July Books 23) Coldheart, by Trevor Baxendale

[nwhyte]

If you can swallow the completely implausible geological setup for this story - a desert planet with an ice core (or at least a permafrost mantle) - it's rather a good tale of the politics of a citadel society under stress, as the monsters arise both from the icy depths and from the elders' own children; it's rather effective as a body-horror story

Comments

[tchernabyelo]

Depends if "desert" = "hot". If not - and strictly the definition of desert is dry, not hot (there's a desert in Antarctica - indeed IIRC it vies with the Atacama for driest place on the planet) - then it's perhaps not entirely implausible to have all the water locked up as ice. But if this is the usual "desert = hot sandy place" then, no.