Donald Maass Literary Agency

Library Journal: When the humans decided to strike against the terra indigene, they were hit with a force that decimated all the people living in towns in Thaisia. Now both humans and Others­those who survived­attempt to revive some of the ruined areas for cooperative living. In Bennett, Jana Paniccia becomes deputy to a Wolfgard sheriff who holds bitter memories of the humans’ actions. Tolya Sanguinati attempts to build relationships with the town of Prairie Gold, and Inuit shopkeeper Jesse Walker, while restoring Bennett and monitoring the area’s train service. As humans slowly come into Bennett, so do Others, all looking for a place of their own. But trust takes time, and when the Blackstone clan tries to take over, everyone in Bennett will need to work together.

VERDICT Bishop’s sequel to Lake Silence presents captivating characters and rich detail, resulting in a satisfying urban fantasy.

Kirkus: Bear, then, offers plenty of big, bold, fascinating ideas in a narrative that culminates in a double showdown with a dazzling array of said thoughtful beings…. Impressive at the core. Readers who relished the Jacob’s Ladder trilogy will certainly enjoy this one.

Horn Book Magazine: Thirteen-year-old Min is feisty and clever, and she has a powerful secret: she’s a gumiho, a fox spirit disguised as a human. Min can shape-shift and use Charm (fox magic) to alter others’ perceptions and emotions. She enthusiastically wields these powers when she ditches her “dismal life” on the barren planet Jinju in order to track down her brother Jun, a Thousand Worlds Space Forces cadet who’s gone AWOL. Min’s epic adventure leads to run-ins with spaceport security guards, gamblers, and ghosts. She impersonates a dead cadet on a starship battle cruiser and encounters the legendary Dragon Pearl, a mystical orb that creates life. Lee has a knack for world-building. His richly detailed, cohesive, original vision is a lively mash-up of outer-space sci-fi and Korean culture and folklore: starships have gi, an energy flow; pirates fly in groups of four because it’s a number that signifies death; characters, both supernatural and human, eat gimchi and play the board game baduk; Min befriends a dragon cadet who can summon the weather—sometimes inadvertently—and a dokkaebi (Korean goblin) who carries a magical spork. The dokkaebi is also a nonbinary character, who’s referred to with gender-neutral pronouns—a small detail that’s woven in matter-of-factly and just as smoothly as all the other strands in this engaging space opera.

Publishers Weekly: Matthews’s second novel (after Blood Enemies) since the relaunch of her Jurisdiction series is a tightly styled, simply plotted examination of ambition, obsession, and the many faces of justice, played out in a military SF setting that is deeply informed by the author’s own military experience. Andrej Kosciusko, former torturer for the established order of Jurisdiction, has decamped to Gonebeyond space. Rocked by crises, Jurisdiction is reaching out to its exiles to find a new path forward­ and so are some other elements who would like to tip the boat over. One of these is the Witt crime syndicate, whose boss nurtures an unhealthy obsession with “Black Andrej.” He delegates Danyo Pefisct, another ex-torturer, to incapacitate Andrej with an engineered virus and transport him back to Jurisdiction. But the Gonebeyond coalition is engaged in military operations against slavers, with all the chaos and displacement of war, and Danyo’s task becomes knotted into the lives of hundreds. Matthews does yeoman’s work in contextualizing characters and past events.