Discount Price: $6.99
Price fluctuation possible.
How soon does it ship: Normal ship time within one day
Shipping? Absolutely FREE if you qualify for Super Saver Shipping.
Type of bind: Mass Market Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN num: 9780765349293
ISBN number: 0765349299
Label: Tor Books
Manufacturer: Tor Books
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 384
Printing Date: April 01, 2005
Publishing house: Tor Books
Release Date: April 05, 2005
Sale Popularity Level: 543320
Studio: Tor Books
Other books you might be interested in perusing:
Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
Justine is a photographer with a tragic past. When she takes a job as thecaretaker for an old Palladian mansion, she finds herself becoming obsessed with the last family to own the house -- particularly the oldest son. Driven to photograph the house and the family's personal possessions, Justine is more intrigued than frightened to discover strange images appearing in her pictures, ghostly images she knows she didn't record. Even more unsettling, it seems like someone is stalking her, watching her.
Halfway around the world, Adam writes letters to a woman he's dreamed about since he was a child, but has never met. One day he sees her picture in a magazine -- it's Justine. That she's living in his old family home is a coincidence he cannot ignore. Drawn to his mystery woman, Adam leaves his exile in South Africa and risks all to satisfy his yearning for her.
Adam believes he and Justine are truly soul mates -- but if neither of them are able to overcome their pasts, how can they have a future?
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers 
-
"Windwalker" by Natasha Mostert is a well written story of star-crossed soul mates finally getting together. But broken apart by their separate destinies to live in England and South Africa. Not as good as "Season of the Witch" published this year. Natrasha keeps improving and is unparalled and unrivalved by any other writer. Great fantasy made absolutely real and sensuous. I want to read all her future books. Also please reprint all the books in paperback. . Windwalker would make a good movie or BBC -type TV program. three episodes. Even more so would "Season of the Witch" as a movie or BBC miniseries.
Rated by buyers -
If one inspects Natasha Mostert's website, one can grasp that with her education and background in language & music that she is trying to evoke a mood more than tell a formulaic romance in Windwalker. She is writing a bit more intelligently & with a lot more research than the average romance writer. In fact, this novel is actually a modern retake of a brooding gothic romance & it is likely the error of US distributors to dub it a romance. The UK book cover seen on Mostert's website is much more evocative of the book than the US cover (sand dune, wolf, pensive woman). Windwalker uses the environment as a character in the book via description like the carribean in Wide Sargasso Sea or the moors in Wuthering Heights. The love story is doomed, well at least in their present lives, but this book offers a lot to a reader willing to explore the african desert & some of the history behind what a soul mate is. If you like Bronte, The English Patient or tragic love stories, then I recommend this book to you. If you prefer a quick romance that doesn't require you to think, then you will be frustrated with this book. I agree that Mostert needed just a little more lingering with a few plot lines to smooth this effort a bit (although I am a skimmer & I might have missed a bit). All in all, I was impressed enough to write a review & this book has the scaffolding to make an excellent movie that could be as picturesque as Titanic, The English Patient or The Sheltering Sky.
Rated by buyers 
-
Justine Callaway and Adam Buchanan are two people deeply unsatisfied with their lives and burdened with guilt from their past actions. Adam is exiled in the country of Namibia after murdering his own brother; Justine moves into his family's home to get away from everyone she knows after the death of her brother in a fire she caused.
And so it goes on. This novel is over-the-top, from the overbearing mother, to the stalker, to the evil arch-nemesis who clubs baby seals, and finally to the whirlwind romance that would never occur between two people at the speed and intimacy and situation as it does in this book.
Also unfortunate is the attention given to detail in this novel. We are given a bunch of meaningless descriptions of the landscape and the house rather than learning why the characters are the way they are. I was interested in Justine's relationship with her brother, but the backstory was summary, not description. Whereas the description of the house was huge, yet not very relevant to the plot.
I would not read this book again, nor do I recommend spending money to buy it. I gave it two stars because I could finish it, and there wasn't anything glaringly awful about it, which is my criteria for one star.
Rated by buyers 
-
Justine is a photo-journalist escaping from her past by taking a job as caretaker of a deteriorating English Manor. Adam is a loner who murdered his brother and exiled himself to the remote African coast. Both lost in their lives are seeking something to bring redemption to their souls.
Perhaps the two are destined to meet. Justine discovers that the English Manor she lives in holds a dark secret. Adam, the heir of the Manor, killed his brother and then fled the country to escape arrest. Justine begins to seek any information about Adam.
Adam, half-way across the world, seeks his soul mate that he believes he has searched for through all time.
While Mostert has set up a good story idea the book simply fails to give the reader any reason to care about her characters or their story. The book includes sweeping lyrical descriptions of the desert sand, ocean and the sand wolf and his family. Also included are great descriptions of the English countryside and the beautiful Manor now fallen into disrepair. What is not included are characters with heart or souls that allow the reading to fall into their lives and care about what happens to them.
