About this book
Shattered Ice grew out of my ongoing concern with the places we too often treat as distant, empty, or expendable. The North is frequently spoken about in terms of resources, shipping routes, sovereignty, pipelines, extraction, and development, but less often as a living system already carrying enormous strain. I wanted to write a story that brought young readers into that tension through wonder, grief, danger, friendship, and the ancient presence of dragons who are not here to save humanity from responsibility, but to remind us of it.
Like the other books in the Draconim series, Shattered Ice uses fantasy to approach real ecological wounds. This book turns toward melting northern ice, fossil-fuel expansion, disrupted caribou migration, fragile waterways, wildlife displacement, and the emotional weight young people carry when they realize the future is being negotiated without them. The research behind it comes from real environmental concerns: thawing permafrost, climate feedback loops, northern development pressures, animal migration corridors, and the way industrial decisions can fracture landscapes long before the damage becomes visible to people far away.
At its heart, though, this is not a textbook hidden inside a novel. It is a story about Ethan, Noah, the Young Dragons, and the difficult work of learning to listen to land, water, animals, memory, and one another. The dragons in this series are not creatures of conquest or spectacle. They are ancient protectors connected to the deep memory of Earth, and their presence asks a harder question: what does stewardship mean when humans are the ones causing the harm?
I wrote Shattered Ice for young readers who already sense that something is wrong, and for educators, librarians, parents, and climate-minded readers looking for stories that respect that awareness. I hope readers come away feeling that grief and hope do not cancel each other out. Hope is not pretending the damage is small. Hope is choosing to act anyway, together, before the old paths disappear.
