With the world under attack by invisible aliens and being turned into a deep freeze by their massive geo-engineering project, Earth is on a war footing as the ice slowly but steadily slides down from the Poles. Alice Dare, daughter of a heroic spacefighter pilot is evacuated with three hundred other children to a half-terraformed Mars where they are to be trained as cadets to fight the alien menace. It's daunting and lonely, but an amazing experience with new friends on a planet where you can jump as high as your own head. When things go horribly Lord Of The Flies, Alice and her friends are forced to make an epic trek across the Martian landscape, fighting for survival the whole way, and in the path of an even deadlier alien menace.

This was a fun, rousing, lively sci-fi adventure with great, spiky, likeable,characters and a brilliant setting, well-written, and sparkling with wit and humour, and lots of science fictional surrealism, like giant mechanical spiders and floating goldfish and pink seas. I tore through it. Excellent.