Her fate is in her flesh.
In an environmentally fragile world where human and animal genes combine, the rarest mutation of all—the Trader—can instantly switch genders. One such Trader—female Sorykah—is battling her male alter, Soryk, for dominance and the right to live a full life.
Sorykah has rescued her infant twins from mad Matuk the Collector. Her children are safe. Her journey, she believes, is over, but Matuk’s death has unleashed darker, more evil forces. Those forces—led by the Collector’s son—cast nets that stretch from the glittering capital of Neubonne to the murky depths below the frozen Sigue, where the ink of octameroons is harvested to make addictive, aphrodisiac tattoos. Bitter enemies trapped within a single skin, Sorykah and Soryk are soon drawn into a sinister web of death and deceit.

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E-book Enhanced content!

Tattoo Writing Soundtrack
Brian Eno “Ambient 4”, Feist “The Reminder”, Kate Bush “Aerial”, Murcof “Remembranza” & “Memoria”, My Morning Jacket “Z”
Natalie Merchant “Ophelia”, Neil Young’s Greatest Hits, Noirin Ni Riain “Stor Amhran”, Sylvain & Czukay “Flux + Mutability”
“Tous les Matins du Monde” (sndtk), UB40 “1980-83” (vinyl), U2 “The Unforgettable Fire” (vinyl)

There are secrets beneath her skin.
    Sorykah Minuit is a scholar, an engineer, and the sole woman aboard an ice-drilling submarine in the frozen land of the Sigue. What no one knows is that she is also a Trader: one who can switch genders suddenly, a rare corporeal deviance universally met with fascination and superstition and all too often punished by harassment or death.
    Sorykah’s infant twins, Leander and Ayeda, have inherited their mother’s Trader genes. When a wealthy, reclusive madman known as the Collector abducts the babies to use in his dreadful experiments, Sorykah and her male alter-ego, Soryk, must cross icy wastes and a primeval forest to get them back. Complicating the dangerous journey is the fact that Sorykah and Soryk do not share memories: Each disorienting transformation is like awakening with a jolt from a deep and dreamless sleep.
    The world through which the alternating lives of Sorykah and Soryk travel is both familiar and surreal. Environmental degradation and genetic mutation run amok; humans have been distorted into animals and animal bodies cloak a wild humanity. But it is also a world of unexpected beauty and wonder, where kindness and love endure amid the ruins. Alluring, intense, and gorgeously rendered, Ice Song is a remarkable debut by a fiercely original new writer.

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REVIEWS
"I'm loving it - it's like furry sexy biopunk arctic witchery. Really." Annalee Newitz, Ed. in Chief i09.com
Active Neurons  "Beautiful and horrible, all at the same time..."
Agony Column  "Ice Song is a gorgeously immersive novel, with lots of great details that give it a prickly, real-life feel even though the settings and critters are determinedly surreal."
Armchair Interviews  "A stunning debut fantasy about love and the ties of blood."
Barnes & Noble  "Those looking for a powerful and provocative female voice in their fantasy reading fare should definitely pick up this stellar debut ... addictively readable, melancholic writing style..." Paul Goat Allen
Barnes & Noble Feature Pick  "A deeply lyrical and sublimely haunting narrative powers this intriguing fusion of science fiction, fantasy and subtle social commentary." Paul Goat Allen
Between Two Books  "It’s not only the setting or the plot but Kasai’s style is beautiful, which gives this dark world its depth and its colors."
Booklist  "A boldly adventurous tale depicting a richly detailed world."
BookReview.com  "A fascinating well written cautionary tale."
Coffee Time Romance  "This author has an amazing wealth of imagination, enlivening a host of beings so bizarre and yet so absolutely attuned to all human emotion."
Curled Up with a Good Book  "The world of Ice Song is as vibrant and lush as the writing that tells of it."
Expanding Horizons  "The world created is vivid and the characters bring the book to life."
Fantasy Book Critic  "Reading it means imagining every scene, hearing every sound, feeling every emotion, so vividly are they described."
Fantastic Book Review  "Kasai’s writing is so vivid and I felt as though I was watching a movie on the big screen."
Fresh Fiction  "ICE SONG by Kirsten Imani Kasai is an adventure with fantasy elements in it. The visual details are so rich I can see every scene, every motion. I cared about the people the Collector's life had destroyed."
Hathor's Legacy  "Ice Song was fabulous ... a journey story of the sort female narrators rarely experience."
Interzone #223  "Ice Song is an accomplished debut from a promising writer...Kasai's prose is sensuous and affective."
i09  "Packed with intriguing ideas."
Library Journal  "Reminiscent of Ursula Le Guin's paradigm-shattering The Left Hand of Darkness, this piercingly moving story belongs in most fantasy collections."
Life After 50  "Kasai weaves the concepts of gender identity, science and the fierce devotion of a mother who will go beyond all odds to save her children."
Locus Magazine (October 2009) "Hard to put down...an unstoppable force [that] ends with a bang."
Love, Romances and More  "From the first to the last page, this author kept my imagination in overdrive and I was sad to see it end."
Mentajack  "Delciously dark first novel."
Oxford Library Book Reviews  "Moody and slightly gruesome, this book is an original take on the hero's journey."
Philadelphia Gay News  "A near-perfect combination of fantasy, great storytelling and social commentary."
Romance Junkies  "Kasai has created a stunning, hazardous and complex world with a heroine/hero who is strong and utterly believable."
School Library Journal  "Told in a quiet, sometimes almost dreamlike style reminiscent of fairy tales (though at times disturbing ones), Ice Song will appeal to teens interested in questions of identity and difference."
Today's Adventure  "Reading Ice Song is like dreaming."

