From the blurb:
One thousand years in the future, the zyme, a thick blanket of luminous green slime, covers the oceans. Glaciers three-miles-high rise over the continents. The old stories say that when the Jemen, godlike beings from the past, realized their efforts to halt global warming had gone terribly wrong, they made a desperate gamble to save life on earth and recreated species that had survived the worst of the earth's Ice Ages.

Sixteen-summers-old Lynx and his best friend Quiller are members of the Sealion People—archaic humans known as Denisovans. They live in a world growing colder, a world filled with monstrous predators that hunt them for food. When they flee to a new land, they meet a strange old man who impossibly seems to be the last of the Jemen. He tells Lynx the only way he can save his world is by sacrificing himself to the last true god, a quantum computer named Quancee.
At first with the description of the people, the tribe, and their lifestyle, I thought I was reading about a prehistoric race, but this book is set a thousand years in the future. The writing style is familiar to me from the People of the Earth series and once I got into the story and started to understand more of what was happening, I was fascinated by the strange creatures and foreign landscape with hints of what the world used to be. I can't wait to see where the story goes next.
I voluntarily read and reviewed an advance copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

The Ice Lion has a rich and in-depth mythology that grabbed me right from the beginning. O’Neal Gear thrusts us into an uncertain and dire future where we, the human race, were not able to stop global warming and instead made things worse, leaving future generations to endure an unending ice age. The Ice Lion is a story of loyalty, duty, and individual and species survival at the end of the world. Please continue reading below to take a stroll through my mind’s reflection on The Ice Lion.

What I really loved about The Ice Lion was the dichotomy that O’Neal Gear created with the post-apocalyptic temporal setting with the prehistoric cultural and environmental settings. This created an intriguing scenario that really shines in the varying mythos of the different groups of survivors, explaining the past and their present. As a reader I was both familiar and unfamiliar with the worldbuilding the O’Neal Gear created, trying to backtrack in my own head to think “well what modern-day person or thing is this character referring to in their own post-apocalyptic worldview?” I truly enjoyed that exercise as a reader and the forethought of the author to create a new archaic view on the present (and hopefully not our future).

The Ice Lion is set up with multiple viewpoints of our main protagonists Lynx and Quiller. I generally enjoy having different narrators as they lend to a more unique and rich discussion of the events they experience. Unfortunately, I did not find that to be the case in The Ice Lion as both narrators were rarely in the same location and it felt as though it was turning into dueling (or even disconnected) survival stories, which were tangentially related and more heavily invested towards one character.

Overall I really did enjoy reading The Ice Lion and I am looking forward to further installments in the series! I felt that there were so many layers (pun intended) to O’Neal Gear’s world-building, mixing both the familiar and unfamiliar. The characters were masterfully created, leading to some serious investment in all the characters and some threats of chastisement of the author in my head if things did not go the way I wanted as a reader. There was enough mystery and unanswered questions to keep me enticed as a reader all the way to the end and beyond with hopes to get a chance to read number two in the Rewilding Report!

Okay so this is such an unique book!
There have been thousands of books written about the future, but this one is special. The world building is so good and unique! A must read for sci-fi fans

This is a cli-sci book about an icy apocalyptic future with primitive people battling each other to survive. ARC from NetGalley.

What a topical book! In the far future, the grand attempt to halt the Earth’s runaway warming has met with equal disaster. The result was a new and 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: dire wolves, helmeted musk oxen, cave lions, and extinct, archaic human species like the Denisovans (distant relatives of Neanderthals) and Homo erectus. As the planet grows even colder, tribes of these hominids vie for territory and food.
Against this background, two teenaged friends, hunter Quiller and visionary Lynx navigate an increasingly hostile terrain. The cold seasons are growing ever longer and the “Rust People” more dangerous. When Lynx goes off on his marriage honeymoon and the camp is attacked by lions, he freezes. As a result, his new bride is killed and he is sentenced to exile and a spiritual journey to confront the mythic giant ice lion. Instead, he encounters an aged shaman who just might be the last of the true humans. Quiller, who has secretly been in love with Lynx, must choose between following him to defend him against the dangers of the wilderness and joining the fight to preserve her tribe.

This book, the first of “The Rewilding Reports” has many strengths. Prose that melts away, leaving the reader immersed in the story; a wealth of sensory detail that bring the world to vivid life; compelling characters and relationships; skillful clues and escalating revelations. The end marks a partial resting place where the drama of this first adventure is resolved but the characters still face ongoing danger and mysteries yet unsolved. Despite the bleakness of this future, the all-too-human denizens move forward with hope, joy in one another, and awesome competence.

