A common complaint from those who don’t much like Broken Angels is that there is too much description about Alaska—especially the weather.

Elmore Leonard has a much-quoted essay on his rules for good writing. Which can be summed in one meta-rule: No hooptedoodle. Or, translated: Don’t write what readers don’t want to read.

This includes weather. Really, who cares?

If you are traveling through (this if for the folks who don’t live in farm country) farming country—serious farming country like Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska—you quickly notice that regardless of what war or epic disaster is erupting elsewhere in the world, the local news always leads with the weather report.

In some places, lives hinge on the weather.

In Alaska, weather drives your life. Even if you live in a centrally-heated tract house with a mailbox at the foot of the driveway—Alaska weather shapes your day, it shapes your life, and more than any other single circumstance, it’ll run you out of the state.

In Broken Angels, Alaska is a character. Her landscape stuns you with awe; her silences scour your soul; her ice and snow and cold grip you like talons; and her utter indifference to your very survival fills you with lonely terror.

Each character in Broken Angels—Kris, Ben, Evie, Justin, Barret, Alvilde—is forced, by her very dominance, to relate to Alaska. She cannot be ignored. Each character engages her in their own way. And it is that embrace that determines if they live or die.