Elizabeth Bear - Grail

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 whos leaving many of her contemporaries in the dust.

SFReviews

And for her novels
CHILL

Bear enhances the usual generation ship themessocial amnesia, decaying infrastructure, and mission-threatening grand calamitieswith 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 Zelaznyesque family politics and Mervyn Peakeish behind-the-scenes intrigue, concocts a delicious blend of science so advanced its like magic and people, the ships royalty, who are somehow altered by the nanotech colonies that make them Exalt but remain neurotic and struggling like ordinary humans. Bears 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 genres standard furniture, the results are extraordinary.

Booklist (starred review)

Bear proves theres still juice in one of science fictions 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 Awardwinning author Bear uses them beautifully to turn up the pressure on her characters, who respond by making hard choices. Andas she did in Carnival and HammeredBear 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

[Bears] 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.

SciFi.com

Dazzlingly conceived has all the makings of a work of unfettered genius Bear [is] a remarkable SF writer whos leaving many of her contemporaries in the dust.

SFReviews

Bears language, pacing, and the gradual unfolding of the mysteries of the world of Jacobs 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 Silverbergs brilliant novels of the seventies. Dust is a great book and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

SF Crowsnest.com

HAMMERED
Winner of the Locus Award for Best First Novel, 2005, forHammered, Scardown, andWorldwired

Hammered is a very exciting, very polished, very impressive debut novel.

M IKE R ESNICK

Gritty, insightful, and daringElizabeth 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 wed all better hope we dont 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 Ive seen in I dont 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. Its a sharp critique of the military-industrial complex and geopoliticswith 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 fictionbut 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 doesnt 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 additionnot only to noir sci-fi but to sensational fiction in general. Compulsively readable Bears greatest talent in Hammered is writing about violence in a way that George Pelecanos, Robert Crais and the aforementioned Parker would envy. Bear isnt just a writer to watch, shes a writer to applaud.

The Huntsville Times

Bears 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 Smiths Jani Kilian or Elizabeth Moons 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 Caseys eyes, she conducts a tour of this societys darker corners, offering an unnerving peek into a future humankind would be wise to avoid.