While the book contains some elements of the paranormal such as reincarnation and ghost photographs, it simply doesn't make any of these elements believable. The plot is driven by multiple storylines and often looses focus from the prime message of reincarnation. Justine herself continues to disbelieve Adam's claim that they are reincarnated lovers through the end of the book. Perhaps, Justine's disbelief brings about the disbelief by the reader.
Mostert has too many story lines in the book and often drops or ends a plot abruptly. A watcher that we meet at the very beginning of the book becomes a lost by the middle only to show up but to have no real significance in the story. Other storylines are dropped like Justine and her brother's death. Adam and his obsession with the Sand Wolf.
Overall, I could barely make myself finish this book. Beware those looking for a Happily Ever After Romance-this will not deliver.
Rated by buyers 
-
Windwalker is a tale of fated lovers meeting -- in a way that will fill you with awe and that sense of anticipation, that flustered need to tear your hair out, as you cheerlead for their pivotal meeting, and the elation you are overcome with when they do, quite finally, meet -- in their current lifetimes, but parting due to the clashing of divine agendas.
Justine is a photo-journalist with a rocky past -- her bitterness over her parents' divorce renders her into a rebellious teenager and later into a suicidal self-destructive adult. She obtains a peculiar tattoo as a teenager without recognizing the significance of the symbol. It turns out that Adam, her soulmate, also possesses the same tattoo. Moreover, they share the the same quote describing joy and suffering, and Justine, too, believes one of her greatest regrets would be not meeting the someone she was supposed to meet.
After the death of her brother, Justine seeks time out from the world and her job by retreating as caretaker to an abandoned mansion in limbo on the market. She immerses herself in Paradine Park, its 30-rooms and tragic history. She is immediately drawn to the painting of the family that lived there - while the place was still well-tended to, the furniture still present, the ghostly feel of the place overcome by its living inhabitants - a decade ago. She becomes obssessed with the oldest son, the murderer who tears apart his family.
Adam is the hero and lover, who is known as a villain and murderer for much of his life. He is driven by his emotions, but he forces purgatory for his soul after failing to leash the animal in him. Although he is the heir to wealth and status, he becomes a recluse, escaping to an secluded city in Africa to atone (and escape the cops). Despite his self-banishment from society, he is still obsessed with the theory that drives his life.
Ever since he was a child, he has had dreams of a woman whom he knows from the depths of his soul to be his soulmate. Although he is plagued with dyslexia, he is a deep, brooding, thinker -- and, his paradigm is based on the idea of reincarnation -- of soulmates, whose lives are blown by celestial winds through time, which intersect in the happy lifetimes. In the isolation and seclusion of the thunderous winds of the desert city he has exiled himself to, he overcomes his disability, and he writes his soul to this unknown woman, whom he is certain he would meet in this lifetime.
And, they do meet. Although, it is after much suspense, and well past the very first half of the book. Their short time together is perhaps reminiscent of the fact that there is little in life that is solely pleasurable -- the strife and hassle gone into allowing that little pleasure far exceeds in time.
A beautiful scene:
Although Adam has poured many nights into hundreds, if not thousands, of letters to Justine, he becomes overcome with despair (along with the reader) that he is merely fooling himself, attached to a flawed view of the world. Moreover, he realizes his despicable past -- he, a murderer, and his soulmate, the innocent angel whom he would not want to debase with his association. Thus, in one fell swoop, he gathers up all the letters -- penned in such precise ink, the triumph of his overcoming his dyslexia, the writs immortalizing his soul -- and sends them off into the heavy winds of the desert town in Africa that is his prison from the world. Words of love divine flutter through the air, dancing towards their end, as the elements, reality, destroy their contents.
A beautiful motif:
Throughout the story, there is the semblance of a wolf, an animal of some sort, guiding and representing and foreshadowing. The wolf is seen to rush to Paradine Park before Justine's arrival -- foreshadowing her intercepting the wildness of the winds of fate. The wolf is present as "thoughtographs" (a nifty theory I came to learn from this book) through her photos of what appears to be empty rooms -- photos, which develop to show the image of a wolf moving through the rooms. The sense of the wolf, the animal, approaching her, each night coming closer and closer to her alludes to the winds of fate working, twisting their lives closer and closer together, until the night Adam arrives in her bedroom in Paradine Park. The brutal murdering of the strandwolf cubs signifies the very first vulnerability of the wildness of fate -- the force of the lives of others (evil Russian guy) can break its beautiful matchmaking. When Justine is overcome with the despair and pathos of Adam's end, the wolf comes to her, and she beckons it to approach her, but it leaves her -- as if fate telling her that her time is not yet to come. The wolf also guides her in running towards Adam, in the end.
Ultimately, though, I can understand why everyone else decided to wreck havoc on Mostert's ratings in revenge for their tears and ... Read More
Find other books like this one:
