All the Windwracked Stars (Sci Fi Essential Books) Review

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(More customer reviews)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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World War I (DK Eyewitness Books) Review

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(More customer reviews)This book really brought World War I to life. I was surprised at how little I really knew about this war. This may be billed as a kid's book, but people of all ages will enjoy it. It's a great source for learning a lot about the war in a short period of time. The entire Eyewitness series is worth checking out.

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THE MAVERICK MOON (Star wars) Review

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(More customer reviews)I first read it a couple months ago and I thought it was pretty lame. Yes, I know it is a children's book, but it was very unorginal. I only recommend this book to extremely die-hard fans that have to read EVERY Star Wars book out there. But, then again it could have been worse.

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Empire Strikes Back, The (Star Wars (Econo-Clad Hardcover)) Review

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(More customer reviews)Well, I'm just writing here because nobody else seems to have come here. Mainly because everybody that's read any Star Wars books at all has seen the original trilogy on video, so why bother with reading the story? Well, the books are always so much better than movies because you can tell what people are thinking without those echo-sounding voices or a narrator. I think this is, of course, a VERY good book. I love the way Han and Leia fall in love. That part where Han gets frozen in carbonite will have sort of sensitive people balling. See, even before the Star Wars fad, the movies were popular in our home. So, I am not a new Star Wars fan. (In other words, I like SW, and I know what I'm talking about.) Very good book.

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A Woman's Civil War: A Diary with Reminiscences of the War, from March 1862 (Wisconsin Studies in Autobiography) Review

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(More customer reviews)I read this journal/reminiscence during a short period in whichI read several other Confederate women's diaries and reminiscences,and something that made this one particularly significant in my opinion was that unlike some of the other southern women whose writings I read, Cornelia McDonald lived along a major battlefront of the Civil War from the early months on. Thus, although she definitely preferred to have the Confederate forces around her and appears to have retained some bitterness toward the Union government after the war, she had a more complex view of Union soldiers than did some other Confederate women who lived further from the warfront through much of the war. She mentions the kindness of a shoemaker in her town who sympathized with the Union cause but made shoes for her large family of children even though she could not pay him, and at one point she even has a good word for the Union general who heads the forces occupying the town where she lives. The story of her struggle to feed and protect her children, help nurse soldiers, maintain tense but somewhat peaceable relations with soldiers who occupy her home, and support her family when she is eventually left alone is a story of courage, resourcefulness, pain, and gratitude. Cornelia had not lived only the life of a sheltered belle before the war, and despite the chaos around her, she manages to combine practicality and a love of beauty to keep enough sanity to survive the war and go on with family life afterward.

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Lone Star Navy: Texas, the Fight for the Gulf of Mexico, and the Shaping of the American West Review

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(More customer reviews)The Texas navy rarely gets more than a page or two in even the most comprehensive Texas histories. But Jonathan Jordan makes a compelling case that it was in fact the damage to Mexican supply lines done by the tiny fighting Republic fleet that forced a withdrawal after the battle of San Jacinto, and thus turned the strategic tide.
The rich cast of historical characters described here are fascinating and sometimes hilarious, from the rogue Secretary of the Navy who essentially stole the fleet for a filibustering expedition, to a never-ending run of drunken gun-toting foul-mouthed salty sea captains. Key are Sam Houston, whose bravery and decisiveness in leading the new Republic was matched only by his ignorance of sea power, and Commodore Edwin Moore, a true hero who fought budget cutters and frigates with equal aplomb only to cross swords with the aforementioned President.
I loved this book. From a sliver of time it tells an arresting story with crisp description, page-turning narrative and wry wit. You can't ask for more from a history.

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**WINNER OF THE 2007 UNITED STATES MARITIME LITERATURE AWARD**In the 1830s, Mexico endured a tragic era of internal political instability. Meanwhile, bold American frontiersmen sought their fortunes beyond the borders of the United States, with many settling in the Mexican territory of Texas. In 1835, these transplanted Americans led a revolt against Texas's embattled rulers in Mexico City. Lone Star Navy chronicles the little fleet of wooden warships, bought on credit by an impoverished band of revolutionaries and sent to sea on a singular mission: to win Texas's independence from Mexico. Beginning with four small sailing vessels, the upstart flotilla became a vital counterpart to Texan armies fighting for an independent republic. Indeed, Capt. Jeremiah Brown's naval battle off Matamoros in April 1836 helped save the fledgling republic from a premature end. But even as it battled for independence on the Gulf of Mexico, the Texas navy came under attack from unexpected enemies. The same fierce individuality that led Texans to shake off their Mexican rulers also stymied their efforts to govern themselves with any consensus. Lauded by its advocates as strategically vital and ridiculed by its detractors as a farcical waste of money, the navy became a flashpoint in a clash of visions. Denied adequate funding, sailors and officers suffered long periods without pay, and their vessels fell into chronic disrepair, but they still defended their small nation's fortunes.The decrepit remains of the battle-scarred fleet finally fell into American hands when Texas, in need of a strong ally, was annexed by the United States in 1845. The Mexican government prophesied that relinquishing Texas would lead to the loss of its other northern territories. And, indeed, the Mexican War and the U.S. acquisition of New Mexico, Arizona, California, and parts of Utah, Colorado, and Nevada soon followed.

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Ways of War and Peace: Realism, Liberalism, and Socialism Review

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(More customer reviews)Before reading Doyle, I had never really come across a good survey of political philosophy which logically relates the classical political theories to their practical corollaries in international relations. I must say I am very much impresssed with Doyle's effort and am delighted to find how well he is able to put all theories (he deals with realism, liberalism and socialism) in an illuminating perspective, and how he is able to ingeniously distinguish the different strands within the respective political theories. What I like in particular is how he associates certain strands of thinking with certain philosophers, and how he then combines and compares these different views within a larger theoretical perpective, thus providing a clear overview on the theories at large. I must admit only having read parts of it, most of the section about realism, all of it on liberalism and some of it on socialism, but still think I have a good enough idea to be able to comment on this book. I initiallty felt inclined to give this book only four stars, since it only deals with a small number of thinkers and theories, but realising the vastness of the subject, I felt I could not withhold Doyle's book the 5th star. So for those seeking the broader view of international relations, going beyond the confines of conventional IR theory, Doyle's book is an absolute eye-opener.

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