Ice Song: Kirsten Imani Kasai

The premise was very intriguing and the book cover well made. The back cover:

Sorykah Minuit is a scholar, an engineer, and the sole woman aboard the ice-drilling submarine in the frozen land of the Sigue. What no one knows is that she is also a Trader: one who can switch genders suddenly, a rare corporeal deviance universally met with fascination and superstition and all too often punished by harassment or death.

Sorykah's infant twins, Leander and Ayeda, have inherited their mother's Trader genes. When a wealthy, reclusive madman known as the Collector abducts the babies to use in his dreadful experiments, Sorykah and her male alter-ego, Soryk, must cross icy wastes and a primeval forest to get them back. Complicating the dangerous journey is the fact that Sorykah and Soryk do not share memories: Each disorienting transformation is like awakening with a jolt from a deep and dreamless sleep.

The world through which the alternating lives of Sorykah and Soryk travel is both familiar and surreal. Environmental degradation and genetic mutation run amok; humans have been distorted into animals and animal bodies cloaak a wild humanity. But it is also a world of unexpected beauty and wonder, where kindness and love endure amid the ruins. Alluring, intense, and gorgeously rendered, Ice Song is a remarkable debut by a fiercely original new writer.

( In general, I like the books I read. I feel guilty for tearing a book apart, and this is not against you personally, Kasai, but really, this book deserves it. Spoiler warning. )

I give this 5/10 on the premise and the trying - some of the writing was truly gorgeous, but it was drowned out in the excessive wordiness, inconsistent characterization, and unevenness of the plot. I wouldn't recommend this to anyone.

Crossposted to bookish