ELECTRIC ICE
Prelude to JELLYFISH DREAMING
In which Jellyfish Jack tells Joon the story of his 200-year journey
before they met; of riding a Great Wave, a Ghost Bison, and
being ridden by the Trickster God Coyote cross-country to where 20 percent of
the world's fresh water freezes while he sleeps. Buried under tons of
snow, Jack climbs out through a chimney and joins a friend to ice
sail, sail-skate, and hang-glide into a lighting battle.
"This is a fascinating exploration of a near-future world, told from the perspective of one of the most unique characters I've come across in speculative fiction. Jack is ostensibly a teenager trying to survive in an ice-covered land, but s/he is so much more than that. The mystery of Jack's true nature is tantalizingly developed, and the picture of the climate-damaged world McCutchen builds is recognizably "our" world but unsettlingly alien." —Juror, Speculative Literature Foundation
In this inexhaustibly inventive prequel to Jellyfish Dreaming, D.K. McCutchen achieves the quietly miraculous. Exploring a post-apocalyptic setting that evokes more of Maurice Sendak than Mad Max, Electric Ice somehow manages to overcome my mounting cynicism about humanity and reactivate my sense of play. —Michael J. Deluca, author of The Jaguar Mask & Night Roll
Beautifully written and exquisitely conceived, D.K. McCutchen's ELECTRIC ICE is an adventure for the coming climate change apocalypse. The protagonist of McCutchen's first novel, JELLYFISH DREAMING, Jack, leads readers through a forbidding continent of ice and other environmental consequences with little more than a willing heart and a fierce intelligence. Along the way, this orphan will fall in with improvised families that either nurture or consume their children, depending on how well they have mastered the landscape and the adaptations it demands of its inhabitants. Yet Jack always seeks more than mere survival for themselves and the people they befriend, because Jack is on a quest. Their quest goes beyond discovering the secret of their origins, and it's no less monumental than those of the Greek myths Jack has absorbed and passes on to their friends. But whether Jack will find what all humans desire—indeed, cannot live without—depends on circumstances far beyond anyone's control, and anyone's imagination. —Jane Rosenberg LaForge, author of The Hawkman: A Fairy Tale of the Great War & Sisterhood of the Infamous
In this strangely comforting skid into the apocalypse, D.K. McCutchen spins ice into electricity. This is a world of extremes where ice and plastic are the only landmarks, and it takes an extreme-myth and an ancient map to keep going—if Jack and their cohort can read the legend. —Kirsten Mosher, author of Plea$e Steal Me for 100 Plus Dollar-zz
"Myth, memory, family, the body, books, love, plastic, ice sailing, and monsters. McCutchen's Electric Ice is an engrossing road trip (minus the road) across time, through environmental disaster, and with a necessary dose of hope." —CINDY SNOW, author of Small Ceremonies