Freeze/Thaw

by Chris Bucholz

The Shade, a set of micro-satellites designed to stop global warming, worked.

A little too well.

The Earth is icing over and no one knows how to shut the Shade off. Every attempt in the last thirty years has failed and humanity is nearly out of options to regain a world that isn’t covered in snow. Gabe Alfil may be the only person alive with enough expertise in quantum computing to solve the problem, but a hiking accident a decade earlier has left him paralyzed. In a world where most people scavenge the wreckage left in the Shade’s shadow to survive, there aren’t many resources for those who can’t go out and take them. But there is a solution to Gabe’s problem, if he’s willing to work with the military. Strapped into an exoskeleton, Gabe will travel with a military patrol to a lost computing facility where the off-switch for the Shade may lay. But a group of eco-terrorists has other plans. Between chases across the frozen landscape, kidnapping attempts, and computer hijacking, Gabe quickly realizes that not everyone wants to save the world. The question is, who can he trust?

Genres: Science Fiction

270 pages, Paperback

Published May 17, 2016

About the author

Chris Bucholz is probably best known for his column at Cracked.com where he regularly shares interesting facts that have been arranged into lists, series, and indices. Mainly lists though. He also periodically gives advice which should never be followed. During the day, he works as a video game writer, and has written for Galactic Civilizations III, Sorcerer King, and the upcoming reboot of Star Control.

Chris is the author of Severance, which is terrific, and Freeze/Thaw, coming out in spring, 2016.

Reviews

[Frank Errington · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review copy

Every now and again I like to divert from my heavy diet of horror. Too much of a good thing and all that. When I read the description for the new novel from Chris Bucholz, I decided it might be a good time to read something outside my favorite genre.

Well, I'm glad I took this little side trip. I enjoyed Freeze/Thaw more than I did Chris' first novel, Severance, the story of a deadly conspiracy about a multi-generational spaceship.

Freeze/Thaw is the tale of a desperate attempt to turn off The Shade "the common name for the array of coin-sized disks floating at Earth-Sun L1 point, where it blocked a significant percentage of the sun's light. It had been placed there by a group of Dutch eco-terrorists almost thirty years earlier in an attempt to limit the effects of global warming. It worked. Though maybe, just possibly, a little too well."

Gabriel Alfil was left a quadriplegic following a hiking accident a number of years ago. Not being able to do much else, he spent his days learning about things that struck his fancy, one of those was quantum computing, which lead to his being one of the few people on Earth with a working knowledge on the subject. Fitted with a computer enhanced exo-skeleton, Gabe is now mobile and sent with a team to a remote lab where a number of quantum computers may hold the answer for disabling The Shade.

Most of Freeze/Thaw is about the journey and and the obstacles to be overcome in getting to their destination. In all, it's a solid story with exceptional character development which, despite it's science fiction themes, I found to be totally believable. It's a tale of double-crosses with a number of excellent twists. Not exactly what I expected, but a completely engaging story nonetheless.

Recommended.

Freeze/Thaw is available for pre-order as a trade paperback from Apex Publishing.

Chris Bucholz is a video game, humor, and third type of writer. His first novel, Severance, was published in November of 2014, and his weekly column on Cracked.com contains a mix of historical curiosities, short fiction, and spectacularly bad advice. He lives in Vancouver, BC, with his wife and son.

[David Hakamaki · Rating 3 out of 5]

Freeze/Thaw was an interesting book that looked at the world that was overcome by a global ice age. The story follows Gabe Alfil, a paraplegic who is the only hope to turn off the Shade. Environmentalists have lofted a grid of reflectors into space that have turned the world into a cold, brutal environment. Nothing the government has done in the past 30 years has worked and existence has crumbled in the northern climates to small pods of civilization eeking out a lifestyle of scavenging and survivalism.

Gabe Alfil is outfitted with a revolutionary body suit that allows him full motion and the ability to walk. He is hooked up with an elite military team that will take him to the heartland of America to find the group responsible for the Shade and to try and shut it down. His travels are documented and encounters show just how difficult life is living with the Shade.

The book is interesting. I enjoyed it, but some parts seemed to drag along for me. Gabe is a bumbling idiot at times, headstrong and naive. At other times, he is Albert Einstein, Sheldon Cooper and McGuyver. He is able to overcome monumental obstacles and devise something that can help him out of a jam with a pair of mittens, toothpicks and an old snowmobile helmet. It is a fast read, but never seemed to grab my attention to the point where I couldn't put the book down. I would give this a 3.5 out of 5 (because Goodreads doesn't allow for half star ratings).

[Idamus · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is boring, and the MC is annoying and boring.

[Ryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a fairly enjoyable read, but I thought the background (ecoterrorists attempt to slow global warming, but accidentally create a new ice age in doing so) was more interesting than the actual main plot of Gabe scavenging through the frozen wasteland of North America. Not a poorly told story, but not the story I was expecting (or wanting) to read.

[Jonathan Baughman · Rating 5 out of 5]

First, let me get this out of the way - I absolutely adore Chris Bucholz's writing. Man is a comic genius, and I've been a fan since I stumbled across his writing on the (inexplicably unblocked) cracked.com in the golden era, where he was doing a bad advice column. I still regularly share the How to Fight 20 Children article, which is, for my money, the single best piece of writing on the internet. He's one of the two most influential writers on how I think about language (the other being Chris Onstead). It took me forever to track down a copy; it looks like the publishers did a limited run and it's rare even on used book sites.

This book is not perfect, but it's very good. Only criticism I really have is that the ending could have been a little slower and more fleshed out - it's not rushed exactly, and it doesn't really end on a cliffhanger, but it's almost begging for a sequel.

Now for the good stuff and plot synopsis:

The book takes place in the not-too-distant future, decades after eco-terrorist released a solar shade that malfunctioned and resulted in a rapid ice age. The United States has conquered Mexico and points south in a great migration, and are battling an insurgency from the Mexicans who have had their land stolen. In the former territories of the United States, now covered in ice and snow, salvage operations for old world tech and materials are conducted in a mostly-lawless frozen wasteland. A little bit Mad Max and a little bit Wasteland, the remnant of the US Army conduct small unit "salvaging" operations, which are just as concerned with private enrichment and the theft of jewelry as they are with securing useful materials for the greater good.

Bucholz has thought deeply about what the effects of the Shade would be, and world-building is a strong suit of the book. It honestly reminds me of World War Z, not in structure or plot, but in how fully realized the world is. Too often authors just think of a single neat concept and don't waste a single neuron thinking on what second or third order consequences of elements of the world would be. The most notable example of this off the top of my head is the treatment of disabled and elderly people - due to extreme resource scarcity, both groups are "humanely" put down for the most part. That's the second order consequence. The third order is that people at the end of their careers hang on long past their effectiveness; the three generals that our protagonist meets early in the book are in their 80s. Just absolutely wonderful world building.

Enter our protagonist, Gabe: he's paralyzed due to a tragic hiking injury - he and a lady friend fell off a cliff, she broke his fall and died, he didn't but was paralyzed - but becomes a bit of a turbo-nerd due to being chronically online with nothing better to do. He's able to escape being put down due to his influential mother, but not the prejudice that comes with being a useless "Eater". Out of boredom, he becomes the world's foremost expert on quantum computers which were extreme bleeding edge tech right before the world collapsed.

With the aid of an online friend (Ernie), Gabe is given a powered exoskeleton/cyborg upgrade, a remnant of pre-Shade tech designed for paralyzed people. This is extremely valuable, and Gabe is given it instead of a paralyzed veteran due to some data manipulation at the hands of Ernie. The idea is that there's a research lab containing quantum computers run by one of the eco-terrorist associates who felt they had gone too far. This Dr. Xu was attempting to turn off the shade, which has resisted all commands to date. It's seen as a pipe dream by other characters, and Gabe is only going because of the inflated salvage value of these quantum computers.

There is an attempt to steal the suit by Gabe's nurse and the Mexican resistance; and he is rushed out of town with the first available group of military scavengers. These are:
Ziggy: the immoral leader, who tries to sell Gabe. A real jerk. He and Mason refer to Gabe as Luggage.
Mason: Ziggy Jr, just an asshole
Mitchell and Jorda: a couple who are mostly neutral to Gabe, but don't seem all that interested in the mission
Kat: the alcoholic cutie Gabe falls for, she becomes his only real friend among the group

They proceed to the facility, stopping along the way a few times for battery swaps. These almost inevitably end up with Gabe (and more importantly) the suit in peril. He first is abandoned at a diner by Mitchell/Jorda after Jorda storms off, offended by something Mitchell said, and Gabe attempts to return to the transport. Gabe installs a software update while en route, which forces a reset of his system and leaves him unable to move. A gang of kids show up and are going to rob him until they're run off by the crew.

