found that the scale and pace of the climate change is at odds with the smaller stories of the individuals and even larger communities.
Something that occurs over long time spans and huge spaces is measured against smaller lives and dramas and as a result the narrative feels mismatched as it jumps from huge to tiny and back again.
Throwing in technology like steam engines and gun poweder also feels like a nod to steam punk rather than a realistic alternative history, I did read it through to the end and the second half grabbed me more than the first so it wasn't without its enjoyable moments.
They were just few and far between,
Yes, I know this is a third book in the series, but I got it for my birthday and didn't really want to read two books just to get to this one.
This is a detailed and ambitious story, I can tell there's a lot of effort put into it, but it still felt tasteless to me,
I think the main problem is that there are too many characters, There wasn't enough time for all of them to shine, so many of them seem onedimentional and unnessesary, This saddens me since there are a few I really liked and I know others had the potential to be as likeable for example, Rina was a great and tragic character.
All in all, for me this was a pretty basic book, nothing special, There are some entertaining and clever scenes and pieces of dialogue, but that's about it, I expected more.
This still reads like the middle book in a series, Many generations ago the Wall was first built to hold back the sea, Northland, a country of fertile plains and ancient forests rescued from the ocean, has become a thriving civilisation based on trade, technology and tradition, centred on the ancient home of the first builders, Etxelur.
The whole of Europe, spanned by the Northlanders' steam caravan lines, has been changed in ways that could never have been predicted, But nothing can last forever, not even the Wall, The weather is changing, growing colder, and in the wake of the long winters come famine, destruction and terror, And as whole nations are forced out of their lands and head for warmer climes, it seems that even Northland may not be able to endure.
But there is one man, an elderly scholar, who believes he can calculate why the world is cooling, and perhaps even salvage some scraps of the great civilisation of Etxelur.
As he embarks on his grand quest across the world, as nations struggle for survival and the fires of war burn in the gloom, only one thing is certain.
The Ice is coming.
Praised as "not only a gifted storyteller but also a master of speculative fiction" Library Journal, bestselling author Stephen Baxter brings his epic Northland trilogy to a close as a oncethriving civilization faces winter without end.
Many generations ago, the Wall was built to hold back the sea, A simple dam, it grew into a vast linear city, home to scholars, builders, and merchants, Northland's prosperity survived wars and unrestand brought the whole of Europe together,
But now darkness is falling, Days grow shorter, temperatures colder, and in the wake of long winters come famine, destruction, and terror, As a mass exodus to warmer climes threatens to fracture Northland, one man believes he can outwit the cold, and even salvage some scraps of the great civilizationbefore interminable gloom settles over the land before the fires of war lay waste to an empire before the ice comes.
The concluding volume of the Northland trilogy is a triumph of the meticulous, characterdriven, detailrich worldbuilding that Stephen Baxter has perfected in his 'future history' sequences.
Despite the grim subject matter the advent of a new Ice Age that destroys a nascent civilisation this is a joyous, albeit violent although not nearly as dystopian as the thoroughly distasteful Bronze Summer tale of human triumph and ingenuity in the face of immense adversity.
. . the ending is paradoxically uplifting and heartbreakingly bleak, Baxter has immense insight into, and love for, his diverse band of characters, but does not balk at wielding the hand of fate, Hugely enjoyable, meticulously researched and unerringly paced, this is one of Baxter's finest concluding volumes ever which has generated some widely divergent reviews, I regard him as simply one of the best practitioners of speculative fiction at work today, and one of my favourite writers of any genre.
Like the previous books in the series I found that the backgroundthe underlying history, culture, and climatewas far more interesting than the story itself.
Frankly, the majority of what is going on in these books is a bit over fantastical, This book was no different in that respect, where everyone just immediately perished except for two rival millionstrong masses that threw themselves a one another dramatically.
If you look past that and focus on the climate, the attention given to languages, the attention given to developing various cultures, . . Well then the book is wonderful, so I'll rate it as such,
If you weren't looking for that kind of a read then you wouldn't've made it through the first two books in the first place so I guess this one is definitely for you! Baxter's final work in this allohistorical trilogy combines his usual strengths: human adaptation as a quality imbued by natural selection and a warning that we remain in an interglacial period.
The climate apocalypse visited upon the early modern society described provides the kernel for how societies can retain knowledge even in deep time, We must be motivated by wider horizons of survival and renewal, You know that feeling you get, anticipating Christmas morning, expecting a certain gift, pretty much sure that you're gonna get what you ask for, only to be severely disappointed when you finally get to unwrap that present and discover it isn't what you asked for Well, "Iron Winter" is kind of like that.
I've been an on again/off again fan of Baxter for years, I flew through "Moonseed" and "Titan" when I was still in high school, I couldn't get enough of the "Flood" and "Ark" series and wish Baxter would write at least one more novel in that universe, and then, even though I'm not one to really like alternate history kind of books, I found myself actually enjoying the Northland Trilogy.
