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Petrel never tired of watching ice caves. Some of them
were so blue and so beautiful that they made her heart ache....That’s when she
saw him. A boy, laid out on the ice like a dead fish, with a scattering of snow
almost covering his face. A boy, where there should have been nothing but the
memory of winter. A frozen boy.
Not since I read Obernewtyn trapped in a tent in rainy Yamba in 1988, have I been so
entranced by a fantasy novel. From the very first page of Ice Breaker, Book One in the Hidden
Series, Lian Tanner transports us utterly to a crystalline, arctic environment.
We shiver as we read and reach for warming things; including the warm touch of kind
and friendly people. Twelve year old Petrel, the outcast, is a sterling hero
with a strong moral compass. She is indefatigable in the face of an exhausting
sequence of pressing dangers aboard the Oyster, an ancient icebreaker that has
been wandering the seas for three hundred years, remaining loyal to her few
friends and insightful about her many enemies.
When the boy is rescued from a passing
iceberg, the long held secrets of the Oyster begin to reveal themselves. The
boy, christened Fin by Petrel, has to make choices – will he fulfil the deadly
mission assigned to him by the Devouts, or will he join his new friends and the
now-awake Sleeping Captain and embark on a quest that could save the world?
The Big Questions – What does it mean to be
human? Do we dare to care for and connect with others? What will the price of
betrayal be? What is true and worth fighting for? – provide philosophical depth
to a startlingly intelligent novel. But, these layers of politics and
philosophy are skilfully interwoven with rich, complex characterisation and a
dramatic plot that drives forward with relentless momentum. The crisp, spare,
yet poetic prose quite takes our breath away.
Ice
Breaker echoes themes of dystopian fiction with its
anti-technocratic stance, warring factions, petty enmities and ruthless egocentricity;
a canvas against which desperate events are projected as the protagonists struggle
for survival.
The child’s face was beaten silver. His mind held the
knowledge of ten thousand libraries....So far, every moment of his short life
had been spent hiding from the Anti-Machinists.
The age old issues the novel raises are
particularly pertinent in a contemporary Australia where compassion seems thin
on the ground, philistinism, xenophobia and self-interested scepticism rule the
day, and a sense of human decency and care for the planet are at serious risk.
This is a novel I would love to explore
with capable readers from 11 -14; a novel I would love to push gently into
willing hands. It is a novel perfectly suited to the Australian Curriculum:
English, which itself is currently in jeopardy of being dumbed down by
reductionist forces.
These views remain those of the blog
contributor & do not necessarily reflect those of CBCA.
Jenni Connor
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