Ice Vegas

Complex, requisite of close attention. Locales and environmental challenges shift dramatically and suddenly. Personalities receive disparate developments, some with shown behaviors, others by telling via the protagonist’s internal ruminations, or the author(s), in an overview narration. Reader sympathies are tweaked mercilessly.

Where typically tale-telling demands a face and a name upfront to focus the reader/listener within the main point of view, here we are confronted with a protagonist whose identity, appearance, gender expression(s), and motivations/compulsions are all delayed in revelation.

This dance of a dozen fleshly and motivational veils is accomplished largely by in-the-head telling. There is gratifyingly frequent action, but that is most often, again, presented by in-the-head recounting.

Masterly universe construction is here, personalities do evolve, and constraints on movement and achievement see adroit usage.

Ice Vegas is a reactor-requiring resort city power-domed in Greenland. Threats to its integrity and the survival of those dwelling or visiting within constitute this saga’s primary conflicts. And speculation as to the economic and social motivations of threat originators makes for a who-mighta-dunnit element underlying all else.

The protagonist’s fluctuating self-perception is threaded throughout, with, again, a great deal of telling.

Engaging, but all in all, a jerky read. Calvin Ball with an octopus rather than a tiger.