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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Slow at times, but nonetheless pretty good, April 22, 2009
Poor Muire is the last of the waelcyrge (servants of Woden in Anglo-Saxon mythology), who saved her life at the end of Midgard by running away. Through the millennia, she has had to live with her failure, as she awaits the end of the other world, Valdygard. But, as things seem to wind down, surprises begin to appear. The Wolf has returned and is on the hunt, and it now appears that many, if not all, of the waelcyrge are being reincarnated. Something very strange is going on, and Muire must rise above her self-pity and self-doubt if she is to get to the bottom of things.
I must say that I found this to be an interesting book. After the initial Ragnarok, the story slows down considerably, and just kind of crawls along. Fortunately, during that time, the author introduces a number of very interesting characters and situations that really blossom as the story picks up speed. I didn't care much for Muire herself, but I did like just about everyone else in the story - Cathoair the super-soldier/prostitute, Selene the cat woman, Cristokos the rat mage, Thjierry the Technomancer, and others.
So, I did find this to be a pretty good book, slow at times, but nonetheless pretty good. Overall, I give it a somewhat guarded recommendation.
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9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
good book, October 30, 2008
This is set in the same world of her stories 'Ice' & 'The Devil You Don't' from her collection The Chains That You Refuse. In fact, 'Ice' seems to be an excerpt or something that expanded into the novel, & from side references in Windwracked Stars it looks like 'The Devil You Don't' actually happened too. But you don't need to have read either story to read the novel.
Muire is a waelcyrge, a valkyrie in the Norse sort of world of the book. Ragnarok happened. Unfortunately, she ran away. She comes back after the battle to find everything she has ever known dead, except for an almost-dead valraven (two-headed intelligent pegasus) and the empty place where the body of Mingan the Wolf (sort of Loki & Fenris combined) had lain. The valraven convinces Muire to make a stab at living, at least as an emotional cripple, & in turn is reborn when Muire asks for a miracle.
Fast forward a few thousand years to a post-apocalyptic wasteland, the last city alive on Valdygard (the earth/planet). It's protected from the wastes outside by the Technomancer, & Muire is living a quiet life when she suddenly meets both the reincarnation of Strifbjorn, the einherjar (angel/Norse god) she had loved from afar, & the still-dangerous old incarnation of Mingan, who vampyrically kills a man before disappearing. Muire has to deal with a shock to her emotional stability & the threat of her old enemy's reappearance.
Elizabeth Bear seems to like Norse mythology, as it was also the background for A Companion to Wolves, co-written with Sarah Monette. This is a novel about surviving and about being reborn, & reminded me at various times of parts of Bujold's A Civil Campaign ('the trouble with oaths of the form, death before dishonor, is that eventually, given enough time and abrasion, they separate the world into just two sorts of people: the dead, and the forsworn'), my favourite Fire Logic, by Laurie J Marks, & parts of Diane Duane. It also has intelligent animal-people (including a catgirl with a whip) who serve the Technomancer, called moreaux in a nod to HG Wells. I was waiting the whole book for some kind of reference to C'Mell (which didn't come). It was a really hard book to put down, & I liked it very much.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Norse mythology and apocalyptic science fiction combined to create a dark dreamscape, March 9, 2010
When the battle (Ragnarok) is over, only three immortals are left alive: Muire, the smallest waelcyrge, the valraven, Kasmir, a two-headed, winged war-mount, and the one whose betrayal damned them all. Together they live through the coming ages to play their roles in the very last days of the world.
I needed something really different to read and All the Windwracked Stars was just what the doctor ordered and more. Elizabeth Bear combines Norse mythology and apocalyptic science fiction to create a dark dreamscape, and also invents a very intriguing concept: angels whose god is either dead or has gone missing.
The desperately savage combat at the beginning of All the Windwracked Stars drew me right in and I soon found myself liking characters that I normally would not. The prose is somewhat surreal, and this story has a rather strange flow which, at times, made it a little difficult for me to follow. Usually I'd find that a little irritating, but for the EDDA OF BURDENS series, this wistful style works perfectly because the characters themselves are lost souls struggling to understand their own destinies.
I was once a big fan of Apocalyptic Sci-fi, so it was a refreshing thrill to lose myself in Elizabeth Bear's dying world. The outcome of doomsday comes down to a handful of unique misfits in a truly original story. I especially liked the conclusion and I was so gloomily fascinated that I immediately downloaded the Kindle version of the next book, By the Mountain Bound.
I almost never jump into the next book in a series without a break between, but By the Mountain Bound is the story leading up to the battle of Ragnarok -- the beginning of All the Windwracked Stars -- and I just had to know the answers to some of the wonderfully tantalizing mysteries left unexplained in this book
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