Published in 1967, Anna Kavan ended up on the wrong side of history, perhaps, by choosing to end the world with ice, not heat. That unfortunate misstep did not destroy the story for me. Even with Donald Trump's imminent inauguration, bleak, apocalyptic novels are a hard sell to me. I don't know why. I'm not exactly Mr. Cheerful, but generally, I stay away from them. Serial killers too. Overall, I appreciated this novel more often than I enjoyed it. I've heard there really aren't X words for snow in "Eskimo". Too bad, all of them could probably be used in a translation of Ice. 
 The universe, I've read, appears to be a certain way to most of us because of our brain and our senses, though that picture is apparently an illusion. As intriguing as that is, I admit to not really getting it. Don't read Ice if you are wedded to cause and effect, whether it is illusion or not, because this story sometimes dispenses with it. Events take place. At times, the next paragraph describes events that refute them or ignore them because both can't be true. Details are often vivid, especially about the encroaching ice, but there is a nightmare/dream quality to the narration. It does not overwhelm. You go with it. The narrator does too: "The hallucination of one moment did not fit the reality of the next." (p. 136) 
 You may not want to read Ice if you must root for a character. The nameless narrator is not a choirboy. References to his training imply he is a government agent, or was. He kills when he deems it necessary and is not above slapping around women, or worse, though his thoughts of it are shared more than actions are shown. 
 To some extent, the narrator seems to be an ol' boy, similar to the way spies are sometimes portrayed as upperclass Englishmen on a lark. If John le Carre or Hemingway wrote dystopian fiction, perhaps they would create a similar character. Anna Kavan has fun with it. Her character is not an ideologue. At the same time, he is not that interested in saving mankind. He admires competence. At first only amusing details make this plain, such as when he offers to help drive a car on a long journey over rough roads. At another point, he is with a group of people building a transmitter near the border of two countries, neither of which is his. Despite that, "To pass the time and for want of something better to do, I organized the work on the transmitter. It was not far from completion, but the workers had grown discouraged and apathetic. I assembled them and spoke of the future..." (p. 91) Believe it or not, that was quite funny in the context of the rest of the story. It also reminded me of Trump's admiration for Putin's "competence", which is not funny. 
 I could say a lot more, because this short book contains a complex story. The narrator's admiration for competent men extends to his rival for a girl. Both men are obsessed by her. Both men want to possess her. Both do, at different points. There are often images of domination. The narrator doesn't seem to care about sex, but there are many imagines of violence. The story is bleak for many reasons, including all that. You'd have to be insane to call this a love story. Perhaps, that is Anna Kavan's point. Love does not save the day. Wars result from the ice catastrophe, which may not be a natural disaster - no clues I noticed clarify. Cooperation between nations is limited and nothing is really done (Like some people's attitude about global warming...?). People deny the reality or focus, like the narrator, on being competent. A few party but it is hardly shown. The story skips the pleasure of personalities and the detailed societal interactions that I imagine fill the Game of Thrones. Perhaps the author was influenced by events in the 1930s and 1940s. At one point, the narrator has the opportunity to escape all of it entirely, perhaps, but he opts instead to commit more violence and becomes a mere soldier. Eventually though, he again seeks a "job with more scope..." (p. 125)