Book by Petaja, Emil

Science-fantasy based upon the Kalevala.

Third Book in Nebula Nominee's Cosmic Kalevala! Based on the myths and legends of the Finns, Emile Petaja spins an enthralling tale chronicling the fate of the last of the three genetic reincarnations of their great hero-Gods of ancient times. In the distant future, Wayne Panu, captain of a battleship, undergoes terrible psychic trauma when he is forced to kill innocent alien children and then sacrifice his best friend, all in the name of duty. When Wayne looks out a viewport and sees an ancient copper canoe floating in space, bearing a bearded elder of great psychic and physical strength, Wayne knows he has suffered a mental breakdown. But the copper boat is real, and its passenger is the greatest sorcerer of the past, the present and the future, Wainomoinen. For behind the Terran-alien war is the near-immortal hag-witch, Louhi, the vessel through which the Pahaliset, cruel forces from another dimension scheme to conquer our own. To stop them, Wayne will have to accompany Wainomoinen across time and space, learn the secrets of the Vanhat (the ancient Finns), beguile Louhi, craftiest of all the Star-Witches, trick her greatest trick from her, and then allow himself to be totally consumed by the Pahaliset! Author-editor-publisher Donald A. Wollheim wrote that "from the Kalevala's mind-stunning material, Petaja has created a cycle of novels—science fiction fantasy adventure of the highest order—retelling in the eyes of modern scientific conjecture the great worlds-shaking events that may be concealed by the folklore of an ancient and mysterious people." Don't miss the earlier books in this classic saga, The Legend of Lost Earth and The Star Mill !

Their Only Hope was the Villain! Here is the stunning conclusion to Nebula Award nominee Emil Petaja's science fictional retelling of the Finnish epic, The Kalevala. Millennia ago the Vanhat fled their dying world, Otava, and settled on Earth, in an icy, unwanted peninsula in the far north, where they became known as the Finns. Once the Vanhat had been a mighty people, possessors of an ancient knowledge, whose cosmic heroes and heroines gave battle to dark forces from beyond our universe. In the distant future, humankind has scattered to the stars, and only a remnant still dwell on and abandoned, ransacked Earth, among them, the Vanhat. For a prophecy has long predicted that in this age Otava would bloom again and the time of the Great Return would be at hand when the exiled Vanhat could reclaim the world that gave them birth. But their most ancient and bitter enemy, the sinister being known as Louhi, the starwitch, has waited eons for this moment and laid careful plans to destroy to the Vanhat on the very eve of the Great Return. Her carefully chosen and honed tool: the most despised being in the universe, Kullervo, the tramontane, the cosmic outcast. Touched in his mother's womb by an evil entity from another dimension, all other living beings, animal, human and Vanhat alike, are instinctively repulsed by him. Kullervo has been on a rampage of destruction since birth. He is a creature who thirsts for revenge on the grand scale, and Louhi has instilled within him the power to destroy an entire race, the Vanhat, forever! Kullervo gloats at the thought. He is the last one anybody would pick for the hero of the piece. Unexpected and deeply moving, Tramontane is a fitting conclusionto Emile Petaja's quartet of cosmic fantasies.