Ice Orphan

This is the third volume in a climate fiction series by a nationally recognized anthropologist. Nine hundred and twenty-five summers have passed since the Jemen released zyme, a glowing algae, into the oceans. The organism set off an ice age that now covers most of the planet. Nearly all of the Jemen fled to the stars, but first they brought back several extinct species that had thrived during the previous ice age. Almost a thousand summers later, the archaic hominins surviving along the edges of vast glaciers are steadily dying out.

Their fate rests with Quancee, a quantum computer nearing the end of her working life, and Lynx, her student, who is a Denisovan man. When Vice Admiral Jorgenson, the last of the Jemen, tells Lynx that he plans to take Quancee apart and reuse her components to build a new computer, Lynx is shocked. He struggles to keep her intact, but Quancee has her own priorities. Before she dies, she must save a particular boy who is unable to save himself.

Far from the glaciers, in the lodges of the Sealion People, a sick boy on the threshold of manhood begins hearing voices, among them an old woman who sings to him. When Jawbone sets out on his first quest to find a spirit helper, that same old woman finds him, and his life will never be the same.