Long-awaited follow up to Moon of the Crusted Snow, about an Anishinaabe reserve in Northern Ontario following the collapse of North American civilisation. This takes place twelve years after the first one, when resources have run low, and an expedition travels south towards the Great Lakes hoping to find a better area to settle, and to discover if anyone else survived the End Times.

I was mixed on the first one because I loved the characters and premise, but the prose felt a bit clunky, and the plot unsubtle. However, Rice has really stepped up his game with this second one. The writing itself is a lot smoother, and I loved the episodic adventure plot surrounding the group of travellers. The younger generation were children when collapse happened, and have never seen a city or eaten a pizza or talked to anyone from outside their small community. The characters in their forties who were adults at the time, remember what it was like to have cellphones and modern medical care and food they didn't catch or grow themselves. They've been trying to teach the younger generations Anishinaabe language and traditions, but not a whole lot of knowledge keepers survived everything falling apart, so it's kind of "what happens when an apocalypse hits on the heels of another apocalypse, so you have neither a full set of traditional knowledge, nor any of the new things you've come to rely on." And "also people might be trying to kill us," and I really couldn't put the book down, as I had to know what happened, and who would make it out alive.

The central relationship is between the main character of the previous book, and his now young adult daughter, and I loved the tenderness and care between them, and how much of the story was about how the relationship between parent and child changes over time. (There was also some hint that she was queer, and we did run into a couple two-spirit characters, but not central to the story.) Gorgeous book, looking forward to what Rice does next.