DNF @ 30%. Ice Age was one of my favourite movies as a kid and I love weird animals and interesting takes on evolution, so I thought I'd enjoy this one despite cli-fi not being my favourite genre. The premise is admittedly fascinating - so much so in fact that this book feels like all concept and no substance. The characters are pretty flat and their motivations and relationships aren't making any sense to me, and the prose is very basic (the MCs are teens, but the writing style and dialogue make them seem more like children, despite them being married and having significant responsibilities to their clans). I wish I'd loved this one more, but alas.

Classified as cli-fi, this book's premise goes something like this: when the world was about to end, scientists mixed genes of hardy ice-age surviving animals and prehistoric humans to create new species that would be able to brave such a world. We follow two main characters on their journey to find themselves.

What I Didn't Like
Didn't find many scifi elements in a book that claims to be a cli-fi novel.

The protagonists are so unlikeable that it was really hard for me to connect to them or even keep reading about them. It might be just me but I'm so over reading about women running after men who are assholes while treating decent guys like trash!

The first time I read it, I found the description of the setting to be fascinating. However, reading the same thing over and over again got tiring pretty quickly.

What I Did Like
There's an authenticity to many of the things described in the book, such as:
The rise of the level of water in the oceans
The world divides itself into clans and tribes who are all struggling to survive in a harsh world
The natural evolution of superstitions to religion that dictates the lives of the characters in this book
I knew this was going to be the first book in a series going on. However, getting almost next to no information about why the world ended or how the new species were created and by whom didn't make for a satisfying conclusion.

I tried downloading this audiobook multiple times and it would say it was sending it to my Netgalley shelf but it never got there.

Ill be buying the book in the next week or so to read and review that way!

Thank you Netgalley for the opportunity to read this!

A thousand years into the future and earth is frozen. The clan's struggle to survive against the elements and enemies both in human and animal form.

While I liked the plot I stayed for the characters so this review will be mainly about them.

Lynx did not care for him. He never deserved Quiller. She sacrificed so much for him just to get dumped. Lynx seems to only care about her when he wants to be saved. He's ungrateful and selfish.

Quiller is strong and kind I really liked her. Just wish she did not spend so much time mooning over Lynx. It's realistic though. So many of us waste our time wanting who we shouldn't and ignoring those who do deserve our time.


Which brings me to Rabitear I adored his character and spent most of this book wondering why Quiller spent so much time trying to be Lynx’s second choice when she was always Rabitears first.

DNF'd around 30%. The premise is interesting, but I just couldn't get into it. The characters were not likeable, and the writing was too YA for my taste.

The Ice Lion was not at all what I expected it to be when I first picked it up, but it was still a completely fascinating and incredibly unique story that I am eager to read more about with future installments. I didn't really expect to like the characters as much as I did–not because I thought they'd be poorly written, but simply because I was expected to be far more interested in the plot than anything else. Instead, they were are all so unique and had such strong personalities, and I really appreciated that one of the main protagonists had some qualities that I would think are generally more unpopular, and did so in a way that I really loved. I also found the world-building itself incredibly interesting, and although not everything worked for me, I was consistently impressed with how Gear chose to write the story. I also appreciated the fast-paced plot intermixed with some slower moments to really balance out the entire story. Overall, four stars from me!

A thousand years in Earth’s future, thick algae-like zyme coats the oceans, while glaciers three miles thick cover vast swathes of land. Before the ice took over the world, human scientists recreated certain species of Ice Age animals and hominids in the desperate hope that some kind of life would survive on Earth. Lynx and his best friend Quiller are members of the Sealion tribe, Denisovans descended from the recreated hominids of a thousand years earlier. Their world is full of ice and monstrous beasts constantly hunting them with something more than animal intelligence. At sixteen summers old and newly married, Lynx thinks his place in his village is assured, but after a disastrous night, he is forced to undergo a sacred rite that will likely end in his death. Quiller moves to follow Lynx into the unknown in an act of love and devotion. As the two proceed on their journeys to a new land, they come across a strange old man who seems to be the last of the Jemen– the ancient people who made the world as it is now. The man pushes both Lynx and Quiller to their emotional extremes for reasons neither can fathom, but which may change the world as they know it.

