Ice (2026) by Jacek Dukaj

 Book Review

Ice (2026)

Jacek Dukaj

  Ice, arrives as a bit of a Polish-language literary sensation, and English language audiences have been waiting for the translation since 2017, when London based published Head of Zeus acquired the rights.  The translation, by Ursula Phillips finally dropped in January and of course I had to purchase this 1200 page alternate history fantasia as soon as I learned it existed.   Ice is hard to describe properly for a number of reasons.  I've seen it described as a cross between science fiction and alternate history and steam-punk lit, but we all know that steampunk isn't a literary thing and alternate history is, in fact, a sub-genre of science fiction.  

  The catalyst is that the object that crashed into the Earth and caused the Tunguska event in June 1908, transformed the landscape in some poorly understood way, causing a novel kind of ice to shoot out from the epicenter and spread across the world.  Presumably as a result of the consequences of this event, there was no World War I and no Russian Revolution, meaning that the alternate history of the book is essentially a world where the 20th century didn't happen in Europe but the industrial revolution of the 19th century did.  The protagonist is a Polish national (Poland is/was part of the Russian Empire), who is set a task by the Czar's secret police:  Locate his long-missing father who is rumored to be an agent for "the ice." 

  They then put him on the trans-Siberian express- a journey which consumes at least half of the 1200 pages of the book, and he is then buffeted by mysterious forces, some who support the ice and some who want it gone forever.  The supporting cast includes real life scientist Nikolai Tesla, here an agent of the Czar sent to defeat the ice.  The train is hundreds of pages of philosophical debates which is surely meant to remind the reader of 19th century Russian author-philosophers, while at other times the tone is decidedly Pynchonian minus the songs and laughs.

  By far the most challenging aspect of Ice is the fact that Polish allows authors to write in a kind of second person singular style where the narrator is the protagonist, but the author is not using personal pronouns.  I've had the same experience reading other Polish authors- most recently Olga Tokarczuk, but here it was particularly hard to follow.   Not hard to follow- hard to appreciate, I guess you could say.