Aug 5, 2012: When I saw the description of this story, I was pretty excited to read it. I’ve always been interested in Norse mythology, and this story is not only a take off on it, but it also follows a Valkyrie as the main character. That alone pulled me in, and I also really liked the fact that it’s a ‘big’ story – a world and universe spanning tale of gods and people and how they interact.

Unfortunately, I had some issues in actually getting into the story itself. Although I’m not at all against the use of summary in storytelling, in the case of Caeruleus Aether, there is so much high-level summary in the first few chapters that I had a hard time getting a sense of the universe the Valkyries moved in, and even the characters themselves seemed impenetrable. This did improve a bit in the last couple chapters of the first arc, when I felt like I started to get some sense of the main character for the first time, and even some of the supporting characters, so I’d advise any readers to give the story a chance beyond the first few chapters. Another issue I had with the story was underscored by the fact that the title opens up to a page with lots of background information about the characters and Norse mythology in general. Frankly, I ignored it and fumbled around the site until I could find where the first chapter was, since all of that is part of what I expect the author to work into the story itself. As the story progressed, I was glad of my familiarity with the subject matter, since all of the explanations I expected hadn’t made their way into the story.

If I had to give one piece of advice to this author, I’d suggest that you please do bore us with the details. When you’re writing a universe-spanning story, I think you need to bring it to a level that ordinary people like us can understand, and the easiest way to do that is to show what’s happening clearly through the eyes of someone who’s living the events – as many of them as possible firsthand, sometimes even the boring, silly, or ugly things.

For fans of Norse mythology, you will probably not want to miss this story, since it features prominently, and anyone who has a liking for ‘big’ stories would probably be well advised to check it out, too.

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