Grail
Authors: Elizabeth Bear
Praise for Elizabeth Bear
Winner of the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best New Writer, 2005
“Bear proves herself to be one of the most talented writers currently working in the field.”
—
Romantic Times
“A remarkable SF writer who’s leaving many of her contemporaries in the dust.”
—SFReviews
And for her novels
CHILL
“Bear enhances the usual generation ship themes—social amnesia, decaying infrastructure, and mission-threatening grand calamities—with enough new flourishes, including a biotechnology-based class system and cruel experiments based on misapprehensions of Darwin, to keep readers happily engaged.”
—
Publishers Weekly
DUST
Nominated for the 2007 Philip K. Dick Award
2008 Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Nominee for Best Science Fiction Novel
“Bear takes on the well-worn sf device of the generation ship and, seasoning with Roger Zelazny–esque family politics and Mervyn Peake–ish behind-the-scenes intrigue, concocts a delicious blend of science so advanced it’s like magic and people, the ship’s royalty, who are somehow altered by the nanotech colonies that make them Exalt but remain neurotic and struggling like ordinary humans.… Bear’s approach to the story results in exactly the kind of brilliantly detailed, tightly plotted, roller-coaster book she has led her readers to expect, replete with a fantastic cast of characters. When Bear revamps the genre’s standard furniture, the results are extraordinary.”
—Booklist
(starred review)
“Bear proves there’s still juice in one of science fiction’s oldest tropes, the stranded generation ship, in this complex coming-of-age tale.… Standard plot devices litter the familiar landscape: tarot, pseudo-angels, named swords with powers, and politics as a family quarrel. But Campbell Award–winning author Bear uses them beautifully to turn up the pressure on her characters, who respond by making hard choices. And—as she did in
Carnival
and
Hammered
—Bear breaks sexual taboos matter-of-factly: love in varied forms drives the characters without offering easy redemption.”
—
Publishers Weekly
“A novel of sharp invention with a conclusion propelled by a love that, in the end, drowns out all distractions.”
—The Washington Post Book World
“[Bear’s] language is sharp and strong and playful. Her technology is up-to-date and cleverly deployed. The cultures she creates are a spiffy blend of futuristic and anachronistic. The plot is never totally predictable. And her characters, including the demiurges, are easy to get next to and relate to. Taken all in all, this is a fine addition to the generation-ship canon, and will reward your attention with many delights.”
—Fantasy Book Critic Blogspot
“
Dust
is deftly paced and plotted; the main characters are well-constructed; the action scenes exciting; and the prose is descriptive, elegant,
and
accessible.”
“Dazzlingly conceived … has all the makings of a work of unfettered genius … Bear [is] a remarkable SF writer who’s leaving many of her contemporaries in the dust.”
—SFReviews
“Bear’s language, pacing, and the gradual unfolding of the mysteries of the world of
Jacob’s Ladder
are pitch-perfect.”
—
Fantasy & Science Fiction
“A tightly plotted, fast-moving story with great characters, loads of science and a brilliant premise … The neat construction of this story, its leanness, with nary a wasted word, reminded me of Silverberg’s brilliant novels of the seventies.…
Dust
is a great book and I thoroughly enjoyed it.”
HAMMERED
Winner of the Locus Award for Best First Novel, 2005, for
Hammered, Scardown
,
and
Worldwired
“
Hammered
is a very exciting, very polished, very impressive debut novel.”
—M
IKE
R
ESNICK
“Gritty, insightful, and daring—Elizabeth Bear is a talent to watch.”
—D
AVID
B
RIN
, author of the Uplift novels
“A gritty and painstakingly well informed peek inside a future we’d all better hope we don’t get, liberally seasoned with VR delights and enigmatically weird alien artifacts. Genevieve Casey is a pleasingly original female lead, fully equipped with the emotional life so often lacking in military SF, yet tough and full of noir attitude.… Out of this basic contrast, Bear builds her future nightmare tale with style and conviction and a constant return to the twists of the human heart.”
—R
ICHARD
M
ORGAN
, author of
Altered Carbon
“
Hammered
has it all. Drug wars, hired guns, corporate skullduggery, and bleeding-edge AI, all rolled into one of the best first novels I’ve seen in I don’t know how long. This is the real dope!”
—C
HRIS
M
ORIARTY
, author of
Spin Control
“A glorious hybrid: hard science, dystopian geopolitics, and wide-eyed sense of wonder seamlessly blended into a single book. I hate this woman. She makes the rest of us look like amateurs.”
—P
ETER
W
ATTS
, author of
Starfish
and
Maelstrom
“Bear is talented.”
—Entertainment Weekly
“Moves at warp speed, with terse ’n’ tough dialogue laced with irony, larger-than-life characters and the intrigue of a 3-D chess match. It’s a sharp critique of the military-industrial complex and geopolitics—with our normally nice neighbors to the north as the villains, to boot.… A compelling, disquieting look at a future none of us ever want to see.”
—Hartford Courant
“Bear skillfully constructs the ingredients for an exciting, futuristic, high-tech book.”
—
The Dallas Morning News
“
Hammered
is hard-boiled, hard-hitting science fiction—but it has a very human heart. The reader will care what happens to these characters.”
—
Winston-Salem Journal
“Bear posits a violent, frightening future. She doesn’t try to sugarcoat this world, [but] does a good job of balancing the bad parts with moments of humanity and goodness.…
Hammered
is a hard-edged, intriguing look at a near-future Earth that paints technology in some quite unique ways.”
—
The Davis Enterprise
“A violent, compulsive read … [Bear is] a welcome addition—not only to ‘noir sci-fi’ but to sensational fiction in general.… Compulsively readable … Bear’s greatest talent in
Hammered
is writing about violence in a way that George Pelecanos, Robert Crais and the aforementioned Parker would envy.… Bear isn’t just a writer to watch, she’s a writer to applaud.”
—The Huntsville Times
“Bear’s twenty-first century has some intriguing features drawn from ongoing events … desperate and violent urban centers, artificial intelligences emerging in the Net, virtual reconstructions of famous personalities, neural augmentation, nanotech surgical bots. Bear devotes admirable attention to the physical and mental challenges that radical augmentation would likely entail, and
Hammered
certainly establishes Bear as a writer with intriguing potential.”
—Fantasy & Science Fiction
“With Jenny Casey, author Elizabeth Bear delivers a kick-butt fighter who could easily hold her own against Kristine Smith’s Jani Kilian or Elizabeth Moon’s Heris Serrano.… What Bear has done in
Hammered
is create a world that is all too plausible, one racked by environmental devastation and political chaos. Through Jenny Casey’s eyes, she conducts a tour of this society’s darker corners, offering an unnerving peek into a future humankind would be wise to avoid.”
“
Hammered
is a tough, gritty novel sure to appeal to fans of Elizabeth Moon and David Weber.… In Jenny Casey, Bear has created an admirably Chandler-esque character, street-smart and battle-scarred, tough talking and quick on the trigger.… Bear shuttles effortlessly back and forth across time to weave her disparate cast of characters together in a tightly plotted page-turner. The noir universe she creates is as hard-edged as the people who inhabit it.”
—SFRevu
“An SF thriller full of skullduggery, featuring a razor-sharp ex-soldier who’s on the run from her own government for fear they’ll want to do worse things to her than they already have, and they’ve done a lot … A tense, involving and character-driven read … a doozy of a ride.”
—The New York Review of Science Fiction
“A sobering projection of unchecked current social, political and environmental trends [centered around the] theme of how what we would choose to preserve and what we wish to discard are sometimes inextricable.”
—Green Man Reviews
“It’s rare to find a book with so many characters you genuinely care about. It’s a roller coaster of a good thriller, too. There’s plenty of intrigue and a few climactic gunfights and an intriguing love triangle.… Elizabeth Bear has carved herself out a fantastic little world with this first novel. Long may it continue.”
“
Hammered
is a well-written debut, and Bear’s deft treatment of the characters and their relationships pushed the book up to keeper level.… I would gladly hand it over to anyone who would appreciate a broader spectrum of strong female characters to choose from, particularly in the realm of speculative fiction.”
—Broad Universe
“An enthralling roller-coaster ride through a dark and possible near future.”
—Starlog
“Bear has done a bang-up job rearranging a few squares of the here and now into a future that’s guaranteed to raise the blood pressure.… Sure, we all want heart-pounding suspense, and Bear offers that in spades. But she also provides the kind of pressurizing prescience that doesn’t exactly see the future so much as it re-paints the most unpleasant parts of the present into a portrait of a world that knows and loathes itself all too well.… And the gritty underpinnings she establishes make her flights of fancy all the more believable.”
—The Agony Column
“[Bear] does it like a juggler who is also a magician.”
—M
ATTHEW
C
HENEY
, Mumpsimus
SCARDOWN
“Bear deftly creates believable characters who walk into your heart and mind easily … [her] prose is easy on the mind’s ears, her dialogue generally crisp and lifelike.”
“
Scardown
is a wonderfully written book, and should be a prerequisite for anyone who wants to write intrigue. Although it doesn’t reinvent the cyberpunk genre with radically new science or philosophy, it uses the established conventions to tell a thoroughly engaging story, and tell it with a high degree of skill. It’s engaging brain candy with surprising emotional insights—and some cool gun fights—and you won’t be able to put it down.”
—Reflection’s Edge
“For all the widescreen fireworks and exotic tech, it is also a tale in which friendships and familial relationships drive as much of the action as enmity, paranoia and Machiavellian scheming. Bad Things great and small will indeed be allowed to happen, but those who come through the other side will have exhibited that combination of toughness and humanity that makes Bear one of the most welcome writers to come over the horizon lately.”
—
Locus
WORLDWIRED
“Elizabeth Bear … has forged a peculiar and powerful path with her tripartite novel. By sheer force of will and great writing, Bear has pulled off a rather remarkable feat without drawing attention to that feat.… [A] rip-roaring tale of detection, adventure, aliens, conspiracy and much more told in carefully turned prose with well-developed characters.”
—The Agony Column
“Elizabeth Bear is simply magisterial. She asserts firm control of her characters, her setting, and her research.… It really is a fine thing to see a writer mature as well and as successfully as Elizabeth has—and in only her third published book. I can pay her the ultimate compliment a reader can make a writer: I will purchase and read each of her books. Yes, I trust her insights and talent that much.… Run, do not walk, to your nearest bookseller, buy this book, and then sit back and enjoy.”
—Las Vegas SF Society
