that was, indeed, my goal. Now, if I were a heartless bitch who wanted glory, I might pretend interest and then deny the girl's claims only to steal her ideas and claim glory for myself, but that whole treatment had me scratching my head. Then again, maybe I misunderstood the nuns' motivations.
Also confusing was the backstory involving the Roma. I got the whole plague carrier bit and how they were wrongly prosecuted, but the story left me feeling that 1) maybe they really WERE the carriers and the plague would return to Earth--as Swan expected and 2) if their backstory played no role in the current story, why bring it up? I don't mind it as history, but until Swan freaked out after checking Ice, I thought the Roma were honestly wrong prosecuted, and to get the impression that might NOT be the case (even if the reaction against the Roma was the WRONG one), left me feeling unsatisfied. Almost like a thread that never got tied. It would've been interesting if Ice, in the process of offering the gypsies what they wanted, managed to uncover the truth of the disease and inoculate everyone for it. Or something like that.
Really, I just wanted into the story itself, wasn't invested in the outcome. I was fascinated by the world-building and the legends/stories that went with it, but I never got a good sense of what the book was driving at, which left me divested in the piece.
There was a lot of telling in this book too. While I'm an odd duck and don't mind tell over show, there's times when it sticks out, and it stuck out here. Granted, it's one of Kenyon's earlier books, but it still stuck out. Time was a nebulous thing because of it, because POV sections didn't pick up where they'd left off: stuff happened in between, and then the author had to tell us about it.
But there's some lovely moments in the book. Places in the prose that spoke to me, like page 13: To her, this place was a fresh start, a place swept clean of old dangers and ancient sins (this is more powerful in context). And then there's Wolf's story, which I love, even if I don't love its ending (let's just say I couldn't visualize the danger: whether it was a swarm of normal sized or a swarm of giant ones). Wolf's hunt for the Snow Angel was fantastic, and I truly loved its arc.
My Rating
Give It Away: Expectations were a little high for this one, because I've enjoyed Kenyon's recent work with The Entire and the Rose, and I liked the premise and cover a lot. Go figure. Certainly, there's a lot of interesting things in this book, namely in the world-building, but the book lacked a lot of tension that's necessary to keep the pages turning, and while I could finish the book (it wasn't unreadable), I wasn't emotionally invested in the characters or their struggles. But yet, there's some very cool things in this book, so it's worth reading if it interests you. It's just not something I'll come back to or even think about all that much now that I'm finished with it.
Cover Commentary: Love it. The cover has taunted me for a LONG time. Combined with the sharp contrast of the black title, and I almost bought this book every time I saw it on Amazon. However, the cover is something of a spoiler, though you can interpret the woman on the picture to be more than one character in the book. Still, there's other details that pretty much tell you what the mystery of Ice is, and while it's cool and probably not something most people would notice, it's there, which meant I had a good idea of what Ice was long before the characters in the book did.
Next up: Fallen by Lauren Kate