Snowfall

The ice age returneth! Compelling, interesting, I enjoyed it, like, you know, the Postman, or Waterworld. Too much violence and death for me to want to continue with the trilogy, though I suspect the next book might be better, as it looks more magically inclined. It reminds of Annie Dillard's The Living, about the early pioneer days of Washington state. I hate that book. This one was marginally better because I like post apocalyptic settings, and at least one character does live throughout the entire book. There, I spoiled it for you.

While reading it, I liked it but also found myself quibbling with the ecology of the Trappers' world. After I finished it, I found that I kept thinking about the different societies he creates in his post-apocalyptic world. Much of the book takes place in the first one, the Trappers, which was the least interesting to me. I should get the sequel to learn more about the others. I really enjoy the main narrator, Doctor Catania Olsen. She's tough, and wise.

From Publishers Weekly:
Suspense novelist Smith (Reprisal) delivers a dark, creepy tale of human survival set several hundred years after an apocalypse caused by a change in Jupiter's orbit. Almost a sci-fi yarn without the gadgets and gizmos, Smith's thriller focuses on groups of people kicked backwards down the stairs of knowledge and discovery, trying to maintain a society in the face of starvation and invasion. North America is divided geographically by an ice wall a mile high that runs east to west, and culturally by competing clans, fiefdoms and kingdoms that trade and war with each other constantly. The Trappers are a fur-clad band of hunters who live in the frozen wasteland of the Colorado mountains. Their knowledge and language show more come from stories told by elders and from a few old books salvaged after the apocalypse generations before. When invaders from the north penetrate the ice wall, the Trappers are attacked and displaced from their territory. Under the leadership of a renegade named Jack Monroe and a doctor, Catania Olsen, the Trappers flee south toward the unknown lands of the Warm-time people. Through harsh and unfamiliar terrain, the desperate Trappers journey to find a sanctuary where they may live in peace, but they meet only death and brutality at every step. Amid the blood and gore of barbaric battles, costly encounters with more advanced societies and bitter character conflicts, Smith reads the palm of the future and finds that it looks none too bright.

From Library Journal:
Since the catastrophe that collapsed civilization and caused a new Ice Age, the Trappers have inhabited a snowbound world for generations. When an invading tribe slaughters most of them, Jack Monroe, a former outcast, and Catania Olsen, a self-taught doctor, form an unlikely partnership to take the survivors to the warmer southern lands. This latest novel by Smith (Reprisal) explores the resilience of the human spirit in a world where book learning is almost nonexistent and survival is the order of the day. Fans of survival fiction and sf adventure will enjoy this tale of courage and persistence. For most sf and general fiction collections. show less