What do you think?
Rate this book
The Eldísvík Novels #1
Until the Ice Cracks
A Scandinavian, crime thriller with a style that pays homage to classic ‘noir’ detective fiction.
The year is 2068. In Eldísvík city state, on the edge of the Arctic Circle, Inspector Nero Cavallo must hunt down an unidentified rogue agent before the fragile balance between the legitimate and criminal worlds erupts into chaos.
Meanwhile, Bruno Mastriano, a young man hiding his telepathic powers, struggles to escape a gang of militants intent on exploiting his gift for themselves.When a beautiful trainee joins Nero’s homicide team, things begin to unravel.
A gripping read that should appeal to fans of Margaret Atwood, Jo Nesbo, J.G. Ballard and the masterful Raymond Chandler.
The year is 2068. In Eldísvík city state, on the edge of the Arctic Circle, Inspector Nero Cavallo must hunt down an unidentified rogue agent before the fragile balance between the legitimate and criminal worlds erupts into chaos.
Meanwhile, Bruno Mastriano, a young man hiding his telepathic powers, struggles to escape a gang of militants intent on exploiting his gift for themselves.When a beautiful trainee joins Nero’s homicide team, things begin to unravel.
A gripping read that should appeal to fans of Margaret Atwood, Jo Nesbo, J.G. Ballard and the masterful Raymond Chandler.
- GenresMystery
298 pages, Kindle Edition
Published December 1, 2019
148 people are currently reading
74 people want to read
About the author
Jan Turk Petrie
14 books25 followersJan Turk Petrie is an award winning writer who lives in the Cotswolds area of England (UK).
She is the author of twelve novels including:
The fast paced, Nordic thriller series: the Eldísvík Trilogy,
'Running Behind Time' and the three other volumes of her bestselling Cotswolds Time-slip Series
'Too Many Heroes' - a noir thriller set in London England in 1952.
'Towards the Vanishing Point' - a tense, domestic drama mainly set in the 1950s
'The Truth in a Lie' - Jan's first contemporary novel dealing with family dramas and relationships.
''Still Life with a Vengeance' - a contemporary story of a woman whose rock star husband is accused of rape.
Jan's latest novel - 'Falling Apart' a dystopian triller full of twists and intrigue.
A former English teacher with an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Gloucestershire, Jan has also penned numerous, prize-winning short stories.
She is the author of twelve novels including:
The fast paced, Nordic thriller series: the Eldísvík Trilogy,
'Running Behind Time' and the three other volumes of her bestselling Cotswolds Time-slip Series
'Too Many Heroes' - a noir thriller set in London England in 1952.
'Towards the Vanishing Point' - a tense, domestic drama mainly set in the 1950s
'The Truth in a Lie' - Jan's first contemporary novel dealing with family dramas and relationships.
''Still Life with a Vengeance' - a contemporary story of a woman whose rock star husband is accused of rape.
Jan's latest novel - 'Falling Apart' a dystopian triller full of twists and intrigue.
A former English teacher with an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Gloucestershire, Jan has also penned numerous, prize-winning short stories.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
June 8, 2020
Until the Ice Cracks, Volume One of the Eldisvik Novels
By Jan Turk Petrie
Rarely does a book make me as angry as this one. I have read lots of Icelandic (scandinavian noir) books by excellent authors who bring Iceland alive to their readers.
Author Jan Turk Petrie has no wikipedia bio and almost nothing about her knowledge of Iceland on her author page except ties to purchases. Turns out she is British, a former English teacher. Her book should have said that clearly but it simply has a throw-away line that someone helped her with Icelandic references. Her author’s note and acknowledgments are uninformative and teen-age sounding, especially the acknowledgments.
I did not shelf this book as scandinavian noir even though it is marketed as such. First, although it is set in a small town in the Arctic Circle in Iceland in the future (2068), so far there are only two reasons to call it S Scandinavian noir. There are only two aspects (THUS FAR) that let it be recognized as such: the change of amount of daylight from summer to winter is mentioned, along with occasional references the aurora and, second, snow and ice is mentioned—but rarely.