It was different, and way outside my typical genres of reading material, but just as he had done before Baxter roped me in with a compelling saga, full of interesting characters and settings and an original series of speculative fiction.
The firstbooks in the trilogy weren't perfect I rated them bothout ofstars, yet they were fun and I definitely felt like I had made a good decision in giving something new a try.
That's probably why I hated "Iron Winter" so much, While Both "Stone Spring" and "Bronze Summer" were exciting and interesting, "Winter" was just flat out boring! Gone are the battle scenes, Gone are the good stories, The characters that were so compelling and fun are absent, Instead, what you get ispages of people you don't care about, wondering around in a cold, blighted wasteland, talking and boring the hell out of you.
They never really go anywhere well, they travel, but it's a slow, plodding trek that makes the hours crawl along and they never really solve any of their problems.
It got the point where, withpages left,ball I wanted to do was get to the end of this book, so I could go on to something new.
Going back to my opening paragraph, . . I honestly was excited about this book, I thought there would be closure here, That Baxter would come roaring to the finish line and complete his trilogy in style, Obviously, he didn't. Maybe it's just me, but the conclusions to the last few trilogies have been severely lacking, First there was "Mockingjay" didn't like it, Then there was Follett's "Edge of Eternity", And now there's this. Am I expecting too much out of authors these days Or are they just tired of their creations so they hurry to finish Either way, I was less than thrilled with the ending to the Northland trilogy.
Maybe Baxter would do well to stay in the sciti/disaster realm, I havent read a great deal of Alternate History type novels, and when I started this series I didnt realise that it would evolve into this genre.
What started with one woman trying to save her home from the rising sea in Stone Age Doggerland Northland or Etxelur in the novels the now drowned strip of land bridging England and France the series has taken us on a journey through a very different past.
This latest novel takes place in, The wall, an epic and now ancient construction keeping the sea from consuming Northland, still houses the people of Etxelur, their advanced society and their longremembered history.
But the age of Northlands position as the navel of the world is about to come to an end with the coming of the ice a global cooling that is set to change the course of history again.
I really admire the work that goes into Baxters novels, For all their lack of fanciful poetics and the sometimes stilted dialogue, they are abundant in rich detail and wild imagination, Baxters research is astounding and there are innumerable great details that resemble their true historic origins, yet are utterly altered by the,years of different history.
The Christian religion, the advent of the steam engine and interactions with the Americas are all wickedly coloured by the influence of fictional Northland.
Thankfully the brutality that marked the previous novel, Bronze Summer, is less vivid and awful in the third book though, of course, its life, so its still brutal.
A reminder for anyone trying to read this or a great deal of Baxters other work: dont get too attached to characters Baxter is as random and cruel as life itself with the way he deals with his people.
Im really hoping that the series gets a fourth instalment, because Im fascinated by this world and really looking forward to seeing how the present might be shaped by such a vastly different past.
first posted here: sitelink comiron Did not start, didnt like book two enough to keep this book either, I LOVED this trilogy. It has its faults though, the major one being that the books are so epic in scope that it's hard to connect to the characters he chooses to focus on.
I know the Northland part of that world is over, . . but I'd love to see more books set herewhat happens in the Land of the Jaguar after all those nestspills arrive This is the final book in the Northland saga.
The glaciers have returned, and the Northlanders world is being gripped by ice, Mass migration bring forth war between nations, and plague kills those that the cold does not get,
Rina and her children travel from Northland to warmer climes, and she finds there that the status she enjoyed is nothing no, and she works as a simple servant, her sone in the army, and her daughter offering care to the plague victims.
Pyxaes, an uncle, is one of the sharpest minds of his generation, and he understands the reason why the ice has returned, and travels to the Khan of the Steppes to meet with other scholars to compare theories.
He returns with a secret that can bring devastation, but also peace to the warring nations,
This is
the most dramatic book in the series, and Baxter manages to convey the pain and suffering of once great nations as they battle over diminishing food sources.
He has used advances in technology to give then steam power, and other details like the Roman empire still having some influence,
The thing that annoyed me slightly is the gaps between each of the previous books and this one, To me a sequence should have a link I know that the wall is the common thing, but it would have been nice to know that people were linked as well.
This trilogy was not what I expected, and I am usually not a big fan of alternate history, I was very impressed by the theories behind the whole thing, It was very imaginative, the Wall and Northland, In each book the characters were well developed, There was no big climax to the trilogy, and I didn't expect one, It was well done and left me thinking it was almost believable, Altogether, worth reading all three books, Finally finished this book! This the third of the series, Even though this book is part of a trilogy, I had a hard time getting into it and getting through it, The characters and landscape had little to do with the previous two books and went another direction, It was a slow trek through uneventful battles and conflicts, endless journeys and tribulations without character evolution, Culmination of specific events seemed to have been abbreviated and resolved "off set, " The reader jumps from a supposedly epic battle scene into the next chapter where the reader learns everything already occurred without witnessing the events.
