The heroes face various servants of the Ice, but the Ice itself is just a tide of cold and glaciers rolling down from the north. (That's one of the cool bits, the evil dark lord is literally faceless and unknowable. Secondly it takes the winking backstory of "this is all really the Earth's prehistory" that Tolkien used and really runs with it - although it's never spelled out explicitly, the way the "dvergar" are described makes them obviously actually Neanderthals, and the Big Bad evil dark lord is. It's 100% a Lord of the Rings clone, but it's one of the better ones from the 70's/80's, because the twist it puts is really interesting (even if it doesn't end up making a lot of sense.) First, it doubles down on the Germanic influences - magic is all based on smithcraft, the lead character is a clear allusion to Wayland, the "dwarves" are given more clearly Germanic names (something simir to "dvergar", I forget exactly), and the lead "God" has a lot of Odin-like traits. And it has some old-fashioned sexism and unexamined racism, of the "Tolkien's orcs" variety.) (It's got a lot of amazingly brilliant, interesting and well-written scenes but some of the connecting tissue can be tedious. Michael Scott Rohan's Winter of the World series has a really interesting setting, although I can't whole-heartedly endorse it.
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