Oct 162020
Oct 152020
A new science fiction mystery featuring Sub-Inspector Ferrin, from two-time Hugo Award winner Elizabeth Bear.
A woman has vanished. She reported her disappearance in advance.
In the Bangalore, India, of the 2070s, a young woman who is internet-famous enters an empty police station and tells the virtual assistant that her life is in danger. When she disappears out of her own apartment, it’s up to Police Sub-Inspector Ferron and her partner to determine whether a crime has even been committed. In a world of enhanced tech and extreme interconnectedness, can someone truly disappear?
To find the answers, Ferron will need to enter a braver, newer world of virtual reality – and deal with the small matter of a herd of tiny, vicious unicorns.
Oct 092020
Oct 062020
In this compelling and addictive novel set in the same universe as the critically acclaimed White Space series and perfect for fans of Karen Traviss and Ada Hoffman, a space station begins to unravel when a routine search and rescue mission returns after going dangerously awry.
Meet Doctor Jens.
She hasn’t had a decent cup of coffee in fifteen years. Her workday begins when she jumps out of perfectly good space ships and continues with developing treatments for sick alien species she’s never seen before. She loves her life. Even without the coffee.
But Dr. Jens is about to discover an astonishing mystery: two ships, one ancient and one new, locked in a deadly embrace. The crew is suffering from an unknown ailment and the shipmind is trapped in an inadequate body, much of her memory pared away.
Unfortunately, Dr. Jens can’t resist a mystery and she begins doing some digging. She has no idea that she’s about to discover horrifying and life-changing truths.
Written in Elizabeth Bear’s signature “rollicking, suspenseful, and sentimental” (Publishers Weekly) style, Machine is a fresh and electrifying space opera that you won’t be able to put down.
Oct 062020
Locus: One thing about Elizabeth Bear’s Machine, the second novel set in her White Space universe after 2019’s Ancestral Night: it’s sure as hell not either shallow or amoral. It is, in fact, fundamentally engaged in wrestling with questions of ethics, culture, worldview, and how much restitution needs to be made when one does harm in order to do other kinds of good.
Jens is a fascinating character. The narrator of Machine, she is – in all her flaws, determination, skill, friendships, and conviction – very easy to relate to, and to empathise with, in her human complexity, triumphs, and failures.
Though Machine is set in the same world as Ancestral Night – in the Synarche, with its vast diversity of people and species, its peculiar form of government, and its technological advances and social compromises – it has a similarly engaging voice, for all that Jens is a very different character to Ancestral Night’s Haimey, and a similarly engaging approach to pacing: Machine isn’t a short book, but it’s a very fast read for its length. Bear has a striking command of tension and character, and a deep interest in ethics and human behaviour.
It’s impossible, if you’re aware of James White’s Sector General stories and novels, not to see Machine as in conversation with that particular lineage. (I think I’ve read all of one Sector General story, but the influence is clear.) Space opera rarely concerns itself with the medical, and with the challenges of workaday life: it’s an untapped vein, and Bear draws from it with characteristic deftness and skill.
Machine is a fascinating, compelling, and ultimately satisfying space opera in a vast, complex, weird, and interesting universe. I really enjoyed it, and I hope this isn’t the last novel to concern itself with Core General, or with the Synarche at large.
Sep 302020
Hungarian rights to New York Times Bestselling author Jim Butcher’s DEAD BEAT and PROVEN GUILTY, books 7 and 8 in the Dresden Files series, to Delta Vision, by Milena Kaplarevic at Prava i Prevodi in association with Michael Curry for Jennifer Jackson.
French rights to Caitlin Starling’s YELLOW JESSAMINE, to Editions du Chat Noir, by Robin Batet at Anna Jarota Agency, on behalf of Katie Shea Boutillier for Caitlin McDonald.
Portuguese rights to New York Times Bestselling author Anne Bishop’s THE QUEEN’S BARGAIN, the newest book in her Black Jewels series, to Saída de Emergência, by Amaiur Fernández at International Editors’ Co. in association with Michael Curry for Jennifer Jackson.
Russian rights to New York Times Bestselling author Jim Butcher’s STORM FRONT and six additional books in the Dresden Files series, to Azbooka-Atticus, by Alexander Korzhenevski at Alexander Korzhenevski Agency in association with Michael Curry for Jennifer Jackson.
Thai rights to Martha Wells’ ALL SYSTEMS RED, ARTIFICIAL CONDITION, ROGUE PROTOCOL, and EXIT STRATEGY, the first four installments in the New York Times bestselling Murderbot Diaries series, to Salt Publishing, by Itzel Hsu at The Grayhawk Agency in association with Michael Curry for Jennifer Jackson.
Sep 292020
THINGS ARE ABOUT TO GET SERIOUS FOR HARRY DRESDEN, CHICAGO’S ONLY PROFESSIONAL WIZARD, in the next entry in the #1 New York Times bestselling Dresden Files.
Harry has faced terrible odds before. He has a long history of fighting enemies above his weight class. The Red Court of vampires. The fallen angels of the Order of the Blackened Denarius. The Outsiders.
But this time it’s different. A being more powerful and dangerous on an order of magnitude beyond what the world has seen in a millennium is coming. And she’s bringing an army. The Last Titan has declared war on the city of Chicago, and has come to subjugate humanity, obliterating any who stand in her way.
Harry’s mission is simple but impossible: Save the city by killing a Titan. And the attempt will change Harry’s life, Chicago, and the mortal world forever.
Sep 252020
Kirkus: The second novel set in Bear’s sprawling White Space universe – after Ancestral Night (2018) – is an intricately plotted fusion of science-fiction adventure and conspiratorial mystery that revolves around a space station that begins to experience critical mishaps after a rescue mission returns with humans who have been in cryogenic suspension for centuries.
When rescue specialist Dr. Brookllyn Jens – who has dedicated her life to saving and treating any and all species of beings – finds more than 10,000 humans in cryo-containers onboard a derelict generation ship that has been in space for 600 years, she is faced with numerous unanswered questions. How did the ship get to its current location? Why were the passengers turned into “corpsicles”? Why was an android named Helen Alloy left to protect them? Why is a modern vessel docked on the generation ship, and where is the methane-breathing crew? What is the purpose of the crablike machine in the vessel? With these mysteries, and more, unsolved, Jens returns as many rescued passengers as she can to Core General, a state-of-the-art hospital and largest constructed biosphere in the galaxy. Once there, however, Jens begins uncovering some chilling revelations about the purpose of the frozen passengers, the strange craboid walker, and a mysterious virus impacting shipmind AIs. While there are a few sequences in which the momentum flags, Bear’s ability to keep the reader immersed in the various characters’ individual stories and the dynamism among the human and alien characters of the Synarche (the interstellar government that joins together multiple alien races for a collective good) more than compensates. The character arc of Jens – who has a debilitating pain syndrome and is struggling to come to grips with her lack of connection with her daughter – is done with insight and sensitivity.
A page-turning fusion of science fiction and mystery – hopefully Bear will revisit her White Space universe soon.
Sep 042020
Publishers Weekly: Muir (Gideon the Ninth) showcases her distinctive voice in this playful page-turner that flips fairy tale archetypes on their heads. A witch traps Princess Floralinda at the top of a tower, explaining “you have butter-coloured curls and eyes as blue as sapphires. The moment I saw you, I knew a tower was crucial. Witches are all slaves to instinct.” Each of the tower’s 40 floors houses a different type of monster, and the dragon guarding the ground floor is so fearsome that none of the princes coming to rescue Floralinda have been able to make it past. After the princes stop trying, Floralinda discovers the diary of the tower’s previous occupant, another princess who eventually became so despondent she jumped out the tower window to her death. Desperate to escape, Floralinda endeavors to get past the goblins on the floor below her. She succeeds only with the help of Cobweb, a fairy she captures. Together, they make their way down the tower, and along the way Floralinda learns to fight, ask questions, and think for herself—none of which a princess is “meant” to do. Told with the humor, whimsy, and innocent romance of a children’s story, this adult fairy tale is a winsome enchantment.
Aug 312020
Publishers Weekly: Hugo Award winner Bear’s spectacularly smart space opera, set in the same universe as 2018’s Ancestral Night, begins with the dispatch of an ambulance ship from the immense medical habitat Core General to respond to a distress signal. The signal originates from a vessel docked aboard a lost generation ship that was launched from Earth centuries earlier, before humans overcame their self-destructive impulses and joined a multi-race, interstellar civilization called the Synarche. When rescue specialist Dr. Brookllyn Jens arrives on the scene, she finds the crew of the generation ship sealed in cryogenic containers, with only Helen, an anxious and rather threatening android, conscious. Meanwhile, the crew of the docked ship that sent out the distress signal in the first place are all comatose and the huge machine they have on board looks suspiciously like a combat walker. In addition to untangling the history of these ships, Jens is deputized to investigate increasingly destructive incidents of sabotage at Core General, leading her to question her faith in the hospital’s ideals. Bear’s vivid tale, narrated by the wry, almost painfully self-aware Jens, bristles with inventive science and riveting action scenes. With this outstanding work, Bear proves her mastery of the space opera genre yet again.