Review: The Cradle of Ice by James Rollins

The Cradle of Ice by James Rollins
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I was provided an audio ARC of this book via Netgalley, thank you to Macmillan Audio for providing me an opportunity to review this book. As always, all opinions expressed in my review are my own. This book was published on February 7, 2023 and is available now in ebook, print, and audio.


After reading The Starless Crown last year, I couldn't wait for the next installment. This was one of my most anticipated books of 2023 and it did not disappoint. While this doesn't end on a what I would consider a cliffhanger, it is very clear that the series is not complete. I'm not sure how many books will be in the series, but I want the next book ASAP. This is a great epic fantasy with some sci-fi elements as well. It is a mix of all of the things I really enjoy about the genre and while it is a bit on the long side, I'm here for ever minute of the journey.


I will say that this book and series has alot going on. If you have trouble keeping track of lots of plot lines and characters, you may not enjoy this book. When I read book 1 I had both the print book and the audiobook going and I found that much easier to keep track of everyone and everything that was going on. This book is long, the audio is just over 26 hours, so if you can't keep track of what is going on it makes things really difficult and hard to stay invested in the story and characters. This time I only had the audio and it was a little harder to keep track of everything. After a few chapters, I was able to settle in and remember who everyone was and stay invested in the story. Speaking of the audiobook the narrator, Nicola Barber was really enjoyable. She did a good job giving a voice to the many characters in the book so you knew who was present in each chapter and who was speaking during dialogue.


As I mentioned this is a tad on the long side, there are times when I felt like the pace and the plot dragged a bit. I find this often occurs in epic fantasy/sci-fi when there are so many plotlines and characters and the author often switches between them from chapter to chapter. You will just start to get invested in one plotline, then you will jump to what is going on somewhere else. The transitions can be a bit jarring and the reader has to remember what was going on a few chapters ago with that part of the story. This also contains many of the tropes that you tend to find in epic fantasy novels and is not devoid of action. This has all of the things I love about a long fantasy/sci-fi novel to keep me interested until the end, it has political intrigue, fight scenes, cool science elements, an interesting magic system, and interesting characters.


Overall, I'm loving this series and I can't wait to find out what happens next.
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