All the Windwracked Stars

The premise: ganked from BN.com: It all began with Ragnarok, with the Children of the Light and the Tarnished ones battling to the death in the ice and the dark. At the end of the long battle, one Valkyrie survived, wounded, and one valraven – the steeds of the valkyrie.Because they lived, Valdyrgard was not wholly destroyed. Because the valraven was transformed in the last miracle offered to a Child of the Light, Valdyrgard was changed to a world where magic and technology worked hand in hand.2500 years later, Muire is in the last city on the dying planet, where the Technomancer rules what’s left of humanity. She's caught sight of someone she has not seen since the Last Battle: Mingan the Wolf is hunting in her city.My Rating: 7 - Good ReadI will warn that All the Windwracked Stars is like Elizabeth Bear's other work in that she throws you in the middle of the story and expects you to swim while reading. Sometimes, this is difficult, and while I'm no expert in the Norse mythology Bear is clearly using, I didn't have the same kind of trouble that I normally do with this technique. Indeed, this book read surprisingly quick, and I think it's because the cast of characters was so fascinating, each with their own problems, their own burdens. It's just a fascinating tale, and while I wasn't always sure what was happening by the end of the book, I felt I understood and I was engaged in the outcome, even if I wasn't sure what I wanted the outcome to be. But it opens and closes wonderfully, and I'm quite tempted to get the next two books in the trilogy, one of which is a prequel to this one.Spoilers, yay or nay?: Yay, but this isn't the kind of story where knowing the details ruins the story. The full review is at my blog, and if you're interested, you can follow the link below. As always, comments and discussion are most welcome.REVIEW: Elizabeth Bear's ALL THE WINDWRACKED STARSHappy Reading!

Of this book, the author says: “Technically speaking, it's a periapocalyptic-Norse-steampunk-noir-romantic-!New Weird-high/low-fantasy. With SFnal elements.” She’s not exaggerating. Technically, it’s also postapocalyptic— the apocalypse being, in this case, Ragnarök. (That alone was enough to suspend my usual misgivings of postapocalyptic fiction.)Bear depicts a technomagical far future, somewhat reminiscent of that of Walter Jon Williams’ Metropolitan and City on Fire; our heroine Muire is the last of the valkyries, living in secret in the last city of a world that flourished post-Ragnarök and fell. The history of the world is infused with the Norse sagas, with the highest of technomagic being rooted in the runes that Odin learned and the Eddas being part of the education of the youth. The perspective she presents is at such variance with what I recall from my study of mythology that the feeling I get is that the familiar Eddas are the result of source material changing over time, and that this tale is showing some of the secret history behind them. (This never gets spelled out explicitly; the characters are too busy for that kind of academic exposition.)The tale itself is of several kinds of redemption for several different characters, starting with the valkyrie who survived Ragnarök by running away. There are plenty of surprising twists and turns, and the variant Norse mythology didn’t give anything away for me.

I loved the premise of this book, but a list of characters would have greatly improved my reading experience. (Please correct me if this feature is, in fact, included; I am reviewing after long-having returned the book to the library.)

It took me a while to get into this book. The imagery is beautiful and the characters are intriguing, but there's so many seemingly disconnected characters, so many names I'm not sure whether I'm supposed to recognize. It's not until late in the book that everything starts coming together into one story -- and then it's great! But it's still not going to be one of my favorite books. I've read other books by this author that I've liked much more.

An interesting start though the Valkyrie concept had me confused: many names and words to learn about before you leap in to this world. Possibly for another time. (Yes, but Kindle.)

This took me a long time to get into. Part of this was due to Bear's writing style which is quite dense and expects you to just 'get on board'*, part of this is that my scanty knowledge of norse mythology made it hard to keep up with what might have been obvious to better read readers, but mostly I think it's that Bear keeps us in the dark about who these characters are and why they're doing what they're doing.

A little more of the back stories early on might have made it easier for me to get involved and care about everyone's damage.

Howeveraround the half way point everything fell into place and was completely wonderful and heartbreaking from that point on building to an beautiful ending.

I'm a great fan of Elizabeth Bear's writing style and imagination, so I dived eagerly into this. Apparently it's one of her earlier works, heavily revised for publication, and the first book in The 'Edda of Burdens' series. It's a curious blend of post-apocalyptic science fiction and Norse mythology with bits of high fantasy, steampunk and animal anthropomorphism thrown in, and it all works together suprisingly well. It's also great to read about a well-imagined world that borrows heavily from Norse rather than over-used Celtic mythology.

It begins with Ragnarök. The world survives the Last Day, as do the waelcyrge Muire, the valraven Kasimir, and the betrayer, Mingan the Grey Wolf. Fast forward a few thousand years and the world is once again facing another (this time self-inflicted) apocalypse. Guilt over her cowardice at Ragnarök makes Muire try to redeem herself and prevent the second apocalypse, and in doing so she encounters her old enemy the Grey Wolf, who wants to finish the dying world so a new can be born, and some other key figures from the past. That's a very simplistic description of the storyline and doesn't really do it justice. It's a complex and audacious novel with a lot of ideas and elements in it. It says much for her craftmanship that Bear succeeds in keeping her flood of ideas under control and pulling them all together for a satisying conclusion.

The characters are flawed but for the most part fascinating. I didn't care much for Cathoair the prize-fighting prostitute and never really engaged with Mingan, but Muire herself, with her burdens of guilt and sorrow is a very believable and sympathetic character. I found myself actually caring a great deal about her. I also really liked the cat-woman Selene, who is a admirably fresh and unique take on the typical animal/human hybrid theme.

It's not a happy book. It's difficult and very bleak in places. But I found if I gave it time and my full attention it's an extremely rewarding read. Bear is a highly imaginative and creative writer and her language is beautiful and lyric. She's not afraid to experiment or make her readers think and work things out for themselves. I'm already looking out for the other two books in the series.

I've liked most of what I have read from Elizabeth Bear, and I liked the first chapter of this book (which I believe I had read before as a stand alone short story) quite a bit, but I had a hard time maintaining interest in the main storyline. Bear gives us an end of the world setting and a basic premise which both seem to offer quite a bit of potential but then proceeds to tell a story which is little more than profoundly self-centered characters maiming and having carnal knowledge of each other while this world completes its long standing program of falling apart around them. Maybe Valkyries are supposed to act that way? I often enjoy books where what is initially a very confusing and convoluted back story gradually begins to take shape and make sense. In All the Windwracked Stars I ended the book just as confused about the world as I was at the end of the first chapter. Perhaps I would have enjoyed it more if I had come to the book with a better understanding of Norse mythology.So, a few inspired images, but a book where I really couldn't connect with any of the characters.

You never know what to expect when reading a book by Elizabeth Bear, and All the Windwracked Stars is no exception. This is a post-apocalyptic novel centered around figures of Norse mythology who are trying their best to stave off the next round of apocalyptic disasters. The main character is an immortal who has managed to keep her naiveté mainly because she believes in black and white and doesn’t understand everything that has been happening around her.Muire wants to help, but she doesn’t have much left. Her god has abandoned her, her comrades all died thousands of years ago in a pointless battle, and she carries the guilt of her survival as a weight on her shoulders. Or at least all that is what she believes to be true.This story brings us to the brink of understanding and then rips everything away in favor of a new understanding that Muire, and therefore us, could not have believed possible. More than changing the shades of black and white, this novel focuses on the influence of life, of people, of circumstance on what the characters can become. It offers changes of redemption and reveals horrifying truths.Here is where Bear’s talents as a storyteller shine: Despite several twists in which everything known is unknown, everything set is turned on its head, she never once lost me. I could see the trail, or if I couldn’t, the new information came in such a way that it made sense. Hand in hand I learned what Muire did, and suffered the truth with her. This is no simple tale. It has layer upon layer that absorbs you and makes you want more even though the book begins at the end of the world. Luckily, there are additional novels in this series, as strange as that may seem, because this is too interesting a world to visit in a single novel.

The immortals are killed in battle and mortals take over the world. The world is dying again. It is up to the last remaining immortals to save the world.It is beautifully written and told a great story of an interesting world. However it took me a while to get into the book, and some of the sections felt a bit long winded.

Picked this up from my local library on a whim when I was collecting books for random reads. I'd passed over it a few times in the SciFi section, and decided to give it a shot. Bear weaves a very detailed world, a very creative blend of magic, mechanics, physics, and life, following the path of a lone angel, who ran from the last great battle. Or she thought she was alone, until she comes across a young fighter, who echoes of a brother angle of long ago. As the world dies, someone is using unscupulous methods to try to preserve a part of it for their own self glory, and corrupting others in the process. Muire, the lost angel, slowly unravels this conspiratorial mess finds a path of self-redemption for running thousands of years ago. Through multiple worlds/times with help of Kasmir she sets out to make the world healed, and whole once more.

I just finished [All the Windracked Stars] and I must say, Elizabeth seems to have a bit of a thing for Bad Boys. Lucifer in the Stratford Man books and now Mingan in this one both end up having those redeeming qualities that make them so interesting and perhaps tempting in real life. Her characters reveal themselves bit by bit so that you come to understand them as the story goes on. You have to pay attention and look for clues as to why they act the way they do. I love complicated, eccentric people and maybe that's why her books appeal to me.Ms. Bears books lead me to round out my education that had weighed heavily in Chemistry and Math. The Stratford Man books caused me to find some of Marlowe's plays to pursue, now I find myself needing to read up on Valkyries. Fun!