
Ice Apprentices
by Jacob North
Interest age: 9 to 11
Reading age: 9+
Published by Simon & Schuster, 2025
About this book
The climate in Tundra is brutal: icy winds, freezing temperatures and relentless snow.
After six miserable years working in the produce fields, Oswin is finally going to Corridor to be an ice apprentice, learn magic and help the settlement survive. Being a stray, he never thought this day would come but is determined to prove his worth.
Even in Corridor though, where lessons include Spellbookery Scelving and Etymagery, life is tough. Strays are discriminated against and seen as scroungers so making friends is a challenge.
But when horrific beasts appear and threaten the fragile ecosystem of Tundra, Oswin forms an unlikely alliance that might save the community but could end up killing him.
Oswin is one of several LGBTQI characters in this exciting, brilliantly imagined fantasy adventure set in a frozen landscape where secrets and deception are rife and it’s hard to know who to trust.
Questions of gender and sexuality are handled with a light, naturalistic touch and never overshadow the tension and underlying sense of threat that becomes ever more sinister as the plot unfolds.
Although the end of the book brings some resolution, shocking revelations make sure there will be plenty to explore in future instalments.
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