The perfect tonic to the current heat! A chilly thriller that's got good pace and is well structured to give a slow reveal. Very different from The Bees (as expected) but a great standalone in its own right.

Quality Rating: Four Stars
Enjoyment Rating: Two Stars

◆ Thanks to Netgalley for this ebook for review ◆

I'm not going to write a full review for this book because I feel it would be unfair. While I have no qualms about giving up on a book, the reason I couldn't bring myself to read more than 34% of The Ice was mostly because it just wasn't for me. I had an idea of where the story was going at the beginning, but a third of the way through and now we've suddenly jumped four years forward - for what? Where was the thriller-style mystery that we'd begun amongst Sean's life? Gone, apparently, and unfortunately I was feeling less and less motivated to read in general, so I decided to end it. I'm still interested in reading Paull's work as I've heard very good things, and I did enjoy her style, but I'll be looking for reviews that confirm there's a solid story in place throughout in the future.

What a wonderful book! A superb page-turning read which was very well researched and carried important messages for the world throughout the gripping narrative. At first sight this is an Arctic based thriller but beyond this is an exploration of what humans are doing to the world in the search for money and power. Alongside this theme relationships are tested and explored with nothing being straightforward. Main characters Sean and Tom have an obsessive love for the Arctic and Laline Paull's writing makes this understandable. Her descriptions of snow, glaciers, ice caves and polar animals are beautifully drawn and made this reader want to know more. The story is interspersed with extracts from real-life explorers' Arctic experiences which serve to add to the reality behind this geo-political fiction. The story starts with a tourist ship desperate to see a polar bear in the Arctic and finding a human body. It is then told via an inquest and flashbacks to various times in Sean and Tom's friendship. Despite their common passion for the Arctic, their motivations digress and their friendship is severely tested. There are many twists and turns which make the story engaging on the thriller level and I do wonder (hope) there may be a follow-up, perhaps featuring the continuing stories of Ruth and Rosie.

After loving 'The Bees' I was really looking forward to reading this book. However, the storyline is disjointed with all the movement through time, the quotes from Arctic explorers added nothing and broke the flow of the tale, and the author seems to have taken the easy option of a hanging ending, rather than a clever one. The characters and the story had promise, but the way it has been done is a little too gimmicky for my liking, sorry.

The Ice simply blew me away! Everything read as if written precisely for me - the cover was gorgeous and spot on; the Arctic setting and concerns over preserving nature was timely; the excerpts detailing early expeditions gripped me; the geopolitical chess match a perfect example of corruption; and the story of Sean Cawson, his friend Tom Harding and the inquest offered up some solid of courtroom flair. Genius all the way! It's a book with heart, a deeper moral code and is completely enveloping too.

There's nothing I didn't like about The Ice. With love, betrayal, action, tension and the battle for right and wrong, how could a person not love it?

Absolutely brilliant book about climate change as it's underlying theme.
I loved The Bees, and this book just as much.

I loved 'The Bees', so was anticipating the author's new title with high expectation, It show her versatility as it is completely different- yet still with an environmentally aware theme. In the very near future the artic ice has melted and global business has taken over the new frontier. During a massive calving of an iceberg, a body is released from the ice, the body belong to Tom Harding, environmentalist, and business partner and friend of Sean Cawson. A thriller exploring friendship and power.

The story: In the near future, the polar ice caps are melting, the transpolar shipping route is being heavily utilised and individuals and countries are jostling for power and control. When a cruise ship searching for an increasingly rare glimpse of the elusive polar bears travels into the restricted waters of the Midgard Lodge, they get more than they bargained for when a calving glacier reveals the preserved body of a man.

The Midgard Lodge is a private retreat run by businessman Sean Cawson, and the body discovered is that of his long-time friend, business partner, and ex-Greenpeace activist Tom Harding. The discovery of Tom’s body starts an inquest into the events that led to his death, led by his friends and family, while Sean also faces an internal struggle that is increasingly difficult to contain.

My thoughts: Much of the novel focuses on Sean’s character development. At the beginning of the novel, he is presented as a selfish opportunist taking advantage of the people around him for his own personal and monetary gain. I feel like as we got to know him more we were supposed to see that there was more to his character, but for me this never really happened. I couldn’t connect with him as a character. He wasn’t likeable and I struggled to see his redeeming features. I think as a character though, he was written really well and came across as totally believable.

The environmental message is one that is impossible to escape from. At the end of the book, I wasn’t thinking about the characters or their stories, I was thinking about the trans-polar route, global warming and capitalism – and the future of the world as we know it. There are two conflicting viewpoints set out here – those who can see the damage that is being done to the environment and want to slow it or stop it as best they can, versus those who can see that change is coming no matter what and believe they may as well be at the forefront of progress.

The descriptions of the Arctic from the early polar explorers talking about the hostility of the natural landscape, which precede each chapter, are sharply contrasted against commercialisation and modernity. There’s a real sense that the natural world as we know it is shrinking and dying, to be replaced by luxury hotels and convenient mod-cons.

This conflict is brought to life through Sean and Tom’s personal story. Although I thought this was handled a bit heavy-handedly at some points, it is a valid and valuable debate and it certainly made an impression.

Pacing was a bit of an issue in this book for me. I felt it really took some time to really get going. Until I got to around 50%, I was struggling to find a compelling reason to pick it back up. After this, the story does really pick up the pace, but if I hadn’t received a copy of The Ice for review, it might have taken me a while to get through it. Having finished it though, I’m glad I persevered. It was a really insightful and thought provoking read.

An interesting novel with a message about climate change, corruption and political intrigue. I found it difficult to get into initially but towards the end I found it a bit more fast paced. The little inserts from other publications about the Arctic were interesting but I didn't really think they were all relevant to the story.

The main characters were believable and an interesting juxtaposition of the environmentalist, his ambitious, troubled friend who was encouraged and mentored by the corrupt business man, using them both to his advantage.

Before reading this, I did not have a lot of knowledge of the Arctic but was aware of some of the problems being caused by the warming of the planet. I do not feel that at the end I had much more knowledge and if that was the point of the story, then it has failed.

... reads like a sophomoric soap opera. Very self-conscious and fabricated, very patronising. Not for me, sorry.

Thank you for the opportunity to read this.

This book is mainly set in about 2018 which to my mind was not far enough into the future to be believable re the extreme melting of the Arctic ice cap. The main characters are Sean Cawson and Tom Harding who met as students at Oxford in the 1980s. Sean has come from a modest background and is working as a barman (which incidentally Oxford students are not allowed to do as all work in term-time is against University rules even now) while Tom is part of the Lost Explorers’ Society who consists of privileged members like Tom.

Tom is driven by a desire to protect the environment whereas Sean is lured more by ambition to be admired by his peers and by money. Sean meets Joe Kingsmith who becomes a mentor and financial backer to help Sean claw his way up the ladder to success. Success being an imminent knighthood in the New Year’s Honours List and immense wealth.

While a worthy plot I found it tedious and dull a lot of the time. At the end of each chapter were extracts from other publications relating to polar exploration. They bore no relation to the story and seemed shoehorned in to try and give the story some gravitas.

This was a fascinating story of our systematic destruction of the Artic which really involved me. The descriptions and characters made the whole story come alive and certainly raised my awareness of the problems. The conclusion was a fitting one except for the final pages. There must be a way!

I received a free digital copy from the author/publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review


The Ice is about a wealthy man called Sean Carson who is the CEO of an important business venture in the rapidly melting Arctic. When the body of his best friend is found following an accident four years prior, Sean has to reconnect with the memories of the terrible day and starts learning new secrets about the business he runs, his partners and if Tom’s death was even an accident in the first place.

This book sounded quite exciting and while it’s very well written and put together, it just wasn’t really for me. I didn’t find it terribly engaging or exciting (I mean it might possibly be because Ireland is actually having good weather so I couldn’t connect with a story about the Arctic at the time, I don’t know). I did think Sean’s character is intriguing as he comes across as a womanising, wealthy ass but is actually quite a sweet guy underneath who does try to do the right thing, even if he often failed. I also liked the mystery of Tom’s death and the events surrounding it. I just couldn’t connect, or even properly understand, Sean’s business in the Arctic and all the dealings with investors and partners just didn’t interest me and went over my head.

I wasn't mad about the excerpts of tales from Arctic explorers in the past at the end of each chapter. I knew it was probably to make the Arctic a whole separate character and it did emphasis the danger and the wild appeal of the Arctic but often the stories didn’t connect with the chapter they were appearing at the end of so just ended up a bit confusing and ‘whatever’ for me.

I had loved The Bees, and this book has a really interesting theme. However I felt that it drifted a little bit and I found myself rushing through parts.

I loved The Bees

This is probably better written more stylistic and certainly raises some important issues about climate but for me it didn't fully engage . The were sections I just wanted to skip through .

I do however want to read more of her work as she has potential and good ideas just for this reader this wasn't involving enough

The first quarter of the book dragged for me, I almost gave up but was glad I didn't by the end. I didn't find most of the characters to be fully fleshed out, descriptions of their appearance, clothes etc were brief. It was difficult to distinguish between some of them. The main character is more developed, and I did feel empathetic towards him. The story gets going in the second half of the book, momentum builds, and the final ten percent is incredibly action packed. It's a shame the tension isn't more even.y spread throughout the book. I was initially deterred by the fact that it is set in the future, but needn't have been. I enjoyed the exerts from historic Arctic expeditions.

A book quite simply not for me! Didn't engage me, I couldn't finish it! Sorry to say it but I gave up! HOWEVER this book is well written, good range of language and structured well! It deserves its stars for the writing talent just not to my taste the story!

Thanks to Net Galley & Harper Collins for an ARC of this book. This story didn't really grab me unti about three wuarters of the way through.
Its a story of a strong friendship between Tom & Sean and their shared love of the Artic. Tom wanting to protect it and Sean wanting to make money and a name for himself.
Tom looses his life on their last big expedition and his body does not turn up for 3 years. His family are at last able to bury him but there is still the inquest to get through. It's at the inquest on the last day that Sean decides enough has been covered up and he tells the court all that he knows about the arms deals and how Tom had begun to suspect that all was not above board.
A courageous thing to do - he is left standing in court alone, his mistress has walked off as has his lawyer, but his wife and daughter both whom he thought he had lost are waiting for him.
There will of course be some powerful people who are unhappy about Sean's revelations.

The difficult second book.... Laline Paull's The Bees is one of the most memorable books I've read in recent years. Phenomenal vision to imagine such a world, and superb execution too as that book was propelled along by an active protagonist challenging the established order with verve and vigour. So I was very excited to read what Laline Paull did next... And in The Ice, we can see similar ideas to The Bees, but there is also much that has changed.

Once again, Laline has imagined a new world. Set in the near-future, The Ice sees a world where the polar ice caps have melted, and where climate change has irreversibly changed our planet. And, specifically, it focuses on the friendship between Tom and Sean - and the fatal accident that separated them. For these young men were both obsessed with the Arctic, that was the foundation to their friendship, but one sought to control it, the other to save it. But four years previous to the start of the story, Sean secured ownership to Midgard, the last outpost in the Arctic, but when he invited his friend to visit, Tom was lost, presumably killed, in a freak accident to which only Sean was witness to.

Now, four years later, Sean is in the middle of a heated trade war between powerful parties determined to exploit the now-available shipping routes across the North Pole. But when the dramatic melting of a huge glacier finally reveals Tom's body, an inquest begins that will finally uncover what happened four years ago between these two friends, and starts poking at the shady deals and powerful parties hovering in the background.

It all sounds good, doesn't it? And I was really rooting for this book all the way through. There is certainly a lot here that hooked me: climate change is coming and the power-play for rights and ownership over access across the Arctic has already started. This book isn't so much a warning on what might come to pass, but a forewarning on what is just over the horizon. And Laline has conjured this world beautifully - the passages set in the Arctic are terrific. Fully realised and powerfully evocative. She is immensely talented at creating worlds.

I also loved the way Laline weaves in historic perspectives, imagining Tom and Sean as the last in a now-broken line of Arctic explorers, braving the elements to go where none had been before. Man versus nature is a recurring theme in this book and Laline gets that bang on.

So, why only three stars?

Well, in Sean we have a very passive protagonist, and one who is thoroughly unlikeable. He is as far removed from Flora in The Bees as you can get. There's all the usual tropes - divorced, having left his wife for a thoroughly miserable and ruthless mistress, his estranged daughter hates him, and he spends his time in bars drinking endlessly and courting the eyes of the pretty girls in the bars. And he's addicted to money. Basically, he's a sleaze. Which is fine, but it does mean you are not rooting for him at all throughout this book. And I remain unconvinced he's ever realised into an anti-hero type.that you could somehow empathise with. He's too awful.

And he just doesn't do anything. The first 150 pages is him in endless meetings with the corrupt and the powerful - arms fairs, government officials, power brokers.... We're barely in the Arctic and we just go from one meeting to the next. It's only when the inquest begins around Page 150 that we start getting some momentum, but even then Sean is just a witness to events, not the instigator.

Laline tries to get around this by playing out the inquest by revisiting the events of four years previous as if they were real time. This helps enormously and the middle section of the book is terrific, no doubt the key reason why this book has been getting four and five stars elsewhere. We are in the Arctic and we are in the middle of events. it's exciting, new and there's plenty of tension between Tom and Sean as we see their friendship under immense strain from the politics wrapped up in Midgard, and from people in their private lives.

Had this carried on through to the end, I would have upped my review to a four-star gem. And there s still much here for me to recommend, but it was the last thirty pages that saw me rub this down to three. There's much that's preposterous in the climax to this story. I know what Laline was trying to do.but I'm not convinced the groundwork is there to back up the very dramatic events that drive the finale.

The Ice has the moral corruption of the human race on a small and large scale firmly in its sights. It's the heart of this book and Laline certainly captures them pretty well. I can imagine this book's screenplay rights being snapped up, and I would expect that the screenplay editing and rewrites would take the nuts and bolts of this story, re-sort the scenes into a new order, and allow the characters to get more complexity and depth. And I think that would do wonders as it's all here; I would just love to have rejigged it to allow Sean more nuance to get us to sympathise with him, and to inject the story with a strong narrative drive throughout.

What an amazing novel about the future of the world were global warning has melted the sea ice in the Artic. Two friends of over 30 years Tom Harding and Sean are bonded over their love of the Artic from their days at Oxford, The novel dwells on the recent recovery of Tom's body witnessed by the passengers of a cruise ship seeking a polar bear. In the background is a shady millionaire who became Sean's mentor and various governments who are engaged through Sean's Milgard Lodge eco development. Add into the mix an ex-wife, an estranged daughter , a galmourous girlfriend Martine and the story gallops along through an inquest into Tom's death. The addition of excerpts from various polar explorers, histories of the native Inuits and sagas which add poignancy to the account. Words cannot express how excellent this novel is to read!