Bear, Elizabeth: All the Windwracked Stars
All the Windwracked Stars (2008)
Written by: Elizabeth Bear
Genre: Futuristic Fantasy
Pages: 368 (Hardcover)
Why I Read It: This wasn't a book I was very interested in, despite admiring Bear's work. Bear's premises are hit or miss with me, and this one just didn't grab my eye. If not for the Women of Fantasy book club at Jawas Read, Too!, I doubt I would've ever picked this up.
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.
Spoilers, yay or nay?: Yay, but this isn't the kind of story where knowing the details ruins the story. However, if you're paranoid, just skip to "My Rating" and you'll be fine. Everyone else, onward!
The very first page of the book is utterly vivid and excellent. Right away, that put me at ease, because no matter how difficult it is to get into Bear's work, at least she can paint an evocative picture. And much to my surprise, while I'll admit to having some trouble grasping at first the time and place in which certain events were happening, I have to admit: this book read a lot faster than I thought it would, and that's saying something. I rarely am able to tear through an Elizabeth Bear novel, but this one only took a couple of days, instead of the week I was expecting.
Part of it was the anguish of all the characters. Every character had a burden, a hidden secret, and all were fighting to survive this crazy post-apocalyptic future they were living in (well, save for Mingan), and it's crazy because being in the future, there's a certain bit of science fictional wizardry involved, but this is very firmly a fantasy, given the use of Norse mythology and the strong element of magic. Take out the magic, and the story wouldn't exist, so the marriage of magic with science fictional technology worked rather well here.
What really engaged me, though it took me a little bit to really understand what was happening, because the POV characters who noticed it didn't make that big of deal about it. They just said so, so the reader's left to wonder if there's a typo, or if they're reading a flashback, or what. Anyway, what really engaged me was this notion of birth and rebirth, and how all of Muire's fellow waelcyrges' souls have been resurrected into this current day, 2500 years after their deaths. That caught my attention for the sheer question of what would happen if any of those sleeping souls woke. That really didn't happen, but learning how these souls were stolen from their rightful rest and how they were being used was fascinating, though not without some questions in terms of technical detail. No matter. It worked.
The whole notion of the giving and taking of one's soul was fascinating too, especially given how Mignan gave Muire a part of his soul she couldn't rid herself of, and vise-versa. The tension between these two characters was fascinating, and I was never sure who's side I was on and why, nor was I sure if I even wanted them to hook-up. That said, I never really knew where the book was going to begin with, as it's one of those where you have to sit back and enjoy the journey. And it was an enjoyable journey. Perplexing at times, but enjoyable.
I did have some technical issues, and I mean that literally: there's a few times were Bear slips out of past tense into present tense, and I couldn't discern a pattern as to why she was making that stylistic choice. It distracted me, but not so much to tick me off. There were also times were the POV didn't seem very firm and I wasn't sure whose head I was supposed to be reading in.
Of course, I'm also confused about the nature of the Tower, and why it didn't fall with the Technomancer's death. Was it supposed to be a slow thing? Wouldn't all the cities and people be crushed beneath it once the Technomancer died? That's what I thought was supposed to happen, but that part of the aftermath isn't really touched upon.
There were some funny moments, like this tiny observation on page 225:
Even after the end of the world, there was weeding.
And then there's unexpectedly sad, pitiful moments, like here, on page 341:
Cathoair hit him with the flat of the sword. Hard, maybe harder than he had to, and the bull blinked and then bellowed, "Hey!" and grabbed for the human with mammoth three-fingered hands. Cathoair sidestepped -- fast, faster than any human Selene had ever seen -- and whacked the bull again when he went by.
Selene cringed, thinking of torture sports and matadors, but again, the human drew no blood. And this time, the bull pulled up, confused, and turned to Selene blinking. "He hurt me," he said, and then sat down on the floor, doubled his fists in front of his belly, and curled around them as if to keep them safe.
The ending, which I won't quote, was beautiful. Made me serious consider getting the other two books in this trilogy.
My Rating: Good Read
I 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.
Cover Commentary: The cover is striking, no doubt. However, it's not how I pictured the floating city (blame this book's cover for that), which is fine, that's my own fault,but what's up with Kasimir looking all organic and stuff! He's basically a steampunk beast for most (not all) of the novel, so that bugs me a wee bit. :) That said, it's striking: putting a Valkyrie against a very science fictional looking setting definitely engages the brain.
Next up: The Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss