Beginning of a new historical-fantasy trilogy, set in the same Mongol Khanate-style universe as the short novel Bone and Jewel Creatures (2010). Along the Celadon Highway, the empire of the Great Khagan is embroiled in civil war. A grandson, Temur, supported his defeated elder brother in terrible battles against his usurping uncle Qori Buqa. In the country of the Eternal Sky, a moon sails in the heavens for each of Mongke Khagan’s sons and grandsons. Once there were over a hundred, now less than a third remain, Temur’s Iron Moon among them. Though badly wounded, Temur survives, attaches himself to one of the wandering clans of the steppes and takes Edene as his woman. Meanwhile Qori Buqa allies himself with al-Sepehr, an ambitious renegade blood-sorcerer cultist of the Uthman Caliphate. Al-Sepehr raises an army of ghosts to kill Temur, but fails; instead the sorcerer snatches Edene and brings her to his stronghold of Al-Din. Meanwhile, Samarkar, a wizard of Tsarepheth in the Rasan Empire, where another, less bloody, power struggle is going on, learns of sorcerous doings in the city Qeshqer and travels to investigate. Here she meets Temur, who’s searching for Edene. They will be joined by Hrahima, a huge human-tiger Cho-tse, who has traveled from Ctesifon with more bad news. The Khagan Empire is Temur’s to claim-if he can survive the plots of Qori Buqa.

This lean, sinewy, visceral narrative, set forth in extraordinarily vivid prose full of telling detail, conveys a remarkable sense of time and place, where the characters belong to the landscape and whose personalities derive naturally from it. Though the book is not self-contained, Bear provides this opener with enough of a resolution to satisfy while whetting the appetite for more. Gripping, perfectly balanced and highly recommended. –Kirkus, Starred Review

Bear and Monette follow 2007′s Companion to Wolves with another tale of the frozen northern lands of Iskryne inhabited by Wolfcarls and their telepathically bonded trellwolves. When wolves mate, so do their humans–leaving thoroughly heterosexual Isolfr, the bond-mate of Queen-wolf Viradechtis, in an uncomfortable position with Skjaldwulf and Vethulf, men bonded to Viradechtis’s consorts. The Wolfcarls have at long last vanquished the trolls who plagued Iskryne, but without a common enemy, their tenuous alliance with the mysterious Svartalfar has become even more fragile, while the nearby Rhean Empire turns its ambitions northwards. Vethulf and Skjaldwulf must forge a new path for their people and a new understanding in their relationship if either of them is to survive. This well-wrought tale serves as an exciting adventure as well as a thought-provoking and often disturbing deconstruction of companion animal fantasies. — Publishers Weekly

Every bit as absorbing as the first volume, The Tempering of Men is compelling and intensely readable. Told from multiple perspectives, the characters are well-drawn and distinct, especially Brokkolfr and Amma, his amusingly maternal wolf-sister. Monette and Bear each excel at creating unique worlds when writing solo fiction, so it’s no surprise that this joint effort combines their strengths into something extraordinary. –RT Book Review, 4 ½ Stars, Top Pick!

This deftly told story completes the Jacob’s Ladder trilogy begun in Dust and Chill. The Conns and the other inhabitants of an ancient wandering spaceship face their last and greatest challenge. They’ve finally found a habitable planet, but others beat them to it: “right-minded” humans, surgically altered to achieve emotional balance, and more alien to the Jacobites than extraterrestrials would be. Leaders on both ship and planet are willing to fight and kill to keep the two cultures from interacting, while old enemies aboard the Jacob’s Ladder re-emerge to wreak destruction. The story is poised on a knife’s edge, with the Jacobites facing both possible annihilation and inner demons just as they’re closing in on their goal. Bear’s talent for portraying cultural divergence and conflict is especially apparent in this intense wrapup. –Publishers Weekly

Hugo winner Bear (The Sea Thy Mistress) begins her new short novel with a deceptive catalog of steampunk clichés—alternate history, a plucky heroine, and the obligatory zeppelins—before veering in a radically different direction with a double-threaded detective story plot. Two murders in Moscow, one in 1897 and the other in 1903, are linked to a single woman. But this is no mere costumed crime story: the Tsarist police employ forensic sorcerers, and vampires and their elegant “courts” of human hangers-on are accepted members of society. The pace is brisk, the characters are well-realized, and the resultant delvings into darkness are certain to keep genre readers entertained to the end. The sole cause for disappointment is that things wrap up too quickly and easily, with limited exposure to the strange minds of Bear’s decidedly post-human vampires.

Few family feuds feature gem-studded automatons facing off against zombies, but this quirky short fantasy by Hugo-winner Bear (By the Mountain Bound) is the exception. When aging wizard Bijou the Artificer starts encountering people and animals infected with a flesh-decaying spell, she prepares for a long-delayed confrontation with her ex-lover, Kaulas the Necromancer. Each desires the allegiance of Brazen the Enchanter, Bijou’s former apprentice, and their weapons include Emeraude, a feral child raised by jackals. Bear provides a sympathetic portrait, drawn in part through Emeraude’s nonverbal perceptions, of a dedicated master coming to terms with the end of her life and determined to honor her commitments to the end. The vagueness of the (Persian? Turkish? Provençal?) setting distracts only a little from the exploration of love and loyalty at the core of this engaging tale. –Publishers Weekly

Having survived the events of 2007’s Dust, the crew of the generation starship Jacob’s Ladder, marooned for centuries, find themselves once more racing though space. Unfortunately, the ship is badly damaged, large sections are out of communication with the central computer, and the highly augmented Exalt who rule the ship and its merely human occupants have lost the knowledge of how to select a destination. Antagonist Arianrhod is still alive, free, and a potential threat. Dealing with these problems involves epic journeys across a massive, poorly mapped spacecraft and confrontations with forgotten and suppressed relics of the past. 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

In this complex prequel to Hugo-winner Bear’s All the Windwracked Stars (2008), Ragnarok has already occurred, but the world must still be cleansed of the residue of the former realm. When immortal einherjar war-leader Strifbjorn rescues a strange woman from drowning, she claims to be the Lady, a long-awaited deity, and defeats Strifbjorn’s champion and lover, Mingan the Gray Wolf, to take command. The ensuing internal power struggles set the einherjar at odds while the Lady attempts to rally the community against a supposedly imminent attack by giants. Numerous fantasy authors adopt the tropes of Norse mythology, but Bear actively pursues them, channeling those myths directly rather than overlaying them on more familiar ones. The result demands much from readers, but repays it in vivid, sensual imagery of a wholly different world. –Publishers Weekly

Elizabeth Bear’s BONE AND JEWEL CREATURES and an untitled story set in the New Amsterdam series, to Bill Schafer at Subterranean Press, by Jennifer Jackson of the Donald Maass Literary Agency.

***

Earlier New Amsterdam books:

New Amsterdam (May 2007, trade reprint: May 2008)
Seven for a Secret (March 2009)

Bear returns to the team of the wampyr Sebastian and Abigail Irene Garrett, decades after the stories of New Amsterdam (2007). Abigail Irene is now in her eighties, not particularly mellowed with age. Sebastian, remembering his history in London, is protecting young lovers from the Schupo (i.e., police; England has been under the not-very-popular iron fist of the Prussians for some time), in the process finding a mystery begging solution. The smell of wolf—of two girls, yes, but also a wolf—and magic somehow relating to sevens sets Sebastian and Abigail Irene to finding out what terrible thaumaturgical experiments the Prussians are into now. Seven echoes, quite often, the events in Paris (i.e., in New Amsterdam), and Sebastian is prone to fits of soul-searching. He has a very small court and is old enough to have a lot of memories to work with. Bear again handles the combination of PI caper and vampire yarn with her usual unconventionality. Sebastian is a fascinating character, and the mysteries he becomes embroiled in are magnificent examples of alternate history. –Booklist