What do You think about The Anvil Of Ice (1995)?
While Michael Scott Rohan sure isn't one of the famous names of fantasy, he's also one of my favourites, and this first book of “The Winter of the World” imho a true masterpiece.This series is set in our own world, but during the last Ice Age, on the West Coast of North America, realistically described mixing fact and... fantasy, and clearly thanks to a huge amount of knowledge and research on mythology, paleontology and ecology by the author.But you don't need to be a nerd/scientist type to appreciate this book, as it's also a wonderful adventure and bildungsroman with real, morally ambiguous, characters who change and grow during the book(s).Magic is “real”, and while this book isn't that similar to Tolkien's works, at least superficially as deep down, in their “philosophy” there's more in common, the two authors use magic in a similar, constrained way (and this is one of the reason I like so much both of them), and here magic is appropriately linked to smithcraft (as in many traditional cultures in the “real world”).Beside the naturalistic descriptions and the main characters, another favourite of mine in “The Winter of the World” are the Neanderthals as sort of dwarves (“duergars”) and great magesmiths who live underground to avoid conflict with the invading Homo sapiens.It's a pity Rohan is absolutely unknown here where I live (Italy) as his books have never been translated to our language...
—Finrod
"The Anvil of Ice"This was highly recomended to me by a housemate who was greatly influenced by reading it when he was much younger- and I find it very like the books I read when I was reading fiction of this fantasy-style as well, at that age. A meaty book, it qualifies as one of those 'what if' sorts of 'NOT-history' fiction. It creates, out of our own world's facts and myths, a perfectly plausible world in which for the stories and events to happen, without confusing our senses about what we KNOW to me TRUE and all that.This is the first volume, beginning with a boy with no past and ending with the man he becomes at that pivotal moment when he finally DOES become a man... it is no light reading, though- it challenges the imagination and yet keeps to the human within us all. I found it a lovely mix of magic and myth while still retaining the reality we suppose we all live in. It just offers us another way it might be viewed, might be seen, might have happened.I loved it. I am looking forward to the next one. KUDOS to the author, Michael Scott Rohan, and to my housemate for putting it in my hand and saying 'no really, READ THIS...'. :)
—David
Not too long ago I was asked to provide some recommendations for a reading list for someone. I went to my shelves and started pulling out some classics, some of my favorites, and other just plain important books. Zelazny, Donaldson, Jordan, Sanderson, Rothfuss... I was picking out some stuff with which to provide a pretty good foundation. And then I got to this book. The description of it started with, essentially, "And this is something I've read so many times it's falling apart."Michael Scott Rohan is an author that basically nobody else I know has ever even heard of, but is a name that really should be on the lips of anyone that is interested in original fantasy by an author that clearly cares a great deal about every word that goes on a page. The first time I read Rothfuss I was blown away by the precision and care that was clearly evident throughout his writing. It just wasn't something that I really had found in many other places. Rereading Rohan's books recently, I was struck by just that same feeling. The language is descriptive, painting a picture of a time long before our own.Where so many authors will reach out for creating their own world from the ground up, Rohan has rooted his in an interesting realm of pseudo-historical fiction. Imagining what the world could have been like during an ice age. What if the great glaciers were driven by a malevolent will, and mankind was barely holding on, barely holding back the inevitable crush of cold? It's into this world that Rohan delves, both as he builds his own variant, and as he seeks out the actual anthropological record of mankind, so as to weave it into his story. Where many authors take a very in-your-face approach to magic in their books, Rohan has opted for something somewhat more subtle. Aside from the Powers that guide and shape the world, the magic system he's gone with is one based around metalworking. It's the smith that serves as the keeper of knowledge and arcane arts in his world, and it's the tale of one smith in particular that the series seeks to tell. We watch a peculiar coming of age tale, as the protagonist comes into power and skill, only to end up dealing with the consequences of what it can mean to have both without the knowledge or wisdom to use them appropriately. There are a few things about the book that do occasionally get to me, unfortunately. The way it is written is as if it were merely someone reading about it to the reader (a book about a book about something that happened?), albeit where the source material isn't necessarily complete or always accurate. This style is useful in that it lets Rohan deal with some time warping where he needs to advance the story timeline by leaps and bounds in just a few pages rather than add a couple hundred pages...but it does feel artificial and forced at times.Some of the action sequences are also conveyed at something of a cursory level as compared to the descriptions of the world in which they take place. While great care may be taken with describing the setting, the movements of the figures fighting within it sometimes boil down to "and he had superior strength because....because Smith, so he wins."Despite the above, The Anvil of Ice introduces readers to a unique take on a low-magic fantasy setting that is like very little written before or since. It's one of those hidden gems that exists in the genre; the type of book that nobody seemingly has read, but every student of the genre should not be without.Overall: 8.5/10
—Joshu Fisher