There are few American writers as accomplished in such incongruous fields as archaeology and creative writing as Kathleen O’Neal Gear, who has published dozens of novels and won numerous distinctions for her work in preserving the cultural history of the United States over the past few decades. Her fictional works blend these two fields, portraying the ancient peoples of North America as historical and archaeological research understand them, bringing the past to life in a way that few other writers can. In The Ice Lion, Gear imagines a possible future where twenty-first-century technology gene-editing technology, CRISPR, is used to recreate– and possibly blend– species that lived tens of thousands of years ago in order to prevent the total destruction of life on Earth after a last-ditch effort to reverse global warming due to climate change goes wrong and plunges the planet into a new Ice Age.

The story is told from the perspective of two young Denisovans who, understandably, have no knowledge of the science that created the Earth as they know it. The Jemen are remote legends, and the Sealion people have developed stories that explain their world. But they have understandably gotten things wrong because they know nothing about the ancient technology that made them. And so the voices of the Ice Giants are entirely mysterious, as are the fates of the Jemen. The reader can gather certain things from context clues (assuming they have a working knowledge of current scientific trends), but the clues don’t explain everything, and so important questions about this icy world go unanswered- presumably to be addressed in later books.

Perhaps the unanswered questions would be less frustrating if the story slowed down a little. The pacing is quick and tends to take great leaps forward, which leads to confusion as to how far Lynx and Quiller have traveled on their respective travels. That’s not to say that The Ice Lion isn’t thoughtful or introspective; it puts a good deal of emphasis on the characters’ interior journeys and less on the exterior ones, which makes it difficult to place them in space and time.

The most challenging aspect of The Ice Lion are the characters themselves. Lynx and Quiller do not have lovable personalities. They are radically different from modern humans, and their society is unlike anything a Western reader of the twenty-first-century would know, but the essentials– Quiller’s love for Lynx and willingness to care for those weaker than she is, and Lynx’s desire to prove that he is a brave man– are qualities we all share, even if the packaging is different from what we see every day. Lynx and Quiller’s stories make The Ice Lion a worthwhile story, but the unanswered questions make for an ambiguous ending.

----

Thank you to NetGalley and DAW for providing me with a free ebook in exchange for an honest review. This did not affect my opinion.

Having read many books by the author Kathleen O'Neal Gear (co-authored with her husband) in the North America's Forgotten Past series, I was curious and interested to read a book focused on the far future.

The world building had me guessing throughout the book. I cannot say my questions were completely answered, but some do resolve as the book goes on. There is a fantasy feel to the book with the belief system of the Sealion People, which is reminiscent of the Gear’s other series.

While there a few similar aspects between this book and the other series, this is a completely different world. Hints of our modern world now long past pop up. The icy world that now exists seems to have developed with an attempt at fixing the climate change problem in the past and failed. Now tribes are at war with each other, while constantly on watch for the large animals that hunt them, such as bears, lions and wolves. The biggest obstacle though, seems to be keeping warm in this icy world. I love how women are warriors too!

Good book for fans of the Gear’s books, as this book will have the same feel. While generally I don't read series, I do make exceptions and this will be another, as I'm looking forward to the next book.

If you don’t read the blurb (which is an iffy representation of the book, by the way), when you start reading this truly awesome book, you might think this is a story about some prehistoric people. You will read about tribes such as the Sea Lion people, living off the land, struggling against both nature and each other. Then stuff gets thrown in. Like the zyme (a slime that covers the ocean surface). Like the name Hoodwink, which stands out among names like Lynx, Ice Giant, Bluejay, and Mink. And talk of the Jemen, the more advanced beings from that past. There is also a mysterious watcher, observing members of one tribe help another and wondering if he can hope.

It will become obvious that the story takes place far into the future, after man has brought ruin to his environment and caused an ice age. But the tribes don’t know this, because the live only for today and tomorrow.

Lynx is a young member of the Sea Lion tribe. He has been accused of cowardice, because his wedding party, including his wife, was slaughtered by Lions. As punishment, he is abandoned in the wilderness to experience a spirit quest. Survival means he may become a gifted shaman. Otherwise, he faces death. During his quest, Lynx meets Arakie, and old man that Lynx believes to be one of the Jemen. The reader knows there is both more and less to the old man. He is wise, but not all-knowing. He seems to be part archeologist, part biologist, part futurist. He really is quite enigmatic and I really like his place in this story. The travels of Lynx and Arakie will put Lynx in the position of changing the life of an outsider.

