Icebones: Bk.3 (GOLLANCZ S.F.) - Hardcover

Baxter, Stephen

3.65

260 ratings by Goodreads

9780575072107: Icebones: Bk.3 (GOLLANCZ S.F.)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0575072105 ISBN 13: 9780575072107

Publisher: Gollancz, 2001

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ICEBONES takes the story into the far future. Transported as embryos to Mars as part of an effort to revive the species the mammoths were left behind when the Mars colony failed. With mankind gone and relying only on their story cycle for guidance in their battle to survive the mammoths must leave behind their ties to man and inherit their own world.
Baxter brings the story of the mammoths to a heroic conclusion, showing the species in its most dignified light and warning US not to dismiss the lessons other inhabitants of earth can teach us. His mammoths personify the grand sweep of nature; his Mars a stunning piece of world building.

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Review:

Icebones concludes Stephen Baxter's "Mammoth" trilogy about the lives, adventures and rich mythic tradition of mammoths. Silverhair featured a mammoth family surviving in modern times; Longtusk backtracked to the Ice Age; now it's AD 3000 and mammoths roam Mars, the Sky Steppe of their ancient legends...

Icebones, daughter of the first book's Silverhair, wakes from suspended animation high up Mons Olympus, the solar system's greatest volcano. Humans ("the Lost") partly terraformed Mars and seeded it with mammoths, but for their own inscrutable reasons have gone home. Already Icebones's untutored cousins, accustomed to being fed like pets, are beginning to starve.

Our heroine's demanding duty is clear. She must make herself Matriarch of the mammoth group, show them how to forage on this alien steppe, pass on the old teaching legends and Just-So stories of mammothdom, and lead her quarrelsome family on an epic trek across the once again dying world, hoping for sanctuary in the lowest of the lowlands.

The shattered geography of Mars is only part of the challenge. Other species are battling extinction: huge predatory cats and birds, a genetically engineered breed of mammoth, and homages to HG Wells and Frank Herbert in the form of deadly red weed and sandworms. Worst of all, abandoned terraforming tools are still erratically active, triggering upheavals of earth, air, fire and water. And at journey's end, an entirely different kind of problem awaits.

With Icebones, Stephen Baxter brings the mingled history and mythology of mammothkind to a satisfying, touching conclusion. --David Langford

Book Description:

The triumphant conclusion to Stephen Baxter�s MAMMOTH trilogy sees the genetically modified children of Silverhair finally inherit their home. The skysteppe; a partially terraformed Mars.

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