Kirsten Imani Kasai, Ice Song

Ice Song

Kirsten Imani Kasai

Del Rey, May 19 2009, $15.00

ISBN: 9780345508812

Engineer Sorykah Minuit is a Trader whose gender changes periodically without her control of the switch. She currently works on a low end job on an ice drilling sub. When she finishes her tour, she goes to meet her infant twins Ayeda and Leander and their nanny Nels in the dangerous ice cap town Ostara. However, they fail to show up.

To keep from freezing she enters a Somatics' bar; a place unsafe for Traders as the hybrid human-beasts prefers no mingling with outsiders. Rava an octopus-lady takes her into her zone while informing a distraught Sorykah that the Trader Matuk the Collector abducted them in his quest to dissect unique individuals seeking a cure for his repulsive mentally disturbed daughter the W ild Wood Beast Radhe. Sorykah goes into Erun Forest to rescue her children, but switches gender losing most of the essence that made her who she was including memories of being a caring mother.

ICE SONG is an exciting futuristic science fiction thriller that extrapolates modern day genetic engineering and HG Wells' The Island of Dr. Moreau with a brilliant gender-memory twist. The story line is fast-paced yet the three prime locales are vivid in a dark gloomy way as readers will anticipate pending doom. Sorykah is a terrific lead protagonist who changes from hard worker to desperate distraught mother to confused male and does so in a believable manner. Kirsten Imani Kasai provides a fascinating well written cautionary tale.

Harriet Klausner