Tiamat, the world ruled by Arienrhod, the eponymous Snow Queen, is technologically backward. Although it is clear to the reader that Tiamat was, at one time, a high tech world, it is equally clear that Tiamat must now purchase its high tech equipment from the off-world Hegemony. The Hegemony extracts a high price for its high tech wonders — it demands payment in a fountain-of-youth extract made from the blood of an indigenous species, the mers. Arienrhod will do anything to preserve her access to the high tech wonders of the Hegemony: She plans to subvert the succession to the throne by both artificially prolonging her life with the youth preserving elixir and by making an illegal clone of herself whom she hopes to control. She allows the wanton slaughter of the mers, despite the protests of those who argue that the mers may be sentient...