The next crisis is being ambushed by Terra-ists, a group that believs that the shade was justified. Gabe uses a satellite map to allow the group to ambush the snowmobiles following them, but is chastised by Ziggy. Almost sounds like Ziggy isn't such a POS until they enter the next city, and Ziggy attempts to sell Gabe without the knowledge of the rest of the team. The deal between two scumbags expectedly falls apart, and they flee after a shootout. Ziggy is shot, but only badly enough to leave him immobile for a week while his leg heals, and Gabe's arm is crushed in an attempt to evade the scumbags.

Gabe and Kat continue to grow closer. They're sitting a watch together when they see a signal light, then they're ambushed. Gabe is chloroformed and kidnapped, but rescued by Kat, but not until after the Terra-ists have blown the ice dam making traversal of the Mississippi possible. They steal the snowmobile, and then crash, and then fall in with a polyamorous group. Kat befriends the one woman who has been rented to the Terra-ists for "services" until the rest of the team reunites with them, being delayed by needing to cross the river. She leaves them alone with a computer for long enough for Gabe to use his cyborg powers to figure out that the Terra-ists have been hunting him specifically all along, from the ambush in Mexico. The one Terra-ist survivor of the ambush shows up, leading to Gabe/Kat taking one of the women hostage to negotiate in order to kill time until they're rescued. Ziggy and company show up, guns are shot, and they proceed onwards.

They finally arrive at the facility, and it's abandoned. Except for blood. It's later revealed that the Terra-ists who had beaten them there were ambushed by cannibals they'd contracted with to supply them. There are no quantum computers, and nothing to do with the shade. Until they find a hidden basement (evil lairs ALWAYS have a hidden basement) with none other than Ernie, Gabe's friend. A betrayal! And some exposition! There are no quantum computers, but the lab is real. The Terra-ists are actually trying to turn off the shade too, but they need the AI in the suit's neural jack to be able to coordinate with it. They felt that Gabe would be easy to manipulate (being a bit of a turbo-nerd and pushover), and invented the quantum computer story as a way to get the suit to them.

As more Terra-ists arrive, Ziggy is told that he and his crew can leave if they just leave Gabe behind. Ziggy uses a virus provided by Ernie to immobilize Gabe, and is then betrayed in turn. The virus gives Ernie the ability to remote-control Gabe, who attempts to pilot him to murder the rest of his friends, starting with Kat. This scene in particular is written very well, with a dream-like sense of inevitability of something awful and no ability to stop it. Gabe realizes that the suit is blind and is using his eyes, so he shuts his eyes until the rest of the crew kills Ernie.

The last bit of the book is wrapping up the frame story, where Gabe had been talking to the paralyzed soldier who was supposed to get the suit. This frame story picks up with chapter 2; the book from that point is what's being relayed to this soldier. Gabe says that the neural jack in the suit enables him to interface with Shade, but it's hard work. He likens it to instead of learning to move his limbs themselves when he first got it, to being aware of and having to move 5 million limbs at once (each individual mirror that comprises the Shade). This is another level of social engineering however - Gabe is there to find out where Ziggy is, since the soldier has been put to work in a data center. The book wraps up with Kat and Gabe going to take revenge on Ziggy.

I really, really liked this book. It's not a hard read, but it's a fun one. Bucholz has a way with words that take serious situations and make them hilarious, all without impacting the severity or peril. It's a shame that there's not more to read by this man; not sure what he's writing these days, but it looks like he stopped writing for Cracked in 2018, no new novels under his name, and even his video game writing doesn't seem to have credits past 2018. Literally one of my favorite writers, and definitely the funniest.

[Sean · Rating 5 out of 5]

Freeze / Thaw is an improvement on Chris Bucholz’s first novel, which already had a lot to offer. It retains his ability to create very distinct and memorable characters within complex worldbuilding, but it also has a tighter plot and eschews juvenile humor a bit more.

(He doesn’t completely avoid the juvenile humor, of course. He is a Cracked writer, after all. But it is far less distracting this time around.)

Much like Snowpiercer and Fallen Angels, the frame of the story is that efforts to combat global warming overcorrected to an ice age. It is different enough from those other two, though, to stand on its own. Unlike those other two, for one, the main characters are looking for a solution to end the ice age that drives the plot forward.

Well worth a read.

[Ansate]

I made it about 1/3 of the way through before giving up. The world is very interesting, and I'd love to see a perspective on it that is not a mediocre white guy.[return][return]Our protagonist is an entitled mediocre white guy. The exact part where I give up is where he is literally talking himself into doing something he knows is stupid. This is annoying habit even if you're not in a post-apocalyptic world with casual killing. It is jarringly idiotic in that world.

[S.B. (Beauty in Ruins) · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a book that hooked me with a great concept, placing the Earth in peril because of a well-meaning attempt to stop global warning - that has backfired on an apocalyptic scale. It had a great hero, a quadriplegic hiker who is turned computer genius during his recovery. While exasperation with Gabe's superhuman perfection detracted somewhat from the ending (he just became too much), it was still an exciting adventure with some great ideas.

[Wade · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this story a lot. After reading Bucholz' other novel (Severance) and not liking it at all, I was a little wary of this one. However, the story grabbed me right away. I loved the premise of living on a frozen earth after a "solar shade" installed to reduce global warming couldn't be turned off. The action moved me along through the story, and the character development was well-done. Each of the characters were layered and seemed to grow/change with the circumstances - some for the better, some for the worse. I would have given it an even better rating if the ending provided more closure. You kind of have to write your own ending. It was almost like one of those super-hero origin stories where the hero is trying to learn his new powers. Usually, they struggle-struggle-struggle and near the end of the book, they finally get control and start to have fun/kick ass/see their purpose, etc. This book kind of ends before the hero gets there and so the ending is a little unfulfilling in that he spends most of the book as a fragile guy (both physically and mentally). I'd recommend this book to those who like post-apocalyptic or adventure stories.

[Claire Luana · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a fast-paced read in a not-too-far-off dystopian setting where the half the world has frozen over as a result of eco-terrorists setting up a sun-shield in space called The Shade. Gabe, our narrator, is a paraplegic who the government gifts with an advanced suit that will enable him to walk and journey up into the frozen United States to try to uncover secrets that could defeat The Shade.

I didn't know what to expect going into this book, and I definitely enjoyed it. Gabe is a great protagonist, sympathetic but not too depressing, and his self-deprecating humor was one of the highlights of the book. The interpersonal dynamics of the team are well developed and the dystopian world-building is great--almost a little too close to home! (I could definitely foresee this type of future).

The plot confused me a bit at times; I thought the story within the story didn't add much and the wrap up was a bit sudden. But overall, the colorful characters and twists and turns kept me turning pages--I read this in one sitting. Nice job Bucholz!

I received an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

[A.F. Grappin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wasn't sure what to expect with this book, but from the start, I was pretty intrigued. The concept of an artifically-created Ice Age was something, and the cyberpunk-like suit our main character is in has its draw. Gabe is irreverent, capable, and limited by his suit's capabilities while strengthened by them, so there's a good balance with him. Overall, it's not a bad book.

I do feel like the pacing was slow, and things seemed kind of repetitive more often than not. It wasn't bad, really, just not as engaging as I would have liked. It did seem to drag on for me, but the ending was good.

[Claudia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Advance copy review. When I started reading this book, it immediately draw me in. Easy to read and a very fascinating story. I wanted to know more about the historic background and of what had happened to the world. A bid more details on the background would have been great. The ending came a bit abrupt and leaves space for the readers imagination. It was a nice short read and I definitely will try his other book.

[Michael Mardel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Freeze/thaw by Bucholz is an entertaining dystopian read set in lots of snow and ice, thanks to the Shade which is covering the sun. The Dutch eco-terrorists were too successful in preventing global warming. Gabe is the narrator and we learn how he gained an exoskeleton after being paralysed. He rubs his team up the wrong way when they set out to find a quantum computer but this changes until he's worth more to others. There's a little romance but on the up and up the characters shine through.

[Binston Birchill · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received this ebook for free from LibraryThing early reviews giveaways.

Really enjoyed this book, especially the inner (and outer) monologue of the main character Gabe. Features a small party travelling through the frozen united states, filled with scavengers, to save the world. What could go wrong?

[RReader · Rating 5 out of 5]

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Fantastic book. Strong story line, really interesting premise, great character development and thoroughly entertaining. I was spellbound the entire time. Felt like I was in the story. I really hope there's a sequel.