Eisenwinter

Northland #3

by Stephen Baxter, Claudia Kern (Translator)

Vor vielen Generationen wurde die Mauer erbaut, um das Meer zurückzuhalten. Nordland, ein Land aus fruchtbaren Ebenen und uralten Wäldern, das vor dem Ozean gerettet wurde, ist zur Heimat einer blühenden Zivilisation geworden. Sie basiert auf Handel und Technologie sowie auf einer Tradition, bei der sich alles um die alte Heimat der ersten Baumeister dreht: Etxelur.

Doch nichts kann ewig Bestand haben, nicht einmal die Mauer. Das Wetter verändert sich, es wird kälter, und mit den langen Wintern kommen Hungersnot, Zerstörung und Schrecken. Als ganze Nationen aus ihren Ländern gezwungen werden und sich auf die Suche nach wärmeren Gebieten machen, scheint es, dass nicht einmal Nordland in der Lage sein wird, zu überdauern. Nur eines ist sicher: Das Eis kommt.

Genres: Science Fiction, Alternate History, Fantasy, Fiction, Historical Fiction, Speculative Fiction, Epic

640 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2012

About the author

Stephen Baxter is a trained engineer with degrees from Cambridge (mathematics) and Southampton Universities (doctorate in aeroengineering research). Baxter is the winner of the British Science Fiction Award and the Locus Award, as well as being a nominee for an Arthur C. Clarke Award, most recently for Manifold: Time. His novel Voyage won the Sidewise Award for Best Alternate History Novel of the Year; he also won the John W. Campbell Award and the Philip K. Dick Award for his novel The Time Ships. He is currently working on his next novel, a collaboration with Sir Arthur C. Clarke. Mr. Baxter lives in Prestwood, England.

Reviews

[Christoph · Rating 4 out of 5]

Deutlich besser als der zweite Band
Geschichte leider ohne Ende bzw. nicht fertig (schade)

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Cheryl Gatling]

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 straight-up 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 straight-up fantasy. It is Stephen Baxter’s fantasy of a near-perfect 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 aren’t 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 don’t have a few living in obscene luxury while the masses are enslaved. Northland doesn’t do slaves. In Northland even the common people are literate and secure. Northland has kept their population low, so it doesn’t exceed the carrying capacity of the land. Northland has achieved a complex society while maintaining a hunter-gatherer diet.

And Northland has better living through engineering. In its fabled wall it has elevators, central heating, running water, and the above-mentioned rail travel. They have philosophy, literature, art, religious scriptures (interpreted figuratively), and hard science. Northland values problem solving for the good of the community.

What’s not to love? Northland’s neighbor nations may be jealous, labeling Northlanders arrogant, or manipulative, but if you had to be transported back into the world of the book, wouldn’t 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 near-utopia 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 it’s 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, Rina’s 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 don’t. 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 aren’t victims of a blind, steamrolling Fate. Or we don’t have to be. It’s time to go out and problem-solve, like Northlanders.

[Molly Whoa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I haven’t read a great deal of Alternate History type novels, and when I started this series I didn’t 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 1315. 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 long-remembered history. But the age of Northland’s 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 Baxter’s novels. For all their lack of fanciful poetics and the sometimes stilted dialogue, they are abundant in rich detail and wild imagination. Baxter’s research is astounding and there are innumerable great details that resemble their true historic origins, yet are utterly altered by the 10,000 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, it’s life, so it’s still brutal.) A reminder for anyone trying to read this (or a great deal of Baxter’s other work): don’t get too attached to characters – Baxter is as random and cruel as life itself with the way he deals with his people.

I’m really hoping that the series gets a fourth instalment, because I’m fascinated by this world and really looking forward to seeing how the present might be shaped by such a vastly different past.

(Review first posted here: http://woahmolly.com/2012/11/23/iron-...)

[reherrma · Rating 4 out of 5]

Im 3. Teil von Stephen Baxters Nordland-Trilogie geht die Welt unter, in seinem 13. Jahrhundert kehrt die Eiszeit zurück und es beginnt das große Sterben...
Nordland ist seit Jahrtausende die zivilisierte Welt, deren Handelsrouten bis nach Südamerika, Afrika und China reicht. Der nordländische Wissenschaftler Pyxeas macht sich auf die Reise nach Kathei (China; ziemlich genau die Route, die Marco Polo in unserer Realität unternahm), um dem Geheimnis der kommenden Eiszeit auf die Spur zu kommen.
Parallel trifft es das Nordland, hinter der riesigen Mauer besonders schlimm, es gibt keine Sommer mehr und der Winter naht nicht nur, es kommt mit Macht. Die Zivilisationen der Hethiter und der Karthager brechen zusammen, weil die Klimaveränderungen große Hungersnöte hervorrufen und die Völker in Bewegung setzen, um an Nahrung heranzukommen, so zerstört der Krieg das, was von der Welt noch übrig ist...
Baxter gelingt es ziemlich schonungslos und dramatisch, die Klimaveränderung zu schildern, die von Menschen hervorrgerufen wird (auch hier ist nach Pyxeas Forschungen, der Mensch schuld am Klimawandel, durch die intensive Landwirtschaft etc.pp.).
So ist diese Trilogie nichts anderes als ein Spiegel zu unserer eigenen Realität, der Aufstieg und Untergang der Zivilisation...
Ein düsteres Ende, wie es Baxter schon so viele Male in seinen Werken geschildert hat...

[David Zimny · Rating 2 out of 5]

The third book in a trilogy, and by far the worst book of the three. Many different sets of characters from many different faraway places; it reads more like a set of short stories than a novel. But instead of the short stories written separately, this is short stories interwoven in alternating chapters of a "novel", making for a very confusing read. I would sometimes come across a character and then have to sift through the book 100 pages ago to refresh my memory "OK who is this again?" First we start with a set of characters in a land that today is known as Greenland. There are also characters from a land called Northland which today is Western Europe, there is a setting in the Middle East, one in China, one in the north African city of Carthage, one in a land today known as Mexico, and one in what is today the United States. We have two characters who start in Greenland, travel to Northland, go to the Middle East, then to China, then down to Carthage, then back to Northland. Got that? Book two took place thousands of years after book one and book three takes places thousands of years after book two, so really the only "characters" uniting these books are the lands. Books one and two were far more coherent than this one.

[Quinton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like the previous books in the series I found that the background--the underlying history, culture, and climate--was 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 million-strong 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!

[Aca · Rating 2 out of 5]

❤

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 one-dimentional 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.

❤

[Cameron · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hardest to swallow of the trilogy, historically. People knowing that global warming and cooling was completely anthropogenic in the 1400s? Hogwash.
Characters were interesting.
Watch out for the rape. Not graphic, but it's casual and everywhere.

[Peter Moyes · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting end to the Trilogy. A world encompassing story blending a what if? scenario with climate change knowledge and histroy of the Known.
Northland (Doggerland) scholar needs to prove what he suspects is to come but is anyone going to listen? You may not like "Other" scenarios but it is a science fiction tennant that you cannot escape. Enjoy

[William Walter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Finished out the trilogy, more recognizable historical events than in the previous parts. A more "realistic" portrayal helped the story, although still simplistic--reminiscent of young adult-type tales.

[Renee · Rating 3 out of 5]

just ok . . .

[Stevie Lockridge · Rating 2 out of 5]

it's ok, it just didn't grab my attention as well as the first book of Northland Trilogy

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

Became a bit of a slog but the final quarter of the book became quite interesting. A pang of sadness to finish the trilogy not knowing what became of these people.

[Kerry · Rating 3 out of 5]

I can't really say this is an exciting book that pulls you through by its own enormous energy. It just kind of travels along - much like its characters - here there everywhere.

[Ian · Rating 4 out of 5]

The high standard of the previous two books was maintained in the final book of this trilogy. It was a very good read.

[Megan]

Did not start, didn’t like book two enough to keep this book either.

[Daniel Hamad · Rating 3 out of 5]

This still reads like the middle book in a series.

[June · Rating 3 out of 5]

Conclusion to the Northland trilogy. I am hard on endings. This was mediocre but the characters carried it through.

[Mike F. · Rating 3 out of 5]

While i hadn't read the previous books, i thought It was a really interesting and engaging story, very unique plot. Kind of like an "end of the world" story but in an alternate universe.

[Guido]

Why you might like it: Macro-systems across altered timelines. Rubric match: not yet scored. Uses your engineering/rigor/first-contact/world-building rubric. Tags: alt-history, ideas

[Brittney Tyler · Rating 4 out of 5]

After the slow pace and major editing mistakes that made up the 2nd book in this series, I was slightly worried about picking up this installment. However, I was pleasantly surprised because this book drastically picked up the pace and brought back all the things that I loved about the 1st volume and missed in the 2nd one. This series is about a civilization living in a land called Northland who at the end of the last Ice Age realize that sea levels are rising and that their homeland is at risk of ending up under the previously mentioned rising sea. To combat this, they decide to build a series of dams or walls to protect themselves, and this decision leads to the entire course of the world changing in interesting and complex ways.

My absolute favorite thing about this book and this series in general is learning how the small change of Northland building a dam to hold back the rising ocean changed the course of the world's progress. Empires that, in the normal course of history, would have fallen remained in power, as well as cultures that would never have met or would have later in history, ran into each other and interacted. Also, inventions, technology, and knowledge that should have taken longer to come about were discovered earlier.

However, after finishing this book, I did not like the way it ended because it was kind of a cliffhanger. We complete the series at the very beginning of a new Ice Age that is happening as a result of the actions of the characters in the story. I really want to know how the people of the world in this story would handle the new Ice Age, and also this novel finishes at the end of a war that happens in the last book where we hear that the losers of the war were sent to America. Unfortunately, we never get to find out what happens to the losers of that war after they get to America or what happens when they encounter the people of the Americas. Finally, one of the elders of the region of Northland copies all the knowledge of Northland onto clay tablets and hides them inside the dam within a secret vault. I really want to know whether someone finds that knowledge and uses it or not.

All in all, I really enjoyed this book, but I also wish he would have expanded the series more. The third book kind of left us on a cliffhanger, which is annoying because I really want to know what happens next. Too bad there isn't any more books!

[Clare O'Beara · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had read Bronze Summer and thought that this book could not get much more depressing. Well, it's a close call.
I was interested to see how the alternative history caused by saving Doggerland from the rising sea at the end of the last Ice Age would play out in the final book. This is a long enough book that I was reading it over several evenings, and finally I just decided to finish it one afternoon so I would not keep on being depressed while going to bed.

Bronze Summer gave us a Bronze Age with early iron workings, and the spread of potatoes across Europe. There was constant famine, warfare, plague, betrayal, sexual assault and murder.

In Iron Winter at least we were spared most of the violence against women. All the rest is there though. The people who have not managed to make glass, have yet managed to harness coal and steam to run railways across the continent and the giant Wall. I was sure that glass would be needed for gauges and so on to make steam engines that would not explode.
The setting is around our 1300s in which the Little Ice Age brought years without summer; it killed off the Danish inhabitants settling Greenland, leaving only the hunting Inuit people to subsist. Read Jane Smiley's 'The Greenlanders' for an excellent account. In Iron Winter however the ice, and glaciers, just keep on coming, so that a new Ice Age makes farming life impossible in Eurasia.
I was thinking, oh no, not the Hatti again. I didn't like them in the last book and didn't really want to read more about them.
We see various people in different situations, but few of them are sympathetic enough that we care what happens. Many seemed to be the same characters from the previous book. Names are often awkward and one scholar makes a journey to Cathay, accompanied by a Greenlander and a young man. The young man shows the best example of personal growth - others are just humbled by new uncertain situations and bow to survive. Or don't adapt much, and die.

This story will interest students of geopolitics, although I could not see why the Normans didn't exist and why the Romans didn't beat down Carthage. Vikings were raiding Ireland in the 1000s and settling its major river mouths. Ireland and Normans don't get a mention.

If the author had not chosen to tell such grinding tales and bring his world to an end, he could have been selling us cheerfully inventive alternate histories for many more books. I guess that was his choice, and I hope he chooses to write something more positive next time.

[Jordan Anderson · Rating 2 out of 5]

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 first 2 books in the trilogy weren't perfect (I rated them both 4 out of 5 stars), 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 is 500 pages 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, with 50 pages 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 sci-ti/disaster realm.

[Mark Easter]

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 once-thriving 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 unrest—and 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 civilization—before interminable gloom settles over the land; before the fires of war lay waste to an empire; before the ice comes....

[Kruunch · Rating 3 out of 5]

The third installment in the Stephen Baxter's Northland series sees us in the year 1300 AD of our parallel Earth. The ice continues to advance, bringing impending doom to the Northland and the rest of civilization.

Iron Winter tells the story of the oncoming of an ice age and how it might be dealt with by surviving societies of the time. Included in this book are tales of discovery, war, disaster and hope.

Unfortunately Iron Winter wasn't as interesting to me as the first two books in the series, seemingly more far fetched and not as well thought out. Suppositions take huge leaps over logic.

Finally, this is not a true trilogy as it feels like just one more installment in an ongoing narrative. As such is fails to satisfy.

Once again, reading the Afterword is a must for context. I feel that Stephen Baxter could have easily linked the "precocious" advances in technology (i.e. steam engines, fire-drug, etc ...) with the lack of a Dark Ages and several contiguous long lived societies but failed to do so in his Afterword.

The series is interesting enough to me to keep following any subsequent releases, but this was not my favorite book in the series thus far (although still readable to say the least).

[Gerhard · Rating 4 out of 5]

The concluding volume of the Northland trilogy is a triumph of the meticulous, character-driven, detail-rich world-building 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.

[Lora Hassani · Rating 2 out of 5]

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.

[Bon Skinner · Rating 3 out of 5]

I 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.

[Linda · Rating 3 out of 5]

This novel kept me interested. It follows several character sets in various parts of a world that is about to suffer the next Ice Age. It focuses primarily on Northland, a country that does not support farming. The plot inevitably leads through longer and longer winters with very few aware of the big picture. It did seem a bit repetitive in the middle. Some of the characters portrayed were a bit on the cliche side. In general, it is an interesting take on an alternative history.