I shelved it as fantasy because the idea is that there are people with extra psychic powers and somehow one of these new kinds of police called “decoys” has come to “intervene” with the character Bruno Mastriano who has psychic powers, called “”telepatico.” The book starts with Bruno and his girlfriend, Krista Sigurthadottir, both in the hospital after a wild ride with her dad’s sports car. Bruno is injured badly but Krista is left by this author in hospital and abandoned by both Bruno and the author.
Meanwhile, we learn that the key police person supposedly in charge is Nero Caballo, who throughout most of the book is a bumbler losing control to his superiors (like Governor Leifsson) and those who work under him, including a beautiful Chinese woman (Chan) working toward her Constable certification.
SO FAR, this fantasy does not interest me. I do not care about the “regular” police characters. I do not care about the Bruno character. Nor do I care about the decoys and the particular kinds of fox vixens they command. I should care about the large murders by one (or two????) small females who carry out these murders in the outer zones, leaving bodies in parts hard to put together and chewed by by the decoy’s vixens and other wild animals. At the end I will list all of the things this author left hanging that are trite dynamics designed, I think, to keep readers wanting to buy the next book in the trilogy.
There are some technologies of the near future but in this book there are lots of malfunctions of these technologies as well as sabotage of them. But not much to care about for me. (I am rereading David Brin’s Uplift trilogy and love the kind of technologies of the future that make the farther future inspiring). Also the technologies are set up in contrast with the TELEPATICO idea that the decoy female is set up (for an unclear reason) to draw together and use to make some kind of social change which is also never clear.
I consider this to be a very “plot driven” book, as if the author thought “what can I put together to draw people into this book. She puts together “decoys” as defined in 3 ways by a set of introductory notes and we learn a bit about them via the character Harris who is a decoy killed off as soon as he is “retired” after being allowed by the decoy organization to work with Nero and his team to learn what these secretive decoys do.
The city itself is set up as a character and that is interesting given the protests going on in the USA in June 2020 about police violence and differential policing depending on which community the police are supposed to serve. Evidently the police and other agencies such as the governor’s office and related agencies in this future city which is divided into “zones” and segments within zones. It is only the middle “Free Zone” that has the privileged people. (Remember again that I would not know that this is a real Icelandic city in the arctic zone except for a few throwaway details.) Later, there are protests but it was another one of those “just barely mentioned” plot details.
The fantasy parts of the book do not interest me. I do not care about the “regular” police characters. I do not care about the Bruno character. Nor do I care about the decoys and the particular kinds of fox vixens they command. I could have cared but they are never dealt with in the kind of detail to make me care.
It is interesting that there are more quotations by characters in Italian than in Icelandic. On page 107, there is a reference that there are things written in Icelandic but in obscure glyphs. Again, just a throwaway detail about Icelandic not returned to. Later we learn more about why Nero uses Italian so much.
On page 116 we learn that perhaps the murders and other things the decoys do may be “officially sanctioned,” but this is never expanded upon except at the end of the book but left mysterious. I was interested in this line because 4 paragraphs later there is a reference to the title. Evidently this line says it is known that one cannot understand who is a friend or an enemy “until the ice cracks.” But so far as I can figure out, that idea of the “ice cracking” is such a far metaphor through the rest of the book that it did not stick with me.
Characters and things that happen to them come and go. After the mysterious woman we are led to believe has committed the group murders has abducted Bruno has come to get him to read her mind, we learn that he has blurted out (p. 122) that she is “Asa Sturludottir,” using the patronymic for a female. She asserts that she is nobody’s daughter. I do not remember if we ever learn why this is important except for the mystery of who she actually is and why we should care.
Later the “Asa” character sets her henchmen to take Bruno to a gay bar where he is told to get with a person that they never make clear to him. Instead he is wooed by a handsome older man but turns out later to be the governor Liefsson’s male partner Marty. (Liefsson has complained earlier about his wife leaving him in the governor’s mansion along, taking their daughters and moving across the country to live with his mother.
Asa’s henchmen complain but Bruno evidently convinces them that he should do this. Why is not explained but remember this is a plot-driven book. Bruno had to be in the governor’s grounds to be involved in an attack evidently by the Asa crew but his story drops away and we go back to police headquarters and some stuff about Nero’s bumbling lack of leadership.
