From Library Journal
The generation ship Star Road returns to Earth after 250 years to revitalize its failing population and discovers that the planet is enveloped in a crystalline substance referred to as Ice. Zoya Kundara, the Ship Mother, acts as emissary to the planet's underground inhabitants, hoping against hope to find a way to rescue Earth and her own people from extinction. The author of The Seeds of Time and Leap Point delivers an ecological adventure set against an Earth peopled by Ice Nuns, snow witches, and renegade cannibals. For most sf collections.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
It has been 250 years since Zoya's starship left Earth, and upon finally returning, the crew discovers a planet nearly swallowed by a peculiar crystalline, icelike substance. As Ship Mother, Zoya has spent most of the long years in suspended animation, wakening occasionally to reconnect with the crew, an extended Romany family that fled after being scapegoated for a virulent plague. They are desperate to rebuild their lives on Earth, but communications with its few surviving inhabitants, who live in stinking warrens under the ice's surface, don't bode well. Then a transmission from a mysterious community called the Ice Nuns, which claims to be studying the ice as an information storage medium, entices Zoya down to the surface to investigate. Unbeknownst to her, Swan, an old enemy of the Rom, still wanders the surface, and when he hears of their return, he vows a singular, bloody vengeance for the deaths of his family. A vivid cast of characters, some interesting asides on religious authority, and the bleakly beautiful landscape make this a uniquely powerful tale reminiscent of Greg Bear. Roberta Johnson
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