Book Reviews: Re-Created Extinct Hominids

 TheIce Ghost, by KathleenO'Neal Gear (DAW)

The Ice Orphan, by Kathleen O'Neal Gear (DAW)

I previously reviewed the first of the “Rewilding Reports”novels (The Ice Lion) and I liked it (The Ice Lion, by Kathleen O'Neal Gear, DAW). The set-up is appealing: Inthe far future, an attempt to halt the Earth’s runaway warming resulted in anew, apocalyptic Ice Age with glaciers three miles high and a poisonous slime,“zyme” covering the oceans. As the planet descended into this frigid nightmare,the last scientists recreated species that had survived earlier Ice Ages: direwolves, helmeted musk oxen, cave lions, and extinct, archaic human species likethe Denisovans, Neanderthals, and Homo erectus. Remnants of theprevious civilization persist in myths (about the godlike Jemen = G-men), anenigmatic scientist with an artificially extended lifespan, and a quantumcomputer spiraling into loss of function.

Someof the things I liked best about the first volume are here in the subsequent books.Foremost is the humanity, culture, and sensitivity, and poetic imagery of thepre-human characters. We moderns tend to regard our ancestors as dim-witted andlacking in social graces, although recent discoveries reveal such markers ofcooperative culture as care for the injured and burial of the dead long before H.sapiens came along. Gear’s characters, although having much smaller brains,are nonetheless resourceful, compassionate, and thoughtful. The Dog Soldiers (H.erectus) may have had small, sloping skulls, but their understanding ofethical issues, not to mention their literacy and reverence for books, marksthem as anything but “primitive.” In fact, the most advanced of the threespecies, the Rust People Neanderthals, are the most violent.

TheIce Ghost andThe Ice Orphan continue the adventures of Sealion People(Denisovan) Lynx and Quiller, and members of Quiller’s family, as they struggleagainst an increasingly hostile terrain and new enemies. Legends mix uneasilywith prophecies and dreams, as none of the pre-human species draws precisedifferences between poorly understood history, inspiration, and the visionsborn of mental illness or hallucinogens. The disintegrating quantum computer,called “Quancee,” is undoubtedly real, as is the reanimated Jemen general benton destroying the computer’s autonomy and changing it into a weapon, and thebrutal Rust People (Neandertal) shaman whose visions drive him to invade theJemen stronghold and reawaken the ancient ruler. Who, of course, has an agendaof her own.

These next two volumes have many of the strengths of thefirst, including smooth prose, sympathetic characters, innovativeworld-building, and wonderful physical descriptions. The characters areportrayed through their experiences so that only occasionally are theirphysical appearances important. What matters is the quality of theircharacters, their courage, compassion, leadership, and honesty.

Each of the three books centers on a different but relatedquest, and therein lies not only the charm of the series and the independenceof each installment, but a flaw in the latter two. The first volume of a serieshas a lot of work to do, establishing not only viewpoint characters, theirgoals and conflicts, but the world itself. In this case, the world’s history iscritical to the story. To her credit, Gear does not bash us over the head withpages of exposition and backstory. History is gleaned from hints here andthere, and the understanding of the characters. In this, Gear does a great job,even when historical facts have become distorted or even erased with time andthe demands of survival in an increasingly perilous
environment.

The problem I experienced was that, compared with the firstvolume (The Ice Lion), what comes next felt lightweight. They seemedmore like novellas in the scope of the plot, stories fleshed out with too manyrepetitive descriptions and inconsequential or trivial events.

My second problem arose from the conflation of imaginary andreal events. In books of this type, there’s an expectation that mysteriouselements will be revealed (as opposed to fantasy, where magic need not have anyrelationship to the laws of physics), that the reader will be able to puttogether the pieces and figure out what the age-warped technology, historicalevents, and so forth really are. And how much were real technology, events, andso forth, versus how much the imaginative, often superstitious interpretation.Gear’s characters treat superstition as just as real as tangible physicalarticles, but we the readers lack the clues to distinguish them. Perhaps thoseclues will be revealed in a future volume. Alas, I for one found two novels toolong to be befuddled. This was made worse by hand-waving technology, such asnear-immortality antiaging tech, a way for the genetically modified prehumansto receive telepathic communications from a computer, and the dream quest ofQuiller’s adolescent son, which left me wondering if he was spiritually“transformed” or actually dead.

I continue to recommend the first volume of this series forall the reasons cited above. As for the rest, other readers may find the samedelight in them. The series looks to be continuing. As they say, “YMMV.”