This one was such a pleasant surprise! I’d heard it talked up on a webinar, but I am highly susceptible to promotional excitement (and highly aware of this), so when I went back and read more about it, I found myself feeling very indecisive. Something about its description simply made me shrug and go “Ehhhhh….” (Maybe it was the talking rats?) Just wasn’t sure my patrons would go for it. But wow! What a great read!

I was sucked in from the start. The tension on the ship was so palpable and the twists (for lack of a better word) kept coming--organically though and without ever making the plot feel frenetic. And the main characters (there’s three and they are rather at odds with each other) were all very relatable: Petrel finding safety in obscurity but longing to be seen, Fin struggling to find out who he is and what he really believes, Dolph laden with anger and hatred and the weight of responsibility. Their actions were all believable and their development, while expected, never felt contrived. (And I really wasn’t always certain my expectations would be met!)

Very solid and enjoyable middle grade dystopia.

ARC provided by NetGalley.
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Icebreaker is a whirlwind adventure set in future Antarctica on a huge ship divided into “tribes.” Only Petrel is tribe-less, called the “Nothing Girl.” Yet she knows the ship better than anyone and wanders its decks and hidey-holes with ease. Existence is harsh, but Petrel is a survivor with quick wits and courage. When she spots a boy on an iceberg, she unlocks a long-held secret that will change her world forever. Tanner writes eloquently of the frozen landscape, of people, their fears and loyalties, and of the power of trust and friendship. ( )

In this trilogy-opener, twelve-year-old Petrel is scrabbling to survive as an outcast on the ancient icebreaker, the Oyster, as internecine conflicts threaten to break out (once more) into civil war. The three tribes--Officers, Cooks, and Engineers--who have sailed the huge vessel throughout its three-hundred-year Antarctic cruise no longer remember the anti-mechanistic uprising that initiated the voyage, but the discovery of a mysterious boy on an iceberg signals the start of an adventure that will lead to the awakening of the Sleeping Captain and the end of Petrel's isolation.

So, yep, this is middle-grade, post-apocalyptic, dystopian literature. While it does suffer from a few of the pitfalls of the genre (rather cartoonish villains, hand-waving explanations for social upheaval or the lack of it, and so on), it's actually quite good on the characterization front, at least for the two youthful narrators. The plot is fairly straightforward but likely not as obviously telegraphed to its intended audience. The pacing, however, is excellent, varying successfully between soul-searching and hair's breadth escapes. And, thankfully, there's a real ending! Obviously, there's plenty of space left for further adventures and a larger arc, but all the initial "problems" facing the protagonists have come to a satisfactory stopping place, which is a marvelous bonus. More trilogy writers should aim to do as well as Tanner in this regard.

As far as the audio recording itself went, Recorded Books kept up its traditional high quality: I was quite surprised in the end to hear the narrator's American accent, as she'd done very well with the variety of British and Australian inflected voices throughout the story. It would have made sense for them to be more uniformly Australian, as the author is from there and it's set in the Antarctic region, but that wasn't distracting. At first, it seemed the narrator was over-emoting (which is a major audiobook pet peeve of mine), but after a while, I became accustomed to her narrative style and enjoyed the rest of the recording. On the whole, this is a very good work of middle-grade fiction and sets the stage for a trilogy that may be worth finishing.

This apocalyptic book brings a new twist. Anti-machinists have convinced many humans that machines and those that use them are evil. A ship leaves land with the hope that anti-machinists will overcome their fears. Three hundred years later, it has not yet happened. The people on the boat have broken up into 3 tribes. Twelve-year-old Petrel does not belong to a tribe. She is an outcast who hides from the tribes to avoid being abused and lives on scraps of food she can find. She watches as crew members bring aboard a boy who had been stranded on the ice. The crew fear the stranger and turn against him. Petrel saves him. She knows all the best places to hide on the ship because she has had to save herself in the past. Now she has a friend, but can she save them both? This book is fast-paced and original. Sometimes it is a bit confusing and I feel it needed more background, but overall a fun book to read. ( )

Early Reviewer Audio Book:

A mysterious demon on a perpetually sailing ship, mechanical rats, a girl who doesn't belong, a fanatical boy.

Icebreaker weaves together some fantastical circumstances. The main characters are likeable and very 'human', the book seems to strike the right balance between quick moving action and detailed description.

The author and narrator must be British, it's read and written in such a tone. That can be a little irritating but is totally personal preference. The narrator does an excellent job in this reading.

I wouldn't mind reading the next book in this series. ( )