Review of Ice by Jacek Dukaj

One of the things linking my wife and I is our love of speculative fiction. It's the majority of what we both read. But there are many conversations we're unable to have. There is a huge swathe of Polish fiction she has read that I cannot. Stanislaw Lem and Andrzej Sapkowski are about the only two authors available to the English speaking world of the dozens if not hundreds who write fantastika. For years my wife lauded and lamented Jacek Dukaj's Lód. You should read it, but it's untranslatable. In 2025 I finally did. Ursula Phillips brought us Dukaj's Ice (originally published 2007).

Ice is set in an alternate,early 20th-century in which World War I never took place and Russia rules the territory we currently know as Poland. A deep freeze has settled on these lands. Everything is covered in ice and snow, including gleiss which shifts and moves by some form of arcane sentience. Gleiss appears in cities and towns, and anything which touches it is frozen to crystal. Scientists work to harness its power. In society, there are a diverse array of political affiliations—nationalists, tsarists, anarchists, autarchs, slavophiles, westernisers, conservative religionists, materialists, and many others. This short paragraph does not do the setting of the novel justice, but suffice to say it is a richly populated world bridging known history and culture with an alternate history that is imaginative and engaging.

The main character is Gieroslawski, a young scholar with a variety of interests, including philosophy, geology, and mathematics. Feeding off his love of numbers, gambling is likewise a hobby. In the opening chapters, Gieroslawski learns his love of gambling is not only a risk to his wallet, but likewise his trajectory in life. He is grabbed by the tsar's Ministry and blackmailed into taking a trip to deep Siberia, a place where ice, winter, and gleiss have truly set in. His mission is to find his father, an anarchist who has disappeared under mysterious circumstances but yet may have some say in the political future of Poland.

We'll get this out of the way, fast. Ice will not be a novel for everyone, particularly mainstream readers. Love your Adrian Tchaikovsky, Brandon Sanderson, V.E. Scwab, Martha Wells, et al, there is a good chance you will bounce hard off Dukaj's novel. First, it's long—1,200 pages long. And unlike long novels such as Annie Proulx's Barkskins, George R.R. Martin's A Storm of Swords, or Mary Gentle's Ash, Ice does not cover a lot of ground plot-wise. Exciting scenes and places are discovered and there is plenty of imagination to flesh out the alternate Russia, but those are not Dukaj's main goals.

Of primary interest is the meaning of self in the material world. Gieroslawski goes on a journey and sees things he never dreamed of seeing and meets people he never thought of meeting (Tesla and other historical figures among them). But core to his travels is the inner conflict of what or who he is in the physical, logical world. Witty dialogue with train passengers, subtly dramatic reveals, and climactic scenes do exist, but they all vector toward Gieroslawki's inner turmoil at locating his self in the real world.

Of secondary interest to Dukaj is the philosophy, logic, and even mathematics underpinning Gieroslawski's personal struggles. Ice can and does go off on tangents, explaining some philosophical or logical concept. What I have come to think of as Polish style of writing (Sapkowski does the same), it may irritate readers looking for a more subtle blend of story and information. I bounced off these sections, too. I like my philosophical ramblings integrated. But these sections do serve to ensure every nail in the theme's coffin is driven to the head. The novel wants to be, and is, a means of setting the reader's thoughts alight with more than just story and character.

This feeds directly into the last facet helping readers determine whether this is a novel for them: pace. Because Dukaj takes his time unpacking everything—character interaction, conceptual exposition, setting, internal monologue, etc., the pages turn,but turn at a rhythm slower than the average novel. The rewards are everywhere for readers who appreciate such a style, just be aware going in fireworks are not on every page.

Which leads us to syntax. This is the place Ice sets itself apart from most other novels, particularly science fiction and fantasy, and is the reason my wife said the novel is untranslatable*. Most sentences in novels and stories are written in standard style: subject-verb-object. Many writers play with this for effect, but by and large a story is essentially a string of said formulas broken into paragraphs. Ice does not adhere. The translator will have my head for saying this, but Ice essentially removes the subject of the sentence. It's predominantly verb-object. Things happen, but it's not always clear who or what the agent is. Once the reader gets into the flow of the novel, they quickly learn to separate the bits of internal monologue (or something similar to internal monologue, the “I” missing) with the bits of “story”. It's fluid and meaning emerges. The manner in which this style feeds back into Gieroslawski's existential inquiries is the crème de la crème. What better way to question personal existence than remove the the personal subject? If ever there were a novel which exemplifies literature as an art capable of using form to elucidate theme, this is one. Who is the ”subject”?, the novel's style asks.

In the end, Ice is a superb novel that will be perfect for the reader with time, patience, knowledge of the humanities, is interested in existential matters, and of course, enjoys a fantasy world whose colorful, imaginative details intertwine tightly with story and scene. It took me a month to read Ice (December, appropriately), but it's a story that will stick with me forever. The imagery of the gleiss, moving, shifting, and crystallizing, is palpable, and any person with deep personal inquiries will sympathize with Gieroslawski's internal conflict on the nature of meaning and existence. If ever there were a definition of an author's magnum opus, this is it.

*Ice is technically untranslatable due to the fact the Polish and English languages do not share the same grammatical structure. It's possible to express certain meanings in Polish inherently through grammar, meanings that must be expressed in direct, expository fashion in English. In the case of Ice, Dukaj uses verb forms which do not indicate which subject the sentence is referring to. In English, of course, we have no such option; subject is a prerequisite to a sentence. Accordingly, the translator, Ursula Phillips, chose to remove subject, which for English ears creates a dissonance. This works well, however, once the reader gets into the flow and is aware how this odd presentation is intended to mirror Gieroslawski's situation. For people interested in more, Phillips' Translator's Note goes into fascinating detail about the methodology applied—a true gem for the philologists out there. (A shout out to Ursula; niesamowite tłumaczenie. I appreciate what was undoubtedly years of effort.)