When all hope is gone and only darkness remains, one woman must stand against the storm of change—or see her world swept away.

Frozen in Time by Zanne Raby

Tradition and change collide in Zanne Raby’s latest riveting page-turner. Frozen in Time: Shelter of Stones marks the beginning of a two-part speculative historical saga that follows fearless Mesolithic heroine Te’a of the Izokina as she fights to protect her home and clan from increasing threats.

With an earnest and passionate narrative voice, Raby reaches deep into the past to imagine civilization as it may have been thousands of years ago, weaving a suspenseful tale of survival and spirituality that reverberates in our present day. Raby’s vivid, immersive vision of rural Europe circa 5200 BC brings sprawling landscapes to life with remarkable clarity, grounding the novel in a world as atmospheric as it is transportive, and providing the backdrop for Te’a and her family’s tests of endurance. 

Readers are quickly immersed into the rich language and culture of the Alterra Clan—traditions that are abruptly threatened by the arrival of a group of Strangers in their lands whose presence signals sweeping change. These men embody difference, danger, and the dawn of a whole new world order ushered in by the Neolithic era. Before long, Te’a and her band of hunter-gatherers are knocked off-kilter as the novel’s pace accelerates into a series of upheavals that test the very foundations of the clan’s way of life. From this point on, tension suffuses every page; Raby’s readers cling to a cliff-face and brace for the inevitable fall as Te’a rails against the rapid and successive changes that are put into motion by the Strangers’ arrival, even as younger members of the clan exhibit a bold curiosity and eagerness to learn.

Steadfast throughout is Te’a’s husband Eder, the calm eye of her storm. The bond between these two characters, as well as other engaging inter-clan dynamics, highlights one of the book’s central ideas: community becomes the greatest form of protection when the world shifts beneath your feet. Although these dynamics are occasionally lost in the fray of the more ambitious plot points, it is clear that the novel’s heart lies with its focus on primal human emotions—love, fear, resilience—and the ways they shape us.

In Frozen in Time (a title that reveals its poignancy toward the story’s gripping final pages), Raby weaves a tale of empowerment that echoes across the ages. A sweeping, thoughtful, and deeply human exploration of survival, tradition, and transformation, the novel draws us into the past to leave us with lessons for our present, reminding us that while ritual and community ground us, we must allow space for new traditions to take root, lest discord fracture us all.

—CANREADS BOOK REVIEW
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