The police men, Governor and his office, and other males in the city government all have the most competitive interactions both in actions and in the annoying inner monologues of their thoughts. Sometimes these inner monologues are set off with italics and sometimes they are in regular print.
There are interactions with the personnel in the morgue, including Chinese doctor Jue Hai. Some of those are ordinary kinds of discussions that take place in most police procedurals. But evidently an important part of the book (and the trilogy to play out) is when Jue joins in discussions of folk religions about foxes in Iceland and also in China. In Iceland, foxes and elves are tied with legends about the “Hidden people.” All of this is mentioned over and over but never explained except some talk about genetic changes. How these changes are done, by whom, and how are never explained.
Almost spoiler: somehow along the way Nero follows up on a tip that the evil woman and her crew are at an abandoned bank. They follow up, find an empty harmless building until, as they are leaving, it blows up on them Nero is in hospital predicted never to walk or be himself again. He is miraculously healing but on pain killers and lots of machines. Surprisingly evil person (I won’t say who) comes in, sets up the monitors to say he is okay but tries to kill him with poison. But DEUS EX MACHINA, there is an earthquake, a night nurse who intervenes, yet that person puts all that poison in Nero’s nurse. And somehow BRUNO shows up and tells Nero that they are both “telepatico.” We never saw any evidence of that with bumbling Nero. Suddenly, we are to care about Nero.
Lawsy mercy, he lives and we have a big FLASHBACK to set up the rest of the trilogy. Many scandinavian noir series have a “big event” to set up the key character so here it comes. We learn that Nero has a “family death” that he blames himself for—and is told by his nurse that he needs to talk about that, to deal with it.
But we get to the end. Here are few of things left hanging, besides whether we care about the characters: the mysterious woman decoy and her vixens are not explained; myth of the vixens and the Hidden People are not explained; how Nero lives after having poison injected into his neck and being kicked vicious twice into the head in which he already has a huge fracture. Oh, yes, and Bruno’s girlfriend from chapter one who we left in hospital after an operation.
I deliberately left it a secret about who shot the poison into Nero’s neck. I think it is tied to the mystery of who the female decoy is but if that it true it is another of those wild “plot twist” things I hate about this book. But mostly I hate that this was supposed to be a book about Iceland. BS, I call BS. This is a book designed to sell more books. But I will give it to the author: she has studied things that successful police procedurals include. And thrown a whole bunch of them in this one.
By Jan Turk Petrie
Rarely does a book make me as angry as this one. I have read lots of Icelandic (scandinavian noir) books by excellent authors who bring Iceland alive to their readers.
Author Jan Turk Petrie has no wikipedia bio and almost nothing about her knowledge of Iceland on her author page except ties to purchases. Turns out she is British, a former English teacher. Her book should have said that clearly but it simply has a throw-away line that someone helped her with Icelandic references. Her author’s note and acknowledgments are uninformative and teen-age sounding, especially the acknowledgments.
I did not shelf this book as scandinavian noir even though it is marketed as such. First, although it is set in a small town in the Arctic Circle in Iceland in the future (2068), so far there are only two reasons to call it S Scandinavian noir. There are only two aspects (THUS FAR) that let it be recognized as such: the change of amount of daylight from summer to winter is mentioned, along with occasional references the aurora and, second, snow and ice is mentioned—but rarely.
I shelved it as fantasy because the idea is that there are people with extra psychic powers and somehow one of these new kinds of police called “decoys” has come to “intervene” with the character Bruno Mastriano who has psychic powers, called “”telepatico.” The book starts with Bruno and his girlfriend, Krista Sigurthadottir, both in the hospital after a wild ride with her dad’s sports car. Bruno is injured badly but Krista is left by this author in hospital and abandoned by both Bruno and the author.
Meanwhile, we learn that the key police person supposedly in charge is Nero Caballo, who throughout most of the book is a bumbler losing control to his superiors (like Governor Leifsson) and those who work under him, including a beautiful Chinese woman (Chan) working toward her Constable certification.
SO FAR, this fantasy does not interest me. I do not care about the “regular” police characters. I do not care about the Bruno character. Nor do I care about the decoys and the particular kinds of fox vixens they command. I should care about the large murders by one (or two????) small females who carry out these murders in the outer zones, leaving bodies in parts hard to put together and chewed by by the decoy’s vixens and other wild animals. At the end I will list all of the things this author left hanging that are trite dynamics designed, I think, to keep readers wanting to buy the next book in the trilogy.
There are some technologies of the near future but in this book there are lots of malfunctions of these technologies as well as sabotage of them. But not much to care about for me. (I am rereading David Brin’s Uplift trilogy and love the kind of technologies of the future that make the farther future inspiring). Also the technologies are set up in contrast with the TELEPATICO idea that the decoy female is set up (for an unclear reason) to draw together and use to make some kind of social change which is also never clear.
I consider this to be a very “plot driven” book, as if the author thought “what can I put together to draw people into this book. She puts together “decoys” as defined in 3 ways by a set of introductory notes and we learn a bit about them via the character Harris who is a decoy killed off as soon as he is “retired” after being allowed by the decoy organization to work with Nero and his team to learn what these secretive decoys do.
The city itself is set up as a character and that is interesting given the protests going on in the USA in June 2020 about police violence and differential policing depending on which community the police are supposed to serve. Evidently the police and other agencies such as the governor’s office and related agencies in this future city which is divided into “zones” and segments within zones. It is only the middle “Free Zone” that has the privileged people. (Remember again that I would not know that this is a real Icelandic city in the arctic zone except for a few throwaway details.) Later, there are protests but it was another one of those “just barely mentioned” plot details.
The fantasy parts of the book do not interest me. I do not care about the “regular” police characters. I do not care about the Bruno character. Nor do I care about the decoys and the particular kinds of fox vixens they command. I could have cared but they are never dealt with in the kind of detail to make me care.
It is interesting that there are more quotations by characters in Italian than in Icelandic. On page 107, there is a reference that there are things written in Icelandic but in obscure glyphs. Again, just a throwaway detail about Icelandic not returned to. Later we learn more about why Nero uses Italian so much.
On page 116 we learn that perhaps the murders and other things the decoys do may be “officially sanctioned,” but this is never expanded upon except at the end of the book but left mysterious. I was interested in this line because 4 paragraphs later there is a reference to the title. Evidently this line says it is known that one cannot understand who is a friend or an enemy “until the ice cracks.” But so far as I can figure out, that idea of the “ice cracking” is such a far metaphor through the rest of the book that it did not stick with me.
Characters and things that happen to them come and go. After the mysterious woman we are led to believe has committed the group murders has abducted Bruno has come to get him to read her mind, we learn that he has blurted out (p. 122) that she is “Asa Sturludottir,” using the patronymic for a female. She asserts that she is nobody’s daughter. I do not remember if we ever learn why this is important except for the mystery of who she actually is and why we should care.
Later the “Asa” character sets her henchmen to take Bruno to a gay bar where he is told to get with a person that they never make clear to him. Instead he is wooed by a handsome older man but turns out later to be the governor Liefsson’s male partner Marty. (Liefsson has complained earlier about his wife leaving him in the governor’s mansion along, taking their daughters and moving across the country to live with his mother.
Asa’s henchmen complain but Bruno evidently convinces them that he should do this. Why is not explained but remember this is a plot-driven book. Bruno had to be in the governor’s grounds to be involved in an attack evidently by the Asa crew but his story drops away and we go back to police headquarters and some stuff about Nero’s bumbling lack of leadership.
The police men, Governor and his office, and other males in the city government all have the most competitive interactions both in actions and in the annoying inner monologues of their thoughts. Sometimes these inner monologues are set off with italics and sometimes they are in regular print.
There are interactions with the personnel in the morgue, including Chinese doctor Jue Hai. Some of those are ordinary kinds of discussions that take place in most police procedurals. But evidently an important part of the book (and the trilogy to play out) is when Jue joins in discussions of folk religions about foxes in Iceland and also in China. In Iceland, foxes and elves are tied with legends about the “Hidden people.” All of this is mentioned over and over but never explained except some talk about genetic changes. How these changes are done, by whom, and how are never explained.
Almost spoiler: somehow along the way Nero follows up on a tip that the evil woman and her crew are at an abandoned bank. They follow up, find an empty harmless building until, as they are leaving, it blows up on them Nero is in hospital predicted never to walk or be himself again. He is miraculously healing but on pain killers and lots of machines. Surprisingly evil person (I won’t say who) comes in, sets up the monitors to say he is okay but tries to kill him with poison. But DEUS EX MACHINA, there is an earthquake, a night nurse who intervenes, yet that person puts all that poison in Nero’s nurse. And somehow BRUNO shows up and tells Nero that they are both “telepatico.” We never saw any evidence of that with bumbling Nero. Suddenly, we are to care about Nero.
Lawsy mercy, he lives and we have a big FLASHBACK to set up the rest of the trilogy. Many scandinavian noir series have a “big event” to set up the key character so here it comes. We learn that Nero has a “family death” that he blames himself for—and is told by his nurse that he needs to talk about that, to deal with it.
But we get to the end. Here are few of things left hanging, besides whether we care about the characters: the mysterious woman decoy and her vixens are not explained; myth of the vixens and the Hidden People are not explained; how Nero lives after having poison injected into his neck and being kicked vicious twice into the head in which he already has a huge fracture. Oh, yes, and Bruno’s girlfriend from chapter one who we left in hospital after an operation.
I deliberately left it a secret about who shot the poison into Nero’s neck. I think it is tied to the mystery of who the female decoy is but if that it true it is another of those wild “plot twist” things I hate about this book. But mostly I hate that this was supposed to be a book about Iceland. BS, I call BS. This is a book designed to sell more books. But I will give it to the author: she has studied things that successful police procedurals include. And thrown a whole bunch of them in this one.
March 31, 2019
Reviewed For Readers' Favorite by Grant Leishman
Until The Ice Cracks brings us something a little different, in a police-style murder, mystery set in the Icelandic town of Eldisvik. Author Jan Turk Petrie takes us forward in time to 2068, where civil society has somewhat broken down and major cities like Eldisvik are sectioned off into different zones, depending on their safety for citizens. The orange, red and double-red zones are definitely not the place to be for sensible, law-abiding citizens. The red zones are patrolled by a mysterious group of special police, known as decoys. These decoys have had their DNA altered somewhat and are in command of special Fox Vixens who regard their human as their alpha. Little is known of the decoys but when one appears to go rogue, Inspector Nero Cavallo and his team must track down and destroy the rogue decoy before panic strikes the Free Zone. Cavallo is secretly a telepath, which gives him a distinct advantage in his detective work. Bruno Mastriano is also a telepath but he has been kidnapped by a ruthless gang determined to utilise his special powers to their advantage. With the Governor under immense pressure to achieve results, Cavallo must move quickly but it seems to Cavallo there is more going on here than just one rogue decoy.
Certainly, Until The Ice Cracks was a change of pace for me, as a reader. The exotic location of Iceland, with its short days and long, cold nights, if nothing else, made the story more interesting than your average futuristic police drama. Author Jan Turk Petrie clearly knows her Nordic setting well and the story is both realistic and believable. The various arcs weaved their way through the story well and the author did a good job of keeping them understandable and relatable. Despite being set forty-odd years into the future, the technology and science of the period was not greatly different from that of today, although definitely more advanced of where we are placed at present. In many ways the formal zones within Eldisvik are reminiscent of that which already exists within some of our inner cities. Clearly there are parts of the city that no law officer wants to patrol and when they are required to enter these zones, they do so fully equipped to handle anything. I found the story satisfying but the ending, which is a cliff-hanger and no doubts leads into the next book, less so. This is a personal choice thing. I know some readers like a cliff-hanger to excite them into their next purchase but personally I do prefer a conclusion, at the very least, to the arcs I have been following and invested in throughout the book. That being said, this is still a good, solid read and yes, I would like to read the next book so I can find out what happened.
Until The Ice Cracks brings us something a little different, in a police-style murder, mystery set in the Icelandic town of Eldisvik. Author Jan Turk Petrie takes us forward in time to 2068, where civil society has somewhat broken down and major cities like Eldisvik are sectioned off into different zones, depending on their safety for citizens. The orange, red and double-red zones are definitely not the place to be for sensible, law-abiding citizens. The red zones are patrolled by a mysterious group of special police, known as decoys. These decoys have had their DNA altered somewhat and are in command of special Fox Vixens who regard their human as their alpha. Little is known of the decoys but when one appears to go rogue, Inspector Nero Cavallo and his team must track down and destroy the rogue decoy before panic strikes the Free Zone. Cavallo is secretly a telepath, which gives him a distinct advantage in his detective work. Bruno Mastriano is also a telepath but he has been kidnapped by a ruthless gang determined to utilise his special powers to their advantage. With the Governor under immense pressure to achieve results, Cavallo must move quickly but it seems to Cavallo there is more going on here than just one rogue decoy.
Certainly, Until The Ice Cracks was a change of pace for me, as a reader. The exotic location of Iceland, with its short days and long, cold nights, if nothing else, made the story more interesting than your average futuristic police drama. Author Jan Turk Petrie clearly knows her Nordic setting well and the story is both realistic and believable. The various arcs weaved their way through the story well and the author did a good job of keeping them understandable and relatable. Despite being set forty-odd years into the future, the technology and science of the period was not greatly different from that of today, although definitely more advanced of where we are placed at present. In many ways the formal zones within Eldisvik are reminiscent of that which already exists within some of our inner cities. Clearly there are parts of the city that no law officer wants to patrol and when they are required to enter these zones, they do so fully equipped to handle anything. I found the story satisfying but the ending, which is a cliff-hanger and no doubts leads into the next book, less so. This is a personal choice thing. I know some readers like a cliff-hanger to excite them into their next purchase but personally I do prefer a conclusion, at the very least, to the arcs I have been following and invested in throughout the book. That being said, this is still a good, solid read and yes, I would like to read the next book so I can find out what happened.
January 5, 2020
I am not easily impressed but Petrie has done the job with “Until the Ice Cracks.”
The book postulates a not-too-distant future where several mutant strains of mankind have emerged. All well and good, but it isn’t that type of story. What it is, is a story of societal breakdown where major cities – we can assume world-wide – have come apart. Authorities have designated specific zones in those cities ranging from the ‘Free Zone’ to the ‘Double Red.’ The latter zones are controlled by gangs and not even the police venture inside, at least not without permission from the gangs that control them.
Certain officers, called ‘decoys,’ are used to help keep those gangs from spreading; now one or more decoys have turned avenging angel.
And that’s all I’m going to tell you. An avenging angel, a relentless cop with a mutation (too much?), and I have already downloaded book two and started to read.
May 22, 2019
I found this a little slow to get into at first, but once it got going I was surprised how fleshed out the world was. It's set in the harsh climate of the Arctic, in (if I remember correctly) Norway. Here, there's two types of supernatural abilities: the ability to read minds, and the ability to take this one step further by controlling legions of animals, specifically foxes.
People who have the latter ability are called decoys and work for the police force. But then there's a decoy on the loose who is committing mass murders, and it's the protagonist's (Nero Cavallo's) job to catch her.
There's a whole host of fascinating characters in this story and complex weaving plot. The world itself feels very dystopian and the writing style reminds me somewhat of Vonnegut with short punctuated scenes and a hell of a lot going on at once.
This is fresh novel work of literature which I'm pleased to have discovered. I'll be looking out for more from this author.
People who have the latter ability are called decoys and work for the police force. But then there's a decoy on the loose who is committing mass murders, and it's the protagonist's (Nero Cavallo's) job to catch her.
There's a whole host of fascinating characters in this story and complex weaving plot. The world itself feels very dystopian and the writing style reminds me somewhat of Vonnegut with short punctuated scenes and a hell of a lot going on at once.
This is fresh novel work of literature which I'm pleased to have discovered. I'll be looking out for more from this author.
October 21, 2018
Great story with a tight plot and some well constructed characters. Although it's set in the not too distant future, the technology described was sufficiently advanced for it to be credible and yet not so advanced it was beyond my comprehension- a nice touch. Jan has some fabulous turns of phrase in otherwise crystal, clear and sharp prose. It's an unusual setting for a novel but somehow this makes it all the more compelling.
I am really looking forward to the next volume.
I am really looking forward to the next volume.
July 2, 2020
Unique detective story set in a future dystopian society
This is a unique crime thriller in the style of a futuristic ‘noir’ detective story unfolding in a dystopian society. It is set in 2068, Eldísvík city state, on the edge of the Arctic Circle, and Inspector Nero Cavallo must hunt down an unidentified rogue agent before the fragile balance between the legitimate and criminal worlds erupts into chaos. The story does take a while to get going as the world and the situation are set out, but once it picks up pace it becomes a page turner. The characters are well drawn and believable for an imagined world, which feature genetically-engineered foxes. I enjoyed the story but was disappointed at the end. I'm sure the story moves on in the next book, but I would have liked some sort of closure for this part of the story.
This is a unique crime thriller in the style of a futuristic ‘noir’ detective story unfolding in a dystopian society. It is set in 2068, Eldísvík city state, on the edge of the Arctic Circle, and Inspector Nero Cavallo must hunt down an unidentified rogue agent before the fragile balance between the legitimate and criminal worlds erupts into chaos. The story does take a while to get going as the world and the situation are set out, but once it picks up pace it becomes a page turner. The characters are well drawn and believable for an imagined world, which feature genetically-engineered foxes. I enjoyed the story but was disappointed at the end. I'm sure the story moves on in the next book, but I would have liked some sort of closure for this part of the story.
June 22, 2019
Set in the future, this murder mystery grips you from the beginning. The cold, harsh Icelandic landscape sets the scene wonderfully and the well constructed characters are interesting and believable.
It has a Blade Runner feel that I really liked and the dytopian tone oozes grit. The writing is punchy and pacey and there's some great lines in there.
I'm looking forward to reading the next one.
It has a Blade Runner feel that I really liked and the dytopian tone oozes grit. The writing is punchy and pacey and there's some great lines in there.
I'm looking forward to reading the next one.
February 20, 2020
Set in a fictitious but completely plausible city-state - think Singapore near the Artic Circle - this book is a great read. This is the first book in a trilogy - a fast paced thriller with a believable set of characters and an exciting premise. Really looking forward to reading the next book in this trilogy.
November 30, 2020
This was a strange plot in that it had no resolution and too many questions were left unanswered. As the book is part of a trilogy, I expect all is resolved by the end. I could not engage with the lightly-drawn characters enough to care about them. Having said that, the book describes an unusual dystopian world with some unique features and some interesting technology.
July 17, 2023
Well written, interesting plot
I'm returning to the 1st of the trilogy to leave a review. The story is very interesting, unique plot, and characters. I've completed the 2nd in the series and looked forward to the 3rd and final segment. What I found was that the 3rd book offered was just a repeat of a portion of the 2nd book. Am hoping to f8nd the actual end of the trilogy.
I'm returning to the 1st of the trilogy to leave a review. The story is very interesting, unique plot, and characters. I've completed the 2nd in the series and looked forward to the 3rd and final segment. What I found was that the 3rd book offered was just a repeat of a portion of the 2nd book. Am hoping to f8nd the actual end of the trilogy.
August 6, 2020
Good read
This book is the first of a trilogy. Set in the future in a distopian city, it is an interesting read with believable characters. I'm looking forward to reading the rest of the series.
This book is the first of a trilogy. Set in the future in a distopian city, it is an interesting read with believable characters. I'm looking forward to reading the rest of the series.
October 4, 2018
This is a futuristic mystery that will suck you in and not let you go. Great action and characters! Definitely recommend it.
June 6, 2019
Good but not great
Somewhat confusing plot but has dramatic ending. Wish the second was ready. I don’t like to be left in suspense when I read a book with no ending.
Somewhat confusing plot but has dramatic ending. Wish the second was ready. I don’t like to be left in suspense when I read a book with no ending.
June 20, 2020
Not for me
I really didn’t ever get into this book. I kept reading till the end and it got marginally better. The futuristic genre just isn’t for me.
I really didn’t ever get into this book. I kept reading till the end and it got marginally better. The futuristic genre just isn’t for me.
November 25, 2020
An interesting blend of dystopian sci-fi and murder mystery, Until the Ice Cracks puts a novel and enjoyable spin on traditional crime writing.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews