Icefall

Icefall: The Rise of the Nine by Jon Land and Michael Newman is their first collaboration, a science-fiction / technothriller novel, a possible first in a new series, that bring together humans, aliens, and superbeing in a confrontation that might destroy the very thing that is called Earth. The story begins with an alien ship that crashed into Alaska’s Mendenhall Glacier 150,000 years ago and stayed frozen there until the ice finally started to melt. Kai and Jules Bevins, two astrobiology professors from Caltech, are taken to the crash site after the army seals off the area. But something has already escaped from the ship.

Nearby, two Alaska state troopers follow the trail of a missing Amazon driver and reach a small village where the people have been killed in a way that should not be possible. Far away in Pakistan, the Nine wake from a long sleep. They were placed on Earth long before human history began, and now the threat they were waiting for has finally arrived.

An alien ship crashed into Alaska’s Mendenhall Glacier 150,000 years ago and froze within the ice…until glacial melting thawed out its deadly inhabitants in the present day.

Kai and Jules Bevins, both professors of astrobiology at Caltech, are roused from their home and whisked away to the site where a special division of the army has taken charge. But not before something escaped through a breach in the hull.

Meanwhile, a pair of Alaska state troopers locate a missing Amazon driver fifteen miles away on the Juneau Icefield and trace his movements to a nearby village with a population of less than fifty. Arriving in town, they are greeted by the bodies of villagers who were killed in an impossible, horrific way.

Thousands of miles away, under a remote archaeological find in Pakistan, the Nine—a team of superbeings placed on Earth a million years ago by intergalactic colonizers that seeded our planet to create human life—are lifted from their long slumber. The kind of threat they’ve been waiting for has finally come.

The Nine find unexpected allies culled from the ancient history of their home world in the form of a teenage boy and godlike entity. All this leads to a confrontation on a volcanic island that will determine the fate of civilization, even as the Nine uncover the shattering truth behind their own tragic paths and learn of a much greater battle to come.

Will they be enough to stem the apocalyptic menace threatening all of mankind?

A standalone novel – see all Jon Land books on the Jon Land Books in Order page.