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! ( )

My review can be found here: at my blog, fiction-theory@lj. ( )

Something like a cross between The Broken Sword, Hardwired, Dark Angel and Shadowrun.

This particular flavour of Ragnarok is only survived by Muire, one of the Valkryie analogues, the Serpent, the Wolf, and one of the outre steeds that the Valkyries/angels ride. Saving the horse makes him sort of a cyborg, too.

Norse angels of course possess magic swords, too.

The horse's Terry Pratchettesque style of talking in bold (not capitals) may also be annoying to some.

While stylish and managing to combine Norse poetry with a bit of the down and out cyberpunkish flavour the story does meander a bit in between the punchy starts and finishes.

Multiple cycles of Muire meets Wolf with aggro posturing, arm wrenching and sado suck face sessions get a little tediously predictable.

The same with the multiple declmations of 'me shortarse historian, not fighter, here's a quote to prove it', likewise.

Those are minor issues though, with an inventive book giving another look.

This particular city setting is kept from destruction by magic - and of a not nice kind, so Muire and friends decide to do something about it.

'Maybe it wasn't a very good plan, but it was the only one Muire had. Considering her resources--two magical swords that weren't much use for anything practical except cutting through anything in their path; a spell-casting, mechanically inclined rodent; a catgirl with a whip; a retired cyborg tavern-keeper; an animate steam engine; and a deeply depressed nineteen-year-old--she thought she had done as well as could be expected."

Or time to Ragnastop and roll.

Blending all this into something that makes sense is well done, and worth reading.

http://notfreesf.blogspot.com/2008/12... ( )

“The wolf sees no reason to salvage this world, when it is already so ruined. He’d rather tear it down. It would not, after all, be the first time. And the Technomancer and her constructs are the only thing between Eiledon and the wolf, and Eiledon and the Waste.” – “All the Windwracked Stars”

Occasionally, a novel can be greatly appreciated without being appealing. Like a piece of art in which one can enjoy the beauty and craftsmanship, but feel no connection with it. No matter how hard one tries, the novel and reader never engage each other; there is only an emotional flatness, a seed of a story that never germinates. Sometimes certain books don’t work with certain readers. This is not a criticism as much as an observation. What doesn’t emotionally connect with one reader could just as likely connect with the next one.

Case in point is Elizabeth Bear’s latest novel “All the Windwracked Stars.” Bear’s novel is beautifully written and expertly plotted, yet the story failed to engage me, lessening the overall appeal of the book for me. There were moments when I got into the story, only to have later events jar me back out of it. However, there was never a point in “All the Windwracked Stars” where the book grabbed hold and refused to let go. Unfortunately, as much as I wanted to like the book due to Bear’s sublime craftsmanship, “All the Windwracked Stars” never generated any interest in me; it was an emotional flatline. But that isn’t to say that it wouldn’t generate interest in others. It contains all the elements necessary to be very successful with readers; I’m just not one of them.

As the novel begins, Muire stumbles across the aftermath of an apocalyptic battle between the children of the Light and the tarnished. She sadly discovers that all of her brothers and sisters of the Light have been killed, leaving her as the lone survivor of the Light. Muire is understandably crushed by this discovery. She is also wracked with enormous guilt, since she owes her survival to the fact that she fled like a coward before the battle began.

Among the corpses littering the battlefield, Muire discovers the valraven Kasimir, barely alive. Kasimir is an extremely intelligent type of stallion that has two heads and wings. The valravens traditionally serve as mounts for the children of Light. Among the cold and snowy field of death, Muire and Kasimir end up eventually saving each other (both literally and metaphorically), creating a timeless bond in the process.

Twenty-three hundred years later, human civilization has risen and nearly fallen, humanity now poised on the brink of extinction. Two hundred years earlier, the Desolation “left all Valdyrgard a salted garden.” Only the ancient city of Eiledon currently survives due to the magical guardianship of the Technomancer. But it too is now failing.

Muire, who has been living in Eiledon since before the Desolation, stumbles across a man dying in the streets one night. She takes in his last breath, sucking it down deep into her lungs, a waelcyrge rite by which she chooses him. In choosing him, Muire “accepted his death and accepted as well the burden of vengeance that death brought.” But this vengeance comes with a heavy price, and Muire suddenly finds herself in the heart of a complex mystery. One in which the outcome may affect the very survival of human civilization.

Muire, the protagonist of “All the Windwracked Stars,” was the biggest hindrance to my enjoyment of the book. Due to her guilt over her desertion of the children of Light twenty-three hundred years prior, Muire is emotionally crippled, filled with so much self-hatred that she is more annoying rather than endearing. Her woe-is-me act wore thin quickly. I generally am bored by mopey, angst-ridden characters, so Muire’s inability to “get over it” didn’t make for the most exciting reading. Thematically, “All the Windwracked Stars” concentrates on the Muire’s possible salvation. Can her future actions erase the stain of her past negligence? While I can appreciate this question, her emotional trauma bored me; I felt no empathy for her character. Many of the other characters in the novel like Selene, Kasimir, Cristokos, and Cathoair are quite appealing though. Only Muire undermines the narrative by wallowing in her angst. If she had only spanked her inner emo, “All the Windwracked Stars” would have been very special.

The world of “All the Windwracked Stars” is highly imaginative and creative; the world-building and characterization is generally fresh and unique. Bear’s creativity is wonderful to behold as it informs even the smallest detail of Valdyrgard. The language is beautiful; passages are poetic in their composition. Bear writes with an artist’s sense of language; prose that is elevated above normal genre fiction. For example, Bear writes:

“Since the breaking of the Light the wolf has been listening to the ticking decay. Worlds, like gods, are a long time dying, and the deathblow dealt the children of the Light did not stop a civilization of mortal men from rising in their place, inventing medicine and philosophy, metallurgy and space flight.”

Aesthetically, the novel is a wonder to behold. I was awed intellectually by Bear’s imagination. Only my issues with Muire kept me from fully connecting with the world. If the focus had been shifted onto another character, I likely would have found the material much more engaging. I just couldn’t bring myself to care about Muire.

Last Word:
Despite being beautifully composed and crafted, “All the Windwracked Stars” failed to connect with me. The angst-ridden protagonist Muire is too weepy, her consuming self-hatred too melodramatic and boring. Therefore, I found myself having a difficult time relating to her, and as she serves as the main conduit for the story, this obviously hampered my enjoyment of the novel. This is really a personal objection more than a criticism though. Despite my distaste for Muire, “All the Windwracked Stars” is still a wonderfully imaginative and enjoyable novel. ( )

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. ( )

Full review:
http://fantasycafe.blogspot.com/2008/... ( )

It is Ragnarok—the Last Day of the Last Battle, the end of the world—and Muire, who thinks of herself as the least of the Valkyries, has survived. She fled the battle before it began, and her brothers and sisters fell without her by their sides. As she goes about the task of finding their bodies in the falling snow, she discovers that one other has survived, though badly wounded—a valraven, one of the two-headed and winged steeds ridden by the Valkyries. In the last miracle of the dying Light, the valraven, Kasimir, is healed and transformed into a creature more of metal than of flesh. He chooses Muire as his new rider, but she, convinced of her own cowardice, denies him and flees his offered love and loyalty.

Unfortunately for Muire, she discovers that it takes a long time for a world to die. Though our world ended with that battle, the death throes last another two thousand years, and she, a demi-goddess, survives them all, watching as human societies rise and fall. At last, the world is nearing its last gasp. Only one city now remains on the blasted surface of the world, Eiledon, ruled over by the protective Technomancer. Muire lives quietly within Eiledon’s walls, awaiting the final end, but discovers, to her shock, that she and Kasimir were not the only survivors of Ragnarok after all. Mingan the Wolf, the greatest of the Tarnished Ones, has survived as well and now hunts the streets of the last city, stealing souls for sustenance.

Ashamed of the cowardice that kept her alive the first time, Muire resolves that this time she will fight Mingan, protecting the last few humans from his evil. But as she slowly discovers that the spirits of her Valkyrie brethren are being reborn into human bodies and that the magic the Technomancer has used to keep Eiledon standing has come at a terrible price, she discovers that there is much more to her own last battle than dying bravely beneath the Wolf’s terrible kiss.

Lyrical, multi-layered and complex, with valiantly flawed characters and a finely honed combination of ancient themes and far-future tech, “All the Windwracked Stars” is compelling and rewarding. ( )

My Bookspotcentral review ( )