It has been months since Sorykah Minuit has seen her new born twins. However departing from the Nimbus, a massive ice-drilling submarine, and arriving at the train, she is met with bitter disappointment. They did not arrive. Disheartened, she befriends one of the somatic, people born human but a shift in their DNA causes their outward appearance to mutate.
The next day they return to the bar only to discover that the Collector, Matuk, has her babies. She must get them back before he discovers her babies both carry her ability to change gender. She is given one choice. Take her friend to the witch, Shanxi, and from there follow her directions and travel the barren, danger filled landscape to get to where her babies are.
Dog sledding across the white fields she meets many obstacles because if it isn't her own fear paralyzing her, then it's the near animalistic men, the wild animals and even nature itself. She quickly is down to just her wits, no dogs, no food, nor shelter against the bitter cold.
After being kidnapped the babies are delivered into the care of the Dunya, the dog faced girl. A gentle soul, she cares for them as if they were her own babes, hoping to keep them from her master's attention. Trauma normally causes the change, however the twins can do it at will. After caring for the master, she changes Leander's diaper, only to find out he is now a she. How does she save the babies where she failed her own?
ICE SONG by Kirsten Imanikasai is an adventure with fantasy elements in it. The visual details are so rich I can see every scene, every motion. I cared about the people the collector's life had destroyed. The one thing the reader have to accept is that nature is just as much a character in her story as people are, if not more, and after awhile I lost interest even in the life and death struggles.
There are secrets beneath her skin.
Sorykah Minuit is a scholar, an engineer, and the sole woman
aboard an ice-drilling submarine in the frozen land of the
Sigue. What no one knows is that she is also a Trader: one
who can switch genders suddenly, a rare corporeal deviance
universally met with fascination and superstition and all
too often punished by harassment or death.
Sorykahβs infant twins, Leander and Ayeda, have inherited
their motherβs Trader genes. When a wealthy, reclusive
madman known as the Collector abducts the babies to use in
his dreadful experiments, Sorykah and her male alter-ego,
Soryk, must cross icy wastes and a primeval forest to get
them back. Complicating the dangerous journey is the fact
that Sorykah and Soryk do not share memories: Each
disorienting transformation is like awakening with a jolt
from a deep and dreamless sleep.
The world through which the alternating lives of Sorykah and
Soryk travel is both familiar and surreal. Environmental
degradation and genetic mutation run amok; humans have been
distorted into animals and animal bodies cloak a wild
humanity. But it is also a world of unexpected beauty and
wonder, where kindness and love endure amid the ruins.
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