SPSFC Book Review - Icebreaker by Steven William Hannah
Icebreaker was a deliciously atmospheric cosmic horror sci-fi blend that had me yelling “why aren’t studios looking at indie books to adapt!”.
Immediately the reader is dropped into the suspense when we meet Bear. A young man of science called to the house of a desperate father wanting to know if there is any way to save his dying son. Bear asks a few questions, before donning sensory blockers, telling Simon (the father) if he doesn’t come out, to set the house on fire and leave. Should the worst happen Simon is told to alert the Forestry authority once he is clear of the building and to take himself to another underground bunker. Bunkers which are commonplace since the cataclysm tore through the world almost a century before. The young man in the bunker has experienced the Phenomenon and he is sick, sicker than most get to at this point, but there is no saving him, the boy will die, and for his sake, the sooner the better.
Someone is trying to summon the Phenomenon, breaking into towns, and killing those that could warn them of its arrival. Inside their walls and their towns, they are safe from exposure to the, but Bear will have to travel outside of them, if he has any chance of saving the next town from the devastating affects of Gaia’s messenger, to do it, he’ll need a crew, and the Icebreaker.
Gaia calls, and she wants you to see hell. Open your eyes, open your ears, and see if you have what it takes to survive.
This is the type of book that gets me excited as a reader, the unique blend of genres created something truly special and had me on the edge of my seat the entire way through. This author has chops! The writing was tight, action heavy, character driven and suspenseful. I cannot count the number of times Icebreaker gave me goosebumps.
The prose and pacing were the standouts for me here, the author has chosen their words carefully and from chapter one the reader is completely sucked into the mystery of what the hell is happening in this world. It’s creepy, but you cannot help but needing to know more at every turn of the page. The chapters start of short and snappy, building as the book progresses which works to also build the suspension of the story itself. When the chapters get longer towards the middle and end of the book, I didn’t want them to end, but I was also impatient to see what fresh hell our crew were going to go through next. I also appreciated that the horror elements and sequences never felt repetitive, we learnt about the phenomenon relatively slowly but in a way that made it all the more skin crawly each and every time it was discussed. Icebreaker was also the perfect length for this story to unfold allowing it to hold suspense and build in such a way the reader is desperately going to be wanting more. These 281 pages could easily be adapted into a movie length feature to capture all of the subtle details hidden inside.
As far as story elements go, I really can’t fault anything from my own reading tastes, but the worldbuilding was excellent for such a short novel. The world was riddled with the effects of the cataclysm and like the rest of the story we got this in small snippets which continually built over time. We were privy to some of the older technologies that were used and being utilised, how people survived and travelled between towns if they could afford the passage, what they needed to rely on to live in the built-up towns and the list goes on. The world was so carefully crafted, that any question the reader might possibly come up with, would be answered along the way and we were left wanting for nothing. Doing this while not compromising on character work or plot elements was .. well … phenomenal.
Icebreaker has certainly put Steven William Hannah on the map for me to the point I am struggling not to drop everything and binge the rest of this series. I cannot wait to see what happens next!
Needless to say, Icebreaker is through to the next round of SPSFC 3.
