Book review: “Ice Crown” by Andre Norton

Andre Norton’s 1970 novel Ice Crown is an interesting mix of the genres of science fiction and historical fiction, with hints of others. In its way, the book encapsulates Norton’s career that spanned seven decades and produced more than two hundred novels.

Starting in 1952 with Star Man’s Son (aka Daybreak: 2250 A.D.), Norton established herself as a major science fiction writer and continued producing starscape stories at a rate of something like three a year until her death at 93 in 2005.

Her first books, however, were works of historical fiction, published in the 1930s and 1940s.  In addition, throughout her career, she wrote works of fantasy, specializing in witches, elves, dragons and magic, and of romance.

As it opens, Ice Crown is a science fiction story, and, like many Norton books, it centers on an orphan — Roane, a young woman who arrives on the planet Clio as part of a three-person archeological expedition led by her rigid and distant Uncle Offlas Keil.

He hardly notices her except to have her do the grunt work of the group.  The third member is his son Sandar, handsome as a hero and an irritable bully to his cousin.

 

A sealed planet

Clio is one of an unknown number of colonized worlds where, at an earlier time, a group called the Psychocrats carried out a variety of experiments:

All those worlds had been chosen as sites for projects which were the particular interest of one of the Hierarchy of the Psychocrats. The original colonists, braincleared, given false implanted memories, were settled in communities which to their briefed minds seemed natural to their new worlds.  They were then left to work out new types of civilization, or a lack of civilization — to be watched secretly at intervals.

Turning humans into guinea pigs was a violation of cosmic law, and the Psychocrats were crushed in a war that destroyed their headquarters and most of its records, including those identifying these experiment worlds.

Now, such inhabited Psychocrat planets are occasionally rediscovered, but present-day cosmic authorities have no idea what would happen if the people were told they were lab rats, even though the inhumane scientists behind the experiments were long gone. How would they react to the truth?  Could they adapt to it and overcome their conditioning?

So, to protect the population, the planets are closed to visitors. Clio is one such sealed planet.

 

The remains of the Forerunners?

Uncle Offlas is only able to bring his expedition to Clio because there are indications that the planet might be a site of remains of the ancient and very powerful Forerunners from eons ago.

His group is being sent to look for these remains, but with the strict proviso to avoid all interaction with the humans living on the planet.

Nothing has been discovered about what the Psychocrats did to the minds of the colonists on the planet, nor how or whether the initial conditioning was kept up.  What is clear, though, from spy probes is that the world’s society is a lot like the medieval times on Earth before human space flight.

Here is where Ice Crown segues into a kind of historical fiction.

 

“The girls”

At a point about halfway through the novel, Roane — having violated all the rules against fraternization with the planet’s people to save Princess Ludorica from kidnappers — is in a castle and looking out a window:

A boy had come out of a shop, sprinkling down the cobbles before the door from a holed can which he sloshed back and forth without care, nearly sending its spray on the wide skirts of a passing woman.  Those skirts were gray, with scarlet flowers bordering them, to match in vivid color the bodice of her dress. She walked with a free, swinging step, one hand raised to balance a basket on her head, its contents hidden by a covering of leaves.

Roane is charmed by the touch and feel, the smell and taste of the life led by the people of Clio, so drastically different from her highly advanced civilization with its spaceships and virtually tasteless tubes of paste food called E rations.

She has become a friend and advisor to the Princess who is trying to stave off enemies seeking to keep her from inheriting the throne of her dying father by locating and using a magic diadem, called the Ice Crown.

Here’s where a fantasy element begins to be woven into the story as well as a genre that Norton was never known for, chick-lit.

Indeed, when the two are sneaking through a forest to get away from the kidnappers, Norton refers to them several times as “the girls,” as if they were two close lifelong friends out for a hike.  Girls just being girls.

 

Much different from coveralls

Later, they are again like two close friends when, in a charming scene, they take baths to clean off the dirt and sweat of their escape, first the Princess and then, with the Princess acting like a house maid filling the tub again, Roane.

They don borrowed clothes, and Roane likes how these strange garments look and feel:

The skirt was full and ankle length, and its folds felt odd against her legs so long used to coveralls.  In contrast, the bodice was tight, laced from belt to just under her throat with silken red strings.  Embroidery of the same shade of red bordered those lacings.  The dress itself was a pleasant yellow-brown.  There was also a hooded cloak lined with red, and a close-fitting cap with a turned-back border, embroidered all over with small, very skillfully fashioned red feathers.

 

Roane’s decision

From this point, Ice Crown operates on two levels.

One has to do with Roane’s discovery of the machinery that the Psychocrats installed to keep mind control over the people of Clio. Should it be left running? Her uncle and cousin are certain that nothing should be done to disrupt it, while Roane isn’t so sure.

The other involves how Roane is ever more deeply intertwined with the Princess and her main supporter Colonel Nelis Imfry and with the life and people of the planet.

The young woman feels a growing kinship with these people — and maybe something deeper with Nelis.  However, it’s clear that he and Ludorica have a deep bond that would seem to doom any idea she might have of romance.

The science fiction and historical fiction genres as well as the fantasy and, yes, romance and chick-lit genres all come together in the book’s conclusion when Roane has to decide if she stands with her space-traveling uncle and civilization or with her friends on a world without motors or E rations.

It’s not giving away too much to say that Ice Crown has a happy ending.

 

 

Patrick T. Reardon

5.24.25