Quiller is Lynx’s friend. Ex-lover really. Disappointed when he decided to marry someone else, she is still determined to help him make it back alive. But first she must join a scouting group looking for the Rust people, their tribe’s mortal enemy. In doing so, Quiller will connect with the Rust people in an unforeseen way.

The icy setting with its mountains and ocean, provide a cold backdrop to the warmth of the peoples, who’s lives are going to be inescapably altered when paths cross and the past is excavated.

I loved this book with it’s juxtaposition of primitive people against a technologically advanced past. The people are in for some big changes and I am eager to see where the story goes.

Through NetGalley, the publisher provided a copy of this book so that I could bring you this review.

Legend says that Ice Giants plunged the world into another Ice Age, so in a desperate attempt to preserve life on Earth—the Jemen, a god-like race—resurrected once-extinct prehistoric species that would be able to survive the harsh conditions.

Now an antient human subspecies roams the earth in clans. Among them is 16-year-old Lynx who is sent on a spirit quest by his elder council. However, along his journey, he meets an enigmatic man who holds knowledge of the past along with earth-shattering truths.

The Ice Lion by Kathleen O'Neal Gear is haunting, genre-bending work of eco-fiction that weaves sci-fi with myth.

It’s important to note though that this is the first in a series, and it very much feels like a set up to a larger, over-arching story. We’re teased hints about how Earth got into the state it currently is and the shocking revelations at the end opened up a huge can of worms, so I’m curious to find out the rest of the answers.

The Ice Lion (Rewilding Reports #1)
by Kathleen O'Neal Gear
After Maze Master, Lady you better not be right. I cheered when the Gears first introduced this book at the last People of the Earth days meeting. I have been waiting a long time to see this story. The remarkable aspect is that even after waiting for this for years, I am still excited. The book as a young adult book would be a great thought provoking lesson for students. I can't wait to share it with my students. The idea that climate change is inevitable has been haunting us for years in the news. That we can't fix what we broke is what they like to say. The concept of Ice Lion is when they fixed it, they did too good of a job. An attempt to combat their mistake causes them to fight an unending battle with the glaciation of the Earth. The remarkable story shows how people adapt to the Glacial Ice Ball Earth. The concepts of small groups, hunting and gathers, and oral traditions are all expanded on in this book. As you begin the story it could have been in the future or the very distant Ice age past. You immediately make a connection with Lynx, a young man who does not fit in as a warrior or a hunter, too gentle a spirit for his world. Quiller is the young girl that not only is a warrior, a leader in her own right at the ripe old age of 15. The book allows students to understand you don't have to fit in to be special, and being what everyone else claims is right is not always the best choice. I found the mystery of the adaptation of Ice Ball Earth and the specific characters in this book even more intriguing as you get into the story. It's perfect for younger readers, because the clues were always there, if you just knew what you were looking for. I can't wait for the next book to see where not only the characters land but how the science develops, to either solve the problem of their own creation or just show the tragedy in assuming the wrong solution.

There are books that cost you a night sleep. Simply because you cannot stop reading them. This is such a book.

I benefited greatly from the fact that I had downloaded it on my phone to leave it dormant for a few weeks and thus forgetting the cover or the sales blurp. Because of that I discovered the world of glaciers one page at the time with the characters instead of having been clued in. I would strongly advice the publisher to alter that synopsis.

I started reading and thought at first I was reading a story set in pre-Columbus America with native Americans hunting bison who all had the name of an animal and where 46 is old and 16 is the age to marry. With Ice Giants being snow capped mountains. But then one of the guys was described as having a heavy brow ridge and a sloping forehead and the word Neanderthals flashed in my mind. So even further back in time? But hooo... enemies who sail rusting ships with motors?????? Green slime or something on the oceans? The Ide Giants glaciers? Fast forwarding centuries. . Gods called Jemen.-.G-men? Jemen who sail the sky.

All this forms a mystery for the readers but also for young dreamer Lynx who loses his wife at the beginning of the novel and his best friend Quiller a tall readhead who is as capable as the male hunters. When Lynx is forced to go on a dangerous trip Quiller who has been in love with him for ages follows him to save him. But who is that old man they meet?

After finishing the novel I was wide awake and trying to piece together the pieces of the puzzle.

The worldbuildings done very well and the personal development also.



---SPOILER ALERT -----

I think that modern men in the future became older than we do but the prehistoric recreations just 40 years or so. As Arakie was a seasoned mountaineer who conquered even Everest he was quite equipped for the new Ice Age world that was formed after a disastrous attempt to fight global warming. Others however just gave up or went mad when they lost hope they could reverse the Ice Age. He however thought that recreating prehistoric people and the animals of those days would give mankind a last chance to survive and start over again. Does Quiller have modern genes? Did people have a connection to certain animal before the end of the world and is that now the case with Lynx and the wolf and Arakie and the lion?

PS: When I was writing my review on my blog and went to Amazon for a link to the cover I realised the book I had in mind when I started reading was one of the prehistoric American tales this same author had written.

An Ice Age story of the future

This cli-fi novel depicts a dystopian future where a new Ice Age has hit the Earth. A science-fiction variation of Jean M. Auel’s “Earth’s Children” book series (1980-2011), or Roland Emmerich’s “10,000 BC” feature film (2008), with hints of Terry Brooks’ “The Sword of Shannara” trilogy (1977-1985), or even Guerrilla Games’ “Horizon Zero Dawn” action-RPG video game(2017). It has the perfect amount of science-fiction, mystery, and fantasy that I like to read.

Following the exploits of Lynx and Quiller, tribe members living in a post-apocalyptic Ice Age, this story covers the survival of their clan and others they encounter along the way, as well as the search for answers about the world, from the freezing climate and the Ice Giant formations to the mysterious slime-covered ocean, and the legends of ancient gods/humans called the Jemen.

The two parallel storylines were perfectly woven together to keep the reader’s attention throughout the novel, and I thought the character development was marvelously executed.

I really enjoyed the hints about the ancient civilization (or our modern society) spread throughout the novel, without it being forcibly explained either. There are still a lot of unanswered questions that I hope will get explored in future books in this series!

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the author, the publishers and the NetGalley team for providing me with an Advanced copy. I cherished this opportunity to read it in exchange for an honest review.

The Ice Lion is a dystopian story about climate change in the worst case scenario. Written by an expert in the field of archeology, there is a ring of truth to this fictional story of the struggle to survive in a frozen world. I found it to be a fascinating and terrifying look at what the future might hold for life on Earth.
The story is set in a future a thousand years off. The Earth is now in the grips of an Ice Age. In a last ditch attempt to preserve some higher life on Earth, scientists have recreated humans from the last Ice Age along with the prey and predators that they hunted and where hunted by. Now these early humans struggle to survive in a world that is still growing colder and is extremely hostile.
The Sealion Clan struggles to eke out a living in this world and predators like the Saber-Tooth Tiger and Dire Wolves are not their only enemies. They complete for resources with other tribes of humans. It is a very dangerous time to be alive.
The star of the show here are the characters. The author made characters that I liked. I understood and identified with them, though it took me a bit to like Lynx. The trials they were put through and how both Lynx and Quiller characters grew as the story progressed was done nicely. At first, I was not a fan of Lynx. However, the author was able to build his character and I began to see that there was more to him than what was on the surface. Not an easy thing to do and I appreciate the subtlety that took.
The plot was fast paced and there was lots of action to keep me excited about what was going to happen next. Though there were not any large plot twists to make you gasp, there were a few surprises that worked nicely in keeping the story interesting.
My only grip is with the world building. I wanted more. I felt the story would have worked better if I understood more of the events leading up to the recreation of prehistoric life. There were a few hints but not enough to slack my thirst for more information. Just a bit more additional information woven into Arakie’s story would gone a long way to making the story even better.
Despite that I didn’t get as much world building as I like, this is still a solid start to the series. I have no reservations in recommending it. Just note, this is not your typical Sci-Fi story and thus I feel it is best suited to those readers that like a mix of both the Fantasy and Sci-Fi genres within the same book. In addition, the book is a great pick for readers of Young Adult fiction. I am looking forward to the next installment and hoping I will learn more about Arakie’s past.
I received a free advanced copy from the publisher in exchange for my honest review.

An excellent book in what is becoming a more popular sub-genre of SFF called Cli-Fi. Unofficially started by authors like Kim Stanley Robinson, it deals with dystopian concepts and conditions brought about by the growing threat of climate change. This book wasn't as dry as most Cli-Fi books that I read and Gear really engages the reader with a top-notch story to go along with the science. I would recommend this to anyone who likes movies like The Day After Tomorrow. it will thrill and entertain you as well as give you a thorough education on the environment to boot! Really liked this one and plan on writing an official review on the blog soon.