I certainly preferred the first two books to the third, In Stone Spring, Stephen Baxter begins with a simple premise: suppose the people of Doggerland had built a wall to keep out the rising sea level.
In Bronze Summer he supposes a few other things: suppose Europe and the Middle East had gotten potatoes a few centuries ahead of schedule.
Suppose the secret of making hard iron weapons had been developed ahead of schedule, Suppose the peoples of the West had had regular contact with the peoples of the Americas, Suppose concrete had been developed ahead of schedule, In Iron Winter the supposing continues, Suppose the Hittites had rebuilt Troy and moved their capital city there, Suppose Jesus had not been crucified, but lived a long life and died a peaceful death, Suppose the steam engine and the railroad had been developed ahead of schedule,
With each supposition, the story gets farther and farther from what actually happened, so that by the third book it is less alternative history, and more straightup fantasy.
The names of some of the places and some of the players are the same the Scand, the Rus, the Franks, the Germans, but their world becomes more and more unrecognizable, almost completely invented.
And in a way this series of books has always been straightup fantasy, It is Stephen Baxters fantasy of a nearperfect society, which is what Northland is, Northland is stable. Its cultural institutions have helped it endure for thousands of years, without the cult of personality or thirst for power that has caused the rise and fall of empires elsewhere.
Its leaders, mostly female, are selected for their ability, Northland is prosperous, engaging in trade with other nations the world over, Northland is peaceable. They arent afraid to fight if they must, to defend themselves, but they prefer diplomacy, strengthening bonds with other nations through the annual Giving ceremonies.
Northland has relative freedom and equality, Some people are richer than others, but in Northland you dont have a few living in obscene luxury while the masses are enslaved, Northland doesnt do slaves. In Northland even the common people are literate and secure, Northland has kept their population low, so it doesnt exceed the carrying capacity of the land, Northland has achieved a complex society while maintaining a huntergatherer diet,
And Northland has better living through engineering, In its fabled wall it has elevators, central heating, running water, and the abovementioned rail travel, They have philosophy, literature, art, religious scriptures interpreted figuratively, and hard science, Northland values problem solving for the good of the community,
Whats not to love Northlands neighbor nations may be jealous, labeling Northlanders arrogant, or manipulative, but if you had to be transported back into the world of the book, wouldnt you rather be a Northlander than live in any other kingdom If I had been designing my own ideal society, I probably would have done some things differently, but just the fact that this is a nearutopia tugs at my heart in the way Star Trek tugged at my heart when I used to watch Star Trek.
Somehow the United Federation of Planets had solved poverty, eliminated racial prejudice, and made peace even with the Klingons, Today, when almost every novel of the future is dystopian, hope is a sweet tonic, Bring it on.
But the story, An ice age is coming, and its coming fast, Around the globe, harvests are failing, Even the Northland fishing catch is declining, as fish head for warmer waters, The Northlanders hole up inside their wall, but the ice and snow cause their famous engineering works to fail,
Elsewhere, the Hatti, now inhabiting a rebuilt old Troy, decide to move their entire population south into Carthage, Carthage has something to say about this, Rina, one of the Annids of Northland, has brought her two teenage children to Carthage, thinking they will live there in safety, She discovers they must grovel and become servants to survive, and they find themselves on the front lines of a war,
Meanwhile, Rinas uncle Pyxeas has traveled to China called Daidu in the book to learn from a fellow scientist the secrets of carbon dioxide called fixed air in the book.
In Pyxeas, Baxter has created one of the most interesting characters in the series, He has a brilliant mind, but no social skills, so he can be a source of occasional comic relief, His flights of enthusiasm are so far removed from the concerns of ordinary people, that they risk dismissing him as a foolish old man.
They should not. And like a comic book superhero, Pyxeas has a sidekick in Avatak, the devoted boy from Coldland,
In previous books of the series, there was violence that made me question if I wanted to continue reading, There is some of that here, particularly when the Hatti begin their great migration by the wholesale slaughter of anyone not strong enough to walk to Carthage.
But now that I have persevered to the end, I find I hate to close the door on the world of Northland,
It will not be lost on anyone that these books deal with climate change, and that we are also facing climate change in real life.
The Northlanders tried to be innovative and practical in the face of climate change, It is by no means clear that we will do the same, But if there is a lesson of the books it is that human choices matter in how human societies thrive or dont, In Stone Spring, Ana made the choice to build a wall, If she had made a different choice, the entire story would have been different, We arent victims of a blind, steamrolling Fate, Or we dont have to be, Its time to go out and problemsolve, like Northlanders,
.