"three thousand years after the birth of christ, a red, rocky land rings to the call of mamoths. But no human can hear them.
This is the sky steppe. this is mars.
deserted by those who brought them to this new land as frozen embryos. Wandering a planet which has resisted collonisation. Forced to flee a lanscape beset by the wonderous and terrible creation which were to transform mars into a new haven for human and animal alike
But not without a guide. Icebones, daughter of Silverhair, an adult frozen and transported across space, has awakened. Her leadership must bring them to a safe place in this desolate world. Her knowlege of the great story cycle will teach them their true place as inheritors of the sky steppe."

This is the third of a series, which might explain why I had such a problem getting into this as the start.
there are element s of this writing that reminds me of warhorse by michael moripungo, in the way that there is such good characterisation of the Mamoth, you can understand the way that thier brains work without assuming that they are human

Icebones ends the Mammoth trilogy quite far from the other books. Icebones is the calf of Silverhair, the main mammoth from the first book and thus born in our time. However, when the book starts, he finds himself in Mars some thousands years from now. It's strange and doesn't get much explanations until much later.

It's another survival story in changing environment, like the other books in the trilogy. This time it's Mars that's been warm and pleasant after human terraforming, but since humans are gone, it's getting colder again, too cold for mammoths. It takes a huge journey across the planet to survive and Icebones has to lead a group of mammoths who don't like it.

There's adventure, there's some quite beautiful scenery, there's strange creatures and envinronmental threats and mammoths struggling to overcome them - if you enjoyed the first two books, you'll like this as well, but skipping this is not a huge loss. Icebones makes a rather nice heroine, though. Still, Baxter has written better books than the Mammoth trilogy. (Review based on the Finnish translation.)

(Original review from my review blog.) ( )

ZB13