A review by tpietila
The Ice Owl by Carolyn Ives Gilman

1.0

A young girl who has travelled from place to with her somehow disturbed mother hasn’t been able to find her place. It is especially hard as the travel between stars has removed her in time from everything she has ever known. The school on the planet is destroyed, and she finds a private tutor who has a collection of rare and exotic items. The ice owl is one of them, another is a special painting made from the wings of the butterflies which can be seen differently depending of the viewing angle. The story took its time to start, and then it was over. The artifacts were the most interesting and imaginative part of the story, but they served only as a partly allegorical backdrop to the story. The story itself was a fairly simple tale of how certain things happen again and again in the history of humanity. It wasn’t too coherent and the plot seemed very fragmentary.