Discover Magazine Blogs Comic-Con 2009: How to Create Tomorrow's Technology Today 
East County Magazine
2001 article in Seattle's "The Stranger" about 3-D painting "The Effect of Beauty on its Bearer"

Plunge into a gritty underworld populated by hallucinatory dancers, deceitful lovers, back-stabbing best friends and menacing doctors. An astonishing sensual adventure for the literary mind, Flesh Hell is a compelling exploration of the sex industry's effects on the women whose labor sustain it.
   Humanity’s defining characteristic is not our opposable thumbs but our voyeurism. It’s the licentious, spying urge, which prompts us to peer through parted curtains and cracked doors, eager for a glimpse of skin or sin. Peep shows were born of that vice and thrived. Peep shows are the absinthe of the sex trades—alluring, misleading and deliciously, delightfully toxic.
    Joely is a peep show dancer plagued by revenge fantasies about her clients. She's desperate to feel normal and win the heart of her handsome neighbor. But when she meets Twilight, a dancer with a penchant for brutality, Joely's facade begins to crack, revealing her darker nature.    
    As two jealous lovers vie for Joely's attention, she must confront her shadow self, a black leather virago with a taste for blood.She hopes that a psychic surgery will cure her but it backfires, resulting in assault, murder and the breakdown of all Joely's careful constructs.

It took six months to write Flesh Hell during the winter and spring of 1998. The first draft was written in longhand as I sat at a rickety card table in front of a high window with a deep, stone ledge. I often wrote by candlelight--back then, my muse and I were still a bit skittish with one another. She required a bit of romancing before giving up the goods. After my daughter was put to bed, I'd turn to the table and my stack of paper. Snow fell against a peachy-purple sky--that peculiar brightness of a winter night in the city. Those were austere months. I knew that I'd have to cloister my imagination, steep it in the dark violence of Joely's world, to find her story. That meant no books, no movies, no TV. Work only. When it was done, oh glorious day, I bought myself a huge bouquet of pink peonies to celebrate my accomplishment. (I still buy myself a present whenever I finish a book.)
    Revisions were made on a Canon Starwriter, an all-in-one word processor and printer that saved to floppy disk. FH was set aside for a while, sent out for publication and rejected--with what felt like malicious glee--by numerous publishers. FH burned like a lamp inside me, a small and steady flame. Lacking a vehicle for publication, I decided to record FH as an audio book.
    Actors were recruited: friends, family members, co-workers and a couple of strangers gathered in my small apartment in the evenings. Beers and script copies were passed around. The microphone, a tiny freebie I'd taped to the bottom of an upended Starbucks travel mug, and my PC served as our recording studio. Once the initial bout of giggles and stage-fright were worked out of everyone's system, we got down to business. Despite the accidental hilarity of the recording (my husband and I howling like hell hounds, choppily edited fits of laughter, more than a few mortified screams of artificial pleasure) the truly hilarious out-takes (the last track on the last disc) are the very best part.  
    After all the dialog was done, I recorded my narration and cut and pasted the files into chapters. Ambient, industrial and vocal music (begged, borrowed and written expressly for the project by SwansinLeather) was layered in, along with sound effects and background noise. Lacking the specific effects I wanted, I went to San Francisco, where FH is set, to record cable cars and night sounds.
    My wonderful, talented and ever-supportive bff Sideshow Melody, photographed me and my shoe collection posing for gyno exams, climbing out of trashcans and splayed out in crime scene outlines chalked onto the street. My husband further indulged me, photographing my legs for the cover art. I designed labels and inserts and had everything printed up. News flash, NOBODY reviews self-produced audio books. This was in the days before CD Baby made indie distribution easy. The CDs gathered dust.
    I'd mostly forgotten about them until I found a box full of CD sets in the garage. That little flame still flickers. Joely and Twilight, Mo and Abbot still want to be heard. My obsession with identity, the shadow side and alternate personalities still demands indulgence. The FH experience is best with headphones and a glass of red wine (or your favorite libation).
I hope you'll enjoy it.

For more audio tales of horrotica, check out Rhapsody in Snakeskin.

• Length: 26:33 minutes (30.38 MB)
• Format: Stereo 44kHz 160Kbps (CBR)

"Rhapsody in Snakeskin" is a Gothic romance with a twist. Ben, a lonely 20-year-old ticket-taker, meets a mysterious older women who slowly entices him into a complex, erotic affair. Amara penetrates Ben's mind with unsettling power and he uncovers, too late, the grim secrets of her dark appetite.

Juicy and Raw
Gritty, sexy, raw...this book is not for the faint of heart! But it is juicy and worth the adventure. It dives into the world of strippers and other sex workers, those who indulge our most primal urges. We slide with Joely into this experience, into her mind as she struggles to define herself. I found myself at turns titillated, horrified, angry, sad and amused. The writing is rich and complex...sometimes I felt an urge to lift my feet up, as if my shoes would stick to the floor in some dark room, a quarter clutched in my hand to lift the window. Other times, I rode on Joely's shoulder, vicariously struggling with all the issues of self definition, rage, lust, yearning and confusion. Flesh Hell is definitely a unique and intriguing read! --J. Medrick

Images Play like a Movie
This fleshy world sucks you in and spits you out, page after voyeuristic page. Don't rush through; take this blushing tour one savage morsel at a time. Pain and pleasure in high doses- dizzying, at times. Kasai's full-bodied images play like a movie. --Jesse Balena

Outside the Box
Be forewarned...Flesh Hell is definitely not a coffee table book! It gives you a peek into the erotic world of peep show performers, as well as takes you on a psychological roller coaster. The outstanding imagery is presented so vividly...like watching a movie unfold. The author has definitely taken me outside of my nice little box and introduced me to a world that I never knew existed! Hats off (or should I say clothes off) to Ms. Kasai! --SC

Bookpleasures.com
The very first chapter of Flesh Hell has us titillated, wanting to know what happens next as the protagonist, Joely, is about to have an operation of some kind. The rest of the story could be described as a slow seduction as the reader wants to know more about Joely, a stripper, and what will happen to her next and what she will decide to do. Fitting perhaps for a book about the sex industry.
   The author's note in the beginning of the book states that Flesh Hell is "not representative of the typical sex-worker's experiences....it attempts to portray the profound emotional and psychological changes...on the women whose labor" sustain the sex industry.
   Joely, once a wide-eyed college student, is now a jaded dancer who feels homicidal urges towards men in general. She is desperate to get rid of the `monster' in her and she turns to rather alternative methods to exorcise these demons. The highlight of the book is its descriptions of the sex industry. The minute details of the working conditions, the politics, the realities of the occupation and the blow-by-blow accounts of the routines are riveting.
   A lot of books that are packaged as `gritty' or `raw' soon begin to grate on the nerves as you wish there might have been a little more polish on the writing. Luckily Flesh Hell does not suffer from this, as Ms. Kasai ably proves that she is a writer. Whether at a party, inside a lover's bedroom or working a booth we see and feel things with Joely. The emotions and atmosphere are almost palpable.
   Ms. Kasai has succeeded in creating a truly believable character, human and flawed, just like every one of us. It is because we can identify with Joely and empathise with her that Flesh Hell works. Hopefully there will be more from this author. --Deborah Augustin