"All the Windwracked Stars" starts after the end of the world with a cowardly angel and a wounded steed. It turns out it takes a long time for worlds to die, and the rest of the story takes place several thousand years later when only one (human) city is left, sustained by the power of a Technomancer who combines science and magic to keep it alive.

A lot of readers say this book is hard to get into it, but for me, this is one of the few books I connected with quickly in a while. From the very beginning, I connected with the main character Muire. She's made a big mistake and her guilt is overwhelming but she finds the will to fight through all the ages to come. She is quite a tortured character - which can at times verge on the annoying - but she does grow through the novel.

The story does rely heavily on Norse mythology, which can make some of the names and terms difficult to keep track of. My knowledge of Norse mythology is sufficient to follow Avengers, but I wasn't able to appreciate the deeper analogies of this novel. Nevertheless, I found it accessible and it also draws on quite a few themes from the science fiction genre as a whole - despite having lots of fantasy elements as well. For instance, the Technomancer's animal-human servants are called moreau - recalling the Island of Dr Moreau and his experiments to create men from animals. It also draws on the rich literature on scientists and the ethics of playing god. So, even if you don't appreciate the Norse aspects, the novel is still multi-layered.

The characters do have a fairly fluid sexuality, which may trouble more sensitive readers, but it makes sense within the context of Bear's world-building.

Overall, I enjoyed the novel all the way through, but I'm not certain that I will continue with the series. The world-building is immersive and unique, but the characters are all very dark. While this makes them interesting, it also dampens the novel. Also, the back-story of the final angelic battle is always alluded to but without the detail, which robs it of its poignancy and can make a lot of the novel elusive. Apparently, the second book goes through that back story, so I might read it, but I don't feel any urgency.

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

A breathtaking prose-poem of the far future by the can-do-anything author Elizabeth Bear references without necessarily paying gushing hommage to, Cordwainer Smith's tales of the Underpeople (here there's a cat-woman named Selene, not C'Mell). And there are also some Jack Vanceian elements (cf the opening paragraphs of chapter 17 at page 238)--as well as the magic-tech and techological magic of Joan D. Vinge's "Snow Queen" trilogy.

Anyway, it's based on old Norse myth, and features the tale of the semi-immortal waelcyrge (valkrie)-historian Muire, her companion the valraven Kasimir (a two-headed winged horse), and Cathoair (a male prostitute and beerhall prizefighter) and the villianous(?) Grey Wolf, who wants to destroy what's left of the dying earth in order to reboot it. It's played out at the end of time in which only one city is left standing--and that due to the efforts of the Technomancer.

Ms. Bear mixes the mythic and the mechancial with incredible skill. (At one point Muire gets a smart phone message that one her companions is in trouble and dashes off to the rescue wielding a sword. And in context, it makes sense!) The tale is so clever that one weak section, in which (oh no!) a character who has fled to safely just HAS to leave that safety to attend to business, just might have been tossed in there deliberately as a riff.

I'm not sure.

Whatever, the writing is breathtaking. Don't speedread, please.