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By the Mountain Bound

By Elizabeth Bear

        In this story, the prequel to Hugo winner All the Windwracked Stars, the Children of the Light sang the world into existence. That was more than five hundred years ago. Since then, these immortal beings have walked through the world, healing humans where they could, avenging the innocent victims of crime. They protected this world by fighting wars with invaders. In return, they could take humans, called thralls, as servants.

When Light’s children married, they took no human mate; einherjar, male, wed waelcyrge, female. There was no taboo on sex, but they were forbidden to share the kiss of Light with any but their life mate. They married so they could bear children. It was difficult for waelcyrge to conceive inside a marriage, impossible outside of it. And though Light’s children seemed immortal, they could die in battle, thus the need for children to replace those who were lost. In the last war, there were four warriors killed, a telling blow to an army of less than a thousand.

War-leader Strifbjorn has not taken a wife, though he has been war-leader from the beginning. He does not intend to marry, for his love belongs to another einherjar, with whom he has shared the forbidden kiss. His sin could very well spell the end of both the world and the Children of the Light.

The story is steeped in Norse mythology. It is very well written. It grabs your attention at the beginning and never lets you go. The characters are not all human, though they exhibit a lot of human behavior. I could have done without the detailed depiction of homosexual intercourse. Beyond that, the story was quite intriguing. Read By the Mountain Bound and enter a different world from any you’ve ever seen.

The Book

Tor Books
October 27, 2009
Hardcover
0765318830 / 978-0765318831
Fantasy
More at Amazon.com
Excerpt
NOTE: Contains Violence, sex

The Reviewer

Jo Rogers
Reviewed 2010